The Nightmare Had Triplets

by Branch Cabell

  —To which the learned imaums, the hadjis and the brahmins replied:

  “It is indeed suitable that the wise words of Smire should be written down in letters of liquid gold. Meanwhile let us buy new locks for the harem.”

  For over and yet over again, from latticed windows carved out of ebony wood, superbly shaped, veiled women would call out to Smire:

  “Tarry, O my lord and light of my eyes! Take pity, O bestower of felicity! Do not spurn thy handmaiden, King of the age!”

  Well, and then as a rule, because of his betraying kind heart, Smire would answer them, as was the land’s custom,—

  “Hearing is obedience.”

  So in he would go. And the old story would start all over again, in a dim atmosphere of musk and rose-water and incense. And the woman’s husband would behave quite as though Smire’s politeness throughout the entire matter were not praiseworthy. And his lost kingdom stayed unregained, his heart’s love remained unsatisfied.

  Yet he passed affably, like a pleasant, rambling, soft-voiced enigma, about a barbaric world in which some said that he was the same as Melchisadek, and some said that he was El Khoudr, and some that he was Eblis. But Smire answered to such persons, always quite affably:

  “No; for I am the God of Branlon. I am the eternal wanderer whose home is not in these lands beyond common-sense; I am an exile who seeks for a fair forest wherein one may dream perfectly about beautiful happenings. With the makings of Jahveh, Lord of Sabaoth, and the makings of Allah the Thrice-Merciful, I have no concern. Meanwhile, I do not—as I must ask everybody to observe—I do not criticize their poor makings. I who am myself a poietes, a ‘maker,’ I prefer tactfully to say nothing whatever about their absurd blunderings, their inadequate creations. Through the litter of their pitiable errors, such as are perhaps natural to young gods, I who was once a Master of Gods go my urbane way, with silence and dissatisfaction as my companions, in my eternal quest after Branlon.”

  “Yet it is far better to stay quietly at home,” a girl’s voice told him.

  XIII. PERTAINS TO MIRIAM

  Well, and Smire liked the appearance of this girl. Her face was bright as the moon, and her lips coral-red, and her eyes black as ink, to be sure; all that was familiar; but her dear voice was most strangely gentle, with a sweet sadness in it. Her voice troubled you with its brave innocence.

  She sat now beside the round, old, partly crumbled stone walling about a well; and dark olive-trees showed behind her in this twilit place. The west was yet splendid with sunset, but seven olive-trees screened this well very thickly, with a tent of shadows and peacefulness.

  To this girl, then, Smire answers: “It is far better to stay quietly at home, you have told me. Still, I do not know about that. To stay quietly at home has not been permitted me. For my home is in Branlon; and as yet I travel eternally in my search for that home. These facts are known everywhere in the—lands beyond common-sense; and it is because of these facts, or so at least they tell me”—Smire interpolated, with his unfailing dislike of seeming to speak boastfully—“that I have become a vast legendary figure in all these countries. For I, I must tell you, I am called Smire.”

  She did not, it was an actual fact, betray any surprise and delight. This ignorant village girl did not seem ever to have heard about Smire’s famousness. Instead, she replied, quite as though Smire were not anybody in particular,—

  “And I am called Miriam.”

  Says Smire: “It is a fine name which was worn by Moses-ben-Amram’s own sister. But that Miriam was a proud fierce woman who wrote. She wrote poems, and prophecies likewise, all of a most bloodthirsty nature; and she danced publicly because of her horrid joy over the destruction of a king’s army. I am glad you do not resemble your namesake, Miriam.”

  “Indeed, I would not care to resemble that woman, Smire, for to do these bold, cruel things was not kindly of her.”

  “Well, but as yet, Miriam, I have not found that the women authors of this world are distinguished for shyness, nor for their great kindliness either, except when they are entertaining some useful person who reviews books.”

  “And is it much of the wide world you have seen, Smire?”

  “I have seen all of it, Miriam, even from the down-falling of Troy to the bright rising of Rome into every sort of pre-eminence, through my charitable permission.”

  “And what is it, O tall strange-eyed vagabond, that you have been doing for a livelihood all this long while?”

  “I have wandered in a dream, Miriam; and since I wandered about without any home in a dream world which was cobbled up by the lean talents of the Seven Stewards of Heaven, I have come everywhither as an intruder, with dissatisfaction as my companion.”

  “That is a poor livelihood,” she replied, with decision.

  “Nevertheless, Miriam, it is not a bad manner of living. Dissatisfaction has been my companion. Yes, but a fair sense of humor has served as my walking stick. The pleasures of conversation have made smooth my way. Behind each bend of my road has waited for me that which was strange and transitory. Because of the foolishness of many gods, all laboring together in heaven so that they might divert Smire, and because of mankind’s inexhaustible foolishness, I have found at every bend in my road something to wonder over and to discuss with my eternal companion, something which amused me by my own foolish discontent with the world’s foolishness.”

  She considered this. She said then:

  “That pleases me better, you dusty, over-travelled Smire, which is familiar and sane and permanent.”

  “You speak,” he returned, smilingly, “with the adorable conservatism of youth. To a poet, nothing is familiar; all is strange. To the philosopher, nothing is sane. And to the judgment of any fairly rational person, nothing is permanent, my dear child, except our eternal changing.”

  “I do not think that matters if we change always into something better,” replied the girl, softly.

  At that, Smire regarded her for some while, with the steady, the strange and the faintly pitying gaze of a divine person. He said, reasonably:

  “I would much like to agree with you, Miriam. But, alas, how can I, who am already Smire, hope to be changed into anything better? For me to hope that, would be to fly in the face of the whole world’s opinion. For me to hope that, would be plain hubris. So I must humbly remain Smire. I at least shall not change. Nor will I change you”—Smire added, meditatively. “I dare not, somehow. No, my dear Miriam, you are not a toy fit for Smire’s handling, with, just as you say, his somewhat dusty divine hands.”

  “They are very beautiful hands,” she observed, gravely. She touched them, with a sort of naïve caress; and remarked, as though with some unspoken reserving of judgment:

  “They are soft hands. They are not like the gnarled and toil-hardened hands of Yussuf.”

  But Smire’s mind, it seemed, was made up. He said, sighing:

  “So I shall but pass into and then out of your living, without changing you at all. I would like to keep you always unchanged, my dear, grave, so very practical-minded infant. But who can prevent this changing, in a cobbled-up world that has Time ranging about it forever, like a silent, fierce hound? Well! we meet here. We shall not meet any more. Yet I shall remember you, Miriam, as you sit here, beside this ruined well, smiling and reasonably innocent, I daresay, and without any fear of the morrow. I shall remember you somewhat fondly in my baroque forest kingdom. And you, Miriam, what will you be doing then?”

  “I shall marry Yussuf. He is not young, and his voice does not move me, as your soft voice moves me, Smire, to be doing sad, great, foolish things; but, at worst, gray Yussuf is not a flighty wanderer about the world’s lanes and alleys. So we shall be content enough, Yussuf and I, living together quietly in the old way of our fathers.”

  Smire tells her, moodily: “Yes; but in the while that I go a-wandering in my immortal youth, and live hand in glove with all miracles, you, Miriam, you will grow old. You will bear, to this Yussuf, a squad of comm
onplace squalling babies, whose bearing will rob you of your prettiness. You will scrub, and cook, and sew, and wash many dirty diapers, in this village. You will comment upon worsened times and upon the commensurate conduct of the young with a loquacious acidity; you will haggle daily over your marketing. You will dwindle into a grandmother, like a gray, dry, shrivelled-up dead leaf; and you will so die without ever having lived. That only will be your saga, my so pretty little Miriam.”

  She answers, “I shall make for Yussuf and for myself, and if Heaven wills it, for our children also, a home.”

  He nodded his approval, his complete comprehension, saying:

  “The riposte is apposite. You touch on the sole luxury which has been denied to Smire, that all-famous poet, that eternal wanderer. I have found in no place a home. Not even in Branlon had I any sense of permanence. And when I regain Branlon, as I still mean to do, I shall be in the odd position of an absolute monarch who does not absolutely believe in the existence of his kingdom.”

  “My kingdom, poor Smire, will be small but assured. And my men children will be sound carpenters, like their father, building firmly.”

  “In fact, Miriam, I am not a carpenter nor a ploughman nor a follower for gain of any craft. So I do not make solid objects like chairs and tables. But I create dreams: and in your heart, dear Miriam, I shall live as a dream, and the memory of my talking will amuse you, a bit tenderly, by your own foolish discontent with its foolishness, just because I—to whom all things are possible—I shall have left your quiet secure living unchanged.”

  “That is as it may be, Smire.”

  She regarded him with great, meditative sad eyes. Her cheeks had colored, surprisingly, in a way most agreeable to witness. And Smire smiled.

  Miriam said then: “Yes, I shall remember you always, not unfondly. You are strange, you are wholly beautiful to look at, dear Smire; and your folly troubles me, because it will bring about your ruin some day, in a place very far from me, a ruin about which I shall never be hearing. Yes; I shall remember you upon yet other quiet, grave, golden evenings, like this evening, when the day’s scrubbing and cooking and needlework are done with, for the while; and when my gray husband has gone to sleep picking his teeth after supper; and when I reflect that my living has produced nothing in particular. But Yussuf”—she said, resolutely—“is a good carpenter, with an assured quiet living, in which I shall have my woman’s part, after the manner of our fathers.”

  Smire bowed his proud dark head, saying: “It may be you are wise, Miriam. I do not know. In any case, I shall not change your assured small future.”

  She sighed a little. She smiled back at him, tremulously. But she did not say anything.

  It was thus that Smire left this Miriam sitting alone in twilight, and made holy somehow to his eyes by her pathetic innocence and by her prettiness, beside an old well in Nazareth, under seven olive-trees.

  XIV. ELOQUENCE OF AN ANGEL

  Well, and under yet another olive-tree sat a grave, golden-haired angel, with rather small cream-colored wings. He was clothed in a white robe, girdled up at his waist, and having red sleeves. His feet were bare; and in his left hand he carried lightly a green stalk which had flowered triply with gleaming, very white lilies.

  “Hail, heavenly one!” said Smire; “and for what are you waiting in this place?”

  “I am waiting, Smire, for you to depart out of this place, in which you have no proper business.”

  “Why, but,” says Smire, whistling softly, “but you are Gabriel!”

  “That is certain,” returned the calm celestial visitant; “nor will any righteous servant of my great Master be denying I am Gabriel, the least worthy of His immortal ministers in well-doing.”

  And Smire said: “Well-doing you may well call it, Gabriel, for your self-respect’s sake. Yet that is a new name for your mission this evening.”

  The archangel colored up a little, perhaps; but he answered nothing.

  “For though it be certain you are a well-thought-of archangel,” Smire continued, a bit ruefully, “yet it is equally certain that you bring news—or, let us say, an annunciation—to the young, unfortunate, dear, small, helpless, so pretty Miriam from whom I have just parted. That fact annoys me, rather. She does not want to hear your glad tidings; nor would any sane woman anywhere care for the intolerable honors which await Miriam. I do not like this, Gabriel. I have been intruded into doings of too vast significance.”

  Thus speaking, Smire lighted a cigarette. And without any false pride, he sat down sociably, beside the archangel.

  “Now, do you know,” Smire continued, “I believe that, at bottom, I am a little frightened to find myself in this exact situation? It is the aftermath of my childhood’s first memories. For I was reared, you must comprehend, under the very best Episcopalian principles—such as no angel could ever possibly grasp, now I think of it,—under principles through which the task set for you this evening was regarded very reverently by persons who did not care to consider your mission too closely. To find myself here, at this instant, is therefore a bit awkward. I cannot but consider you are behaving abominably, from Miriam’s point of view—yes, and from that of Yussuf also. Poor Yussuf! it is of his position, in particular, that a confirmed Episcopalian simply does not dare think. And poor me! for my position likewise is dreadful.”

  “Then, if you do not like your position,” says the archangel, practically, “do you go away from it, Smire, and save trouble for everybody concerned.”

  “But really you do not understand my position, dear sir,” Smire pleaded with the Archangel Gabriel. “That you act in all good faith, and are even sustained by a sense of duty in the performance of your rather delicate functions, I do not question. Your innocence in all such matters is quite probably angelic. Mine by ill luck is not. Moreover, to me is foreknown the unhappy result, for two thousand years to come, of this evening’s work. I foresee, in one huge, hideous panorama, all the martyrdoms, the pitched battles, the heresies, the persecutions, the hatreds, the miseries, the lies, the hypocrisies, the blatant zeal, and the pious horrors in general, which it is perhaps my duty to avert from mankind. Already I have upon my conscience three Punic Wars; and dare I—that is the question—dare I increase its burdens thus intolerably?”

  Gabriel asks him, “And by what means, O wicked Smire, would you avert that which has been decreed by the stainless wisdom of Heaven?”

  “Hah,” Smire replied, smiling reminiscently, “I have but to go with you, Gabriel. When you have spoken your glad tidings, then I might speak—as I did not speak just now.”

  “And as always, you would speak foolishly, Smire.”

  “Why, but of course!” Smire agreed. “That is the whole point of it. You would speak with the tongue of angels. And I would speak less loftily, without heeding reason the least bit. But we would both be addressing a woman; and I have not yet known a woman who would prefer an angel to Smire.”

  “Still you talk blasphemy,” said the archangel, frowning.

  Smire waved that aside, urbanely; and he answered:

  “All things are possible to Smire except only to blaspheme. You forget that before your Master had climbed Sinai, I was Smirt, the great Master, not of any mere synagogue, but of Amit. No, Gabriel, you take altogether the wrong way to persuade Smire; you serve your Master abominably; and I dislike bungling.”

  Up went the archangel’s eyebrows.

  “But what would you have me do, Smire?”

  That Smire was surprised by any such obtuseness, his unfailing savoir faire could not wholly conceal, now that Smire replied,—

  “Why, it is your plain duty, as the ambassador of Heaven, to exercise your diplomacy until you have circumvented me in argument and have convinced me you act for the best.”

  “Alas,” said the archangel, “but I have not your fine eloquence, Smire, nor your keen wits either.”

  Smire applauded that. “Come now, that is far better. Yes, you ought to begin just so, by thus flatterin
g me a little and thus softening me into a more tractable state of mind.”

  “And what ought I to do afterward, Smire?”

  Gabriel was now speaking with a suitable meekness. And Smire answered him in tones of continued encouragement, saying:

  “Well, there are various means of approach. You might contrive for me some everlasting punishment in your Gehenna, for example. But no, I would deride any such notion, at once. For your Master—in a somewhat narrow-minded way, so I cannot but think, although to be sure it is none of my business—your Master denies the existence of any other god whatever. He could not, at this late date, officially recognize the existence of the God of Branlon, by punishing the God of Branlon in any place so open to the public as is Gehenna, without stultifying His own age-old position. He would make Himself flatly ridiculous. No, I would see that at once. So, you could not well circumvent me in that way.”

  “Why, then—” said the archangel.

  “Please do not interrupt me, Gabriel! Interruptions are inurbane. Or again, you might try being quietly logical with me. But there, still, you would fail. In mere logic, you are now undeniably setting afoot the wars, the persecutions, the burnings, the reform movements, the Sunday radio programs, the temperance crusades, and yet other iniquities to which I referred just now. No, I would refute you far too easily did you dare venture into logic. So I counsel you to avoid logic.”

  “I shall obey you, Smire,” says the archangel, sighing.

  “Yes, Gabriel, but I have also counselled you not to keep interrupting me. Garrulity is a great vice in anybody; but it is fatal to an ambassador. It is not diplomatic. All delicate negotiations perforce go astray when people begin to talk thus at random. But what was I saying? I have lost the thread of my remarks on account of your constant interruptions.”

  “You were saying, Smire—”

  “Oh, but come now, Gabriel! Do you not thrust words into my mouth, if you please. I was saying that your position is desperate. I was saying that your sole hope is to circumvent me by taking advantage of some personal weakness in my nature.”