“I see,” said Smirt amiably; “you wanted to get rid of me.”
“Your perceptiveness, Smirt, is astounding.”
But Smirt waved aside this compliment, with his usual modesty. Smirt said:
“Oh, no, it is a mere matter of experience. I have noted that desire in yet other quarters. And I have encountered it not only in book reviews written by enviably young persons, black dog, but in grave magazine articles, and in books too, by people well advanced in senility. This getting rid of me is quite a national movement, which has at many times assumed the fervor of a crusade. Some day I must show you my press clippings. They will interest you. They will, as it were, buck you up. Oh, yes, beyond doubt they will, for a great number of these press clippings bear directly upon that same smug self-conceit about which you were just talking.”
“This,” said the black dog, “is beyond endurance!”
“To the contrary, black dog,” Smirt consoled him, “my self-conceit is a popular superstition which any thoughtful person can well understand. It is a plain sample of pseudodoxia epidemica, and in its inevitability it outrivals by a great deal the question of the hare’s sex, or the enigma of the lion’s backward conduct in his amours, or even the vexed problem of Adam’s navel—”
“Bah!” said the black dog.
“—For by the dull-minded,” Smirt went on to explain courteously, “a person of any special talent is expected not to notice that he possesses this talent; by the dull-minded an artist is permitted to give over his life to his art, if he so elects, but he is not permitted to attach any audible importance to his art. Should he assume, in brief, in so many words, that his work is worth doing for its own worth, and is not merely a legalized form of prostitution, then that artist becomes a figure of fun. Oh, yes, one can quite understand that: and as a creative artist myself, in my own romanticizing way, I have often envied these imaginative flights of the dull-minded, which, in a democracy at least, are not ever hampered by rationality.”
“Bah!” said the black dog.
“But you keep saying that, when Bow-wow would be a welcome change, and upon the whole far more appropriate—”
“Bah!” said the black dog, “bah, bah! You talk and you talk. Bah! None the less you are still in search for that suitable audience of yours; and I have your writing room all to myself.”
“In fact, black dog,” said Smirt equably, “it is permitted you to remain standing on a radiator undisturbed; and it is permitted me to enter into the august presence of the Stewards of Heaven. I do not know as yet which one of us makes the nobler bargain, no, I do not know that absolutely; but I do know I have not any least desire to stand on a radiator.”
“It is a pity,” said the black dog, in a contained frenzy, “that I was made without teeth! There are times when I feel the need of them. However, I am in lively hopes the Spider Woman may finish the work I began.”
Thus growling, he went back sulkily to his radiator; and Smirt entered the city of Amit with entire urbanity.
PART FOUR. TEACHES BY EXAMPLE
“According to Plutarch and Herodotus, the Mnevis of the Egyptians was held by some to be the mystic father of Apis. Again, in Deuteronomy XXVIII, we find ‘the first fruits of the body’ promised as one of the special blessings for obedience to the law. It will be remembered also that the oldest Spanish university, at Salamanca, was founded in 1240.”
XIX. THE STEWARDS OF HEAVEN
The home of the Shining Ones was beautiful beyond imagining. It seemed not certain that even the refined and sinewy and multi-colored prose of Smirt could do full justice to Amit, now that in order to welcome Smirt, came from each of the seven palaces of Amit the tall master of that palace attended by his symbolic animal—excepting Phaleg, who came in red robes, like a much magnified cardinal, followed by a peacock.
Six of the Shining Ones wore eternal youth. Arathron, the Divine Father, alone kept the appearance, becoming to his estate, of a bearded man in early middle life whom a sedate mouse-colored goat accompanied everywhither. All were serene and handsome huge persons, and yet, as Smirt saw, they were impervious to humor. It was not possible to conceive that any one of them had ever laughed over anything which was not wholly stupid. The nobility of their faces and of their heroic forms and of their sublime dullness was a vague trouble to Smirt. These gods reminded him of a drove of superb cattle.
Such were the seven Stewards of Heaven, who said: “Homage to Smirt! Be very welcome to this place, to the eternal city of Amit. We have all heard of Smirt. Until to-day no fortunate one of us has beheld the face which is more admirable than the face of any god. To-day the bliss of the Shining Ones is made complete.”
“Upon my word,” Smirt reflected, “but these divine beings, if a little dull-minded, yet have big hearts, as well as a mighty civil way of putting matters.”
“Now do you tell us,” said Bethor, “what will be the future trend of Southern literature, what is your philosophy of life, and which one of your books do you like best.”
“Well,” Smirt replied, “I would say that all depends.”
“Do you write in the morning or the evening?” asked Phaleg, “and does your secretary open all your letters? It must be simply wonderful to be a writer. Do you think that capitalism is doomed? What critic has best understood your work as a whole?”
“That, too, that all depends, my dear sir,” Smirt assured Phaleg, “although I grant, of course, there is something to be said on the other side.”
Then Och asked: “What author has most influenced you? Do you compose on a typewriter? If I were to tell you a perfectly true story about what happened to an aunt of mine would you like to make a book out of it? Why do you not write for the moving pictures?”
And thereafter, of course, the Shining Ones began to inquire about the younger Southern writers.
“Tell us frankly,” said Phul (who was an hermaphrodite, clothed in pale green and pale yellow) “just what you think about DuBose Heyward, Roark Bradford, T. S. Stribling, Julia Peterkin, Hervey Alien, Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, and Paul Green. It must be simply wonderful to be a writer. What effect will the radio have upon literature?”
“Do you write every day,” inquired Ophiel, “or do you wait for inspiration to move you? If I send you a book will you autograph it for a young man who is a close friend of my wife’s third cousin, and who has already read one of your books? What do you usually have for breakfast when you are writing? How did you happen to take up writing as a profession? Do you really understand James Joyce?”
Hagith said: “When is your next book to appear? Are you working on anything just now? Have you devoted much study to Karl Marx? Who is Karl Marx? What are you going to call your next book?”
All the other usual questions did the huge Shining Ones ask with that benevolent inattention which befits the asking of these questions. Smirt began to feel quite at ease in the home of the Shining Ones, wherein every customary tribute was paid to the genius of a visiting writer. Everyone was abeam with delight, for all these divine beings had heard about Smirt’s wonderful books from absolutely everybody, they told him, and they were all planning to read these books on the very first opportunity. Meanwhile, they had arranged in his honor a banquet; and Arathron, Smirt saw, had already risen to address the gods, as their toast-master.
XX.CONCERNS ROUTINE MATTERS
Continuing, Arathron remarked that he need say no more. He would add only that his endeavors to say anything whatever this evening had reminded the speaker of a story; which Arathron narrated. Like that Scotchman, gentlemen, your toast-master was unaccustomed to public speaking, though for a different reason. (Laughter.) He had been caught this evening quite unprepared by the arrival of Heaven’s distinguished guest. (Applause.) This pleasant surprise, this highly pleasant surprise, had permitted the speaker no time for the preparation of any formal address, as in fact must be only too evident to his hearers. (Cries of No, no!) Arathron could but speak as the heart prompted: indeed, his
present predicament reminded the speaker of a story; which Arathron narrated.
Well, and like that Irishman, gentlemen, the Stewards of Heaven had been afforded an unlooked-for pleasure. (Prolonged applause.) The speaker might make bold to say it was an exceedingly great pleasure. He would not, however, pursue his remarks along that line. It was sufficient to say they had among them one than whom no living writer, one in fact whose name was a household word among all lovers of a great and ancient art, for the speaker alluded to literature. (Cheers.) Literature, gentlemen, had its place, its esteemed place, in the life of every cultured person, and a special function that—inasmuch as no ladies were present—reminded the speaker of a story; which Arathron narrated.
It might be, the conclusion reached by the traveling man was not wholly logical. (Loud laughter.) It was not for the speaker to say. He could say boldly, however, without any fear of successful contradiction—
And Arathron did say it, at some length.
Smirt felt more and more at ease in the home of the Shining Ones, where every customary tribute was being paid to the genius of a visiting writer; so that, at the conclusion of Arathron’s customary address, Smirt delivered, with his habitual ease and elegance, his customary impromptu acknowledgment. The brilliant, cordial, and engagingly modest observations of the guest of honor were greeted with all the customary applause.
Thereafter the Stewards of Heaven spoke of their own labors, in the while that the Shining Ones continued to partake of the banquet; for now Arathron was questioning his children as to how they had spent the day at their offices as the Stewards of Heaven. And they answered him, belching reverently.
Bethor replied first. He was by much the largest of the seven Stewards; he was of a golden color; he was clothed in sea-green and purple; and at his gold-shod feet crouched a lion. Two thousand and nine hundred legions of salamanders served under Bethor in the daily labors of his office. Now Bethor told about how he had caused zero weather to creep south, and had caused four lives to be claimed in feud war, with five wounded, and had caused Congress to meet in heated session.
Hagith talked next. Hagith was pink and plump and golden-haired: he was the most friendly looking of all the Stewards. He dressed in white and very light blue; he wore upon his breast an engraved tablet of burnished copper; a white bull lay beside him. Four thousand legions of undines were at Hagith’s command. Hagith and his undines had during the term of that day split a French cabinet, and they had displayed storm warnings along the coast, as far as Cape Hatteras, and they had led a worried mother to slay son and self. All in all, it had been somewhat an off-day, devoted entirely to routine work, Hagith reported modestly.
Then Phaleg spoke. He was of a ruddy color, wearing scarlet; and a peacock attended him. Phaleg ruled over those thirty-five principalities which the gnomes inhabit. That day the red troops of Phaleg had compelled a banker to be flayed in quiz, and a gangster to go jestingly to death chair, and an irate husband to surprise couple in love nest.
Each one of the huge children of Arathron spoke with just that quiet air of self-reliance which befitted a hardworking and somewhat humorless Steward of Heaven, by whom even the most trivial and most tedious duties of his station were discharged conscientiously. But this was their hour of relaxation. So they jested heavily over their celestial banquet, becoming more and yet more befuddled as the Stewards swilled down the dark beer of Sekmet, until they had all reached a state of dignified and complete incoherence. This beer, to Smirt’s personal taste, was unattractively seasoned, with mandrakes and with human blood, so that Smirt did not partake of it, nor did he eat any of the banquet.
In brief, the Stewards of Heaven drank out the evening as conscientiously as throughout the day they had worked, giving to the pleasures of the table their proper therapeutic place in the economy of divine living. They thus drugged themselves into a restful stupor with the dark beer of Sekmet. They now sprawled in their great gold and ivory chairs, snoring. But pallid Ophiel, who was dressed in black and azure, had fallen out of his chair, and lay flat on the floor, where his attendant buffalo served as a pillow. Smirt only remained awake and alert in the eternal city of Amit.
XXI. EPILOGUE OF SOBRIETY
Smirt alone remained awake and alert, and wholly sober, in the eternal city of Amit; and he regarded the insensible large overlords of this place a bit ruefully. Drunkenness Smirt did not mind in particular, since his long residence in a land given over to the barbarities of Prohibition had made Smirt familiar with drunkenness: but he did think it sad that to-morrow every one of these immortal beings would be at his office, seeing to it that a biplane plunged near Golden Gate, or that a bishop rapped modern tendencies, or that forty-three women’s dresses, formerly to $16.50, should be $5.00.
Yes; Smirt found it all a little sad, and a trifle perplexing: yet, since the Stewards of Heaven were only realists, their doings, he decided, as he sat in urbane sobriety among these divine drunkards, did not really matter. Such doings did not enter into the sphere of art; they concerned deleteriously nothing more important than human life, which such doings helped to keep in its normal condition satisfactorily enough, Smirt supposed, from any divine point of view.
“Yet I would not contemn human life, not wholly,” Smirt admitted. “To the aristocracy of Earth—to persons of birth and intelligence and means and culture, and, perhaps above all, to persons with a correct sense of humor—the requirements of civilized living have always seemed both comely and captivating. For these urbane if infrequent persons, living has become, nowadays, a form of art pursued hazardously at the heart of a whirlwind. And living is thus made an ever-dangerous and many-colored and Protean affair for such finely attuned beings as still manage to dissociate themselves from the dull daily labor, the stupidities, the quaint moral ambitions, and the depressing sturdiness, of mankind at large. They get—as the vulgar say—a double kick out of living, nowadays.”
For of course (his meditations strolled on) whensoever you considered the human race en masse, there were a dreadful number of reputable bourgeois about, all yammering; and, even below the scared bourgeois, you noticed everywhere the unbathed and yelping proletariat.... Proletarians Smirt took to be the sort of people whose automobiles displayed advertising matter on the cover of the spare tire: and, in academic theory at least, he broad-mindedly ranked them as human beings.... Well, and all these odd creatures appeared so fretted and so terror-stricken, nowadays, that you mildly wondered at what instant the animals would begin to murder one another.
“It will be an excellent film,” Smirt reflected, “with no cuts by the censor. It will be the end of that queer world which the newspapers tell about—and, what is a far graver matter, it will be the temporary end of Earth’s urbane aristocracy. My lords, the tumbrils wait: and I fancy these divine drunkards about me know that as well as I do. I condone, therefore, where I cannot exculpate.”
After that, Smirt took out of his pocket the forty reis piece which made Smirt omnipotent—within limits,—and he wished for a package of Virginian cigarettes and a box of matches. He inhaled pensively. And Smirt said:
“Against stupidity even the gods are powerless in every handy book of quotations. I begin now to understand that saying. I begin to see that my wit and my fancy and my profundity are at loose ends in a universe which has no real need for these intellectual luxuries.”
XXII. ARACHNE RETURNS
Now the seven Stewards of Heaven sat at ease, looking over the polished white stone ramparts of their supernal home in the city of Amit, and dealing as they saw fit with the mortal world which was in their keeping. In the while that they drank the dark beer of Sekmet, one after another did they speak the word of power which put upon human beings the needed passions and calamities and desires and weaknesses which would lead these mortals to obey the speaker’s will. And Smirt sat with brown Arathron and the six brightly colored children of Arathron observing the handiwork of the Stewards of Heaven.
Smirt could thus see fo
r himself a Danube economic union arranged at Paris, and Austria arrest fleeing Nazi chieftain, and Mrs. B. F. Zogbaum visiting her parents at Galax. He saw Rev. D. W. Cook resign as pastor on account of health, and old Sol on rampage, and mother of 3 slain, mate held. He saw lawyer die in crash as trolley hits truck, and turn of tide indicated by gains in trade. He saw state Solons vote bill to aid wheatgrower, and missing boy found dead in Jersey swimming pool, and he saw people buying Zip razor blades for 39 cents with this coupon, and he saw gayeties galore mark season’s height. He saw, in brief, all the sad doings of the Shining Ones as they hammered away at their realism.
Smirt did not like it. He said as much, pointing out that all literate human beings could enjoy at will the delights of romance, if only because the books of the speaker could be borrowed from any public library; he mentioned the address of his publisher; and Smirt added that immortals also might fairly claim a due share of such pleasures.
“There is, for example,” Smirt remarked, “the fine legend of Arachne, which I have now in hand—”
“We have heard, often and yet over again,” said the Stewards of Heaven, “of a hackney. It is a cross between a cart horse and a race horse. But what, O illustrious Smirt, may be a rackney?”
“Why, do you judge for yourself,” replied Smirt.
He spoke the required word of power; and there before them all stood the appearance of that dark young girl who had directed Smirt to the All-Highest.
Then the Shining Ones murmured uneasily. Hagith cried out:
“Beware of the Spider Woman! This is she who devours ignobly the body and the soul also of her victims!”
Smirt replied: “Nonsense! Do I not know a bit better than you do what I create?”
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