The Holy

by Daniel Quinn

  “I believe you. I give you credit for knowing what you’re doing. Please give me a little credit too.”

  She nodded, not in agreement but in resignation. “So you want a name.”

  “A name would be deeply appreciated.”

  She leaned back in her chair and gave him a long, speculative look. “Would you let me do a reading first?”

  Howard shrugged. “You know, Ms. Purcell, I forgot to bring a gun to point at you, so what can I say? I’m in your hands.”

  They went to a table by the window, and Denise refilled their coffee cups and produced a thick deck of outsize cards. She ran through them quickly, selecting one and laying it face up between them.

  “This is you: the King of Pentacles. It’s called the significator. The King of Pentacles seems appropriate because you’re a dark man, as he is, and you came to me over a matter of business, and the suit of pentacles is generally about work, craftsmanship, and fortune.”

  She shuffled the cards three times and asked him to do the same.

  “I should have done a reading before we talked,” she said.

  “Why is that?”

  She smiled. “Because you’ll undoubtedly think the reading I’m giving you now is being slanted by what you’ve told me.”

  “And it won’t be?”

  “No, but I’m sure you’ll think it is.”

  He handed her the deck. “You’re that sure of the cards?”

  “Yes. Once I did a reading for a friend of a friend—a woman I didn’t know. All I knew about her was that she was immensely wealthy. The first card I turned over to cover the significator almost made me swallow my teeth. This first card is the key card in the reading, the card that indicates the predominant influence in the subject’s life. In this case, it was the Five of Pentacles, and it was so incredibly wrong I just sat there gawking at it and wishing I could sink into the ground. Finally the woman asked what was wrong, and I began to stutter out an apology: I must have done something wrong, I must have made a mistake, this couldn’t be right. And she asked me what the card indicated. I told her it was one of the most explicit cards in the deck. It indicated plainly that the ruling influence in her life was poverty—absolute destitution. She threw back her head and roared with laughter, and then she said, ‘My dear, I doubt if you could find anywhere in that deck a better card than that for me. The fear of poverty has ruled my life from the age of fifteen, and every important decision I’ve ever made was driven by it.’ After that I never again worried about what the cards would turn up.

  “And this is what covers you,” she said, turning up a card over the King of Pentacles. “This is what’s presently setting the tone of your life, what’s influencing you and will continue to influence you in the near future. It’s the Seven of Swords.”

  She picked it up and handed it to him. “See if you can tell me what it’s about.”

  Howard glanced uneasily at the card. “Do you usually work this way?”

  “No. It’s as I said. If I proceed normally, you’ll think I’m slanting it. See what you can figure out for yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “Don’t be silly. Look at the picture.”

  He studied it with bared teeth. “It shows a man sneaking away from a camp with some swords.”

  “He’s stealing the swords?”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Why is he stealing these swords? Look at him and see if you can tell me what’s going through his mind.”

  “Well … he’s grinning. He thinks he’s pulled off a real coup.”

  “What does he think he’s achieved with this coup?”

  “I’d have to guess he’s stealing these swords for his side.”

  “So what’s in the offing here, between his side and the other side?”

  “A battle, I’d assume.”

  “Of course. Now have another look at what’s going on. The thief seems to have overlooked something.”

  “Well … He’s left two swords behind. He’s taken five and left two.”

  “Does that worry him?”

  “It doesn’t seem to.”

  “How is he holding the swords?”

  “By the blades.”

  “It doesn’t seem to occur to him that he could get cut.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Now what would you have thought if I’d said to you, ‘Here is what’s going on in your life at the moment: You’re getting ready for a battle and you’re overestimating your own cleverness and underestimating the strength of your enemy. You’re overconfident and you think you can’t be hurt in the enterprise you’ve planned.’ ”

  Howard nodded, smiling. “I would’ve thought you were slanting it.”

  “Put the card back.”

  He put it back.

  “If it had been another sort of card covering the significator—any of the major arcana, for example—a more general reading would have been indicated. But the Seven of Swords, with its very explicit story, indicates the reading will center on the conflict you’re preparing for.”

  She laid a card sideways across the Seven of Swords.

  “This crosses you: this is the obstacle you face in your endeavor.” She smiled gently. “The Two of Pentacles. It depicts a young man with a pentacle in each hand, and the pentacles are bound together in a figure eight on its side—the symbol for infinity. The pentacles therefore represent grave extremes: the beginning and the end, life and death, the infinite past and the infinite future, good and evil. Nevertheless, as you see, the young man is dancing. The weighing of these matters isn’t something he takes very seriously. In the background, two ships on a storm-tossed sea are trying to reach shore, but the dancing man is unaware of them. Given the context, it seems likely that these two ships are carrying the two swords the thief left behind in the first card.

  “In this position, the card indicates it’s your own attitude that threatens you. You underestimate the magnitude of your undertaking and take it lightly.”

  She placed a card above the Two of Pentacles.

  “This crowns you; this is the best outcome you can hope for: the Eight of Cups. A man walks into the distance along a desolate, moonlit shore, away from an array of eight cups, which represent the good life—normalcy, security, comfort. In other words, at the best, you can hope for a strange journey, an adventure into the darkness.

  “This is beneath you,” she said, laying a card below the Two of Pentacles. “This is what you bring to the enterprise, what you build on: the Three of Wands. A stately man stands looking calmly out to sea, where several ships are sailing into the distance. Three staves are planted in the ground, and his hand rests lightly on one of them. All three belong to him, but he needs only one for support; he is a man with strength in reserve. The ships, too, belong to him, and the cargoes they carry are his; he has much to give the world. What his wisdom has garnered he shares with others.

  “This lies behind you.” She put a card to the left of the Two of Pentacles. “This is the past, the tide that brings you to the matter at hand: the Five of Wands reversed. Five young men are engaged in mock battle with staves. In this position, and in context with the other cards, this suggests that you’ve had practice in the sort of battle you’re getting ready for—which of course we know to be true. But note that the five staves in this card correspond exactly to the five swords stolen in the first card. This makes it plain that the battles you’ve fought in the past have only been play-acting in comparison to the one that lies ahead. The fact that the card is reversed suggests that you should be on guard against trickery.

  “This lies before you.” She laid a card to the right of the Two of Pentacles. “This is the current you’re entering; this is what will influence the matter at hand: the Page of Swords. A young man strides through the countryside with his sword aloft, but he gazes back over his shoulder rather wistfully, as if he regrets having left home. As you see, he’s not in armor; this suggests
either that he’s not prepared for the battle ahead or that he’s a spy rather than a warrior.”

  Denise pondered the card in silence.

  “Three different readings offer themselves. The first, most obvious reading is that you yourself are unprepared for the battle you face. But this doesn’t feel right to me; the point has already been made. The second reading is that the person whose name I’m thinking of giving you will become your ally. This troubles me, because I will explicitly forbid him to ally himself with you, and I believe he’ll obey me in this. The third reading is that another young man or boy will become involved in the affair. He may be a runaway or an orphan. He’ll need your protection, but it’s his sword you’ll follow.”

  She shook her head, dissatisfied, and turned up a card to the right of the layout. “This is yourself, your relation to the matter: the Tower. A bolt of lightning shatters a tower, and the king and queen are hurled to their deaths. A very telling card, in this position. What you bring to the matter is your vast strength, but being a tower of strength has its own special hazard—it attracts the lightning of destruction. By rearing up above your fellows, you make yourself a target—and put those close to you in danger as well.”

  She laid a card above the Tower and smiled.

  “This is your house, the environment in which your endeavor will take place: the Seven of Cups. A man is disconcerted by an array of tantalizing apparitions of love, mystery, danger, riches, fame, and evil. Illusions will bedevil you. You’ll be pulled in many directions, and your choices will be confused.

  “These are your hopes and fears,” she said, placing a card above the last. “The Two of Swords reversed. A blindfolded woman sits by a moonlit shore. Her arms are crossed, and she holds a sword in each hand. The two swords exactly balance each other; a concord has been reached between opposing forces—peace prevails though neither has conquered. However, because the card is reversed, the concord is a false one, and will be broken by treachery. These two swords, of course, are the swords the thief neglected to carry away in the first card. This is what’s become of them.”

  She turned up the tenth and last card and said, “Ah. This is what’s become of the five swords that were stolen. This is the outcome of the matter: the Five of Swords. A man grins disdainfully as his opponents trudge away empty-handed, leaving him in possession of their swords. Is this the same grinning man who stole the five swords in first place? Perhaps. The card is irreducibly ambiguous—this is its point. The victor’s triumph seems hollow, not a cause for rejoicing. He’s won the field, but he hasn’t slain or even wounded his enemies, who are free to reassemble and avenge their defeat. The card is oddly placed here, since it suggests the middle of a story, not the end of one. What it indicates is that you’ll take the first round of the conflict and imagine you’ve won it all.”

  “Not too good, huh?” Howard observed.

  Ignoring the interruption, she continued to study the cards.

  “There are only seven cards in the deck that show the principal character with his or her back turned to us. Three of them are in this layout, indicating that you’ve already firmly made up your mind to pursue the matter. You’ve already turned to it; you’re resolved to see it through.

  “The preponderance of swords makes it clear that it’s going to be a battle. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever undertaken—more serious, more dangerous—but this doesn’t worry you at all. You set out on the adventure with a light heart. What you’ve failed to take into account is the power in the two swords left behind—the power of your opponent. In fact, you don’t see him as an opponent at all. You’re sure there is peace between you, that you can do as you please and he won’t move against you, but in this you’re deceived. At the very end, he’ll take your weapons away as if they were toys, and you’ll be helpless in his hands.”

  Howard leaned back in his chair. “Not too good, huh?” he said again.

  “Not too good, indeed,” she agreed and gave him an ironic smile. “But it doesn’t worry you, does it?”

  “I’d be lying if I said it did, Ms. Purcell. I’ve just never been much of a worrier.”

  She gathered the cards together and stood up. “I’ll get you that name now. And something else. It’ll just be a few minutes.”

  She disappeared into a bedroom and Howard got up to look out toward Jackson Park and the lake, which was disappearing under a mounting snowfall. By evening, he suspected, it would be a full-scale blizzard—maybe, with luck, the last of the season. Every year around the first of March, despite sixty years of experience to the contrary, Howard began to tell himself that the dragon of winter was surely in its death throes, that at worst there was only one more lash of the tail before the end. Thereafter he managed to view sub-zero weather and six-inch snowfalls as unseasonable encroachments on spring.

  When Denise returned, she handed him a three-by-five card and an envelope. He turned the envelope over, noted it was sealed, and asked what was in it.

  “Something for later.”

  He looked at the card. “Richard Holloway.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is Richard Holloway?”

  “A young man. A boy, really. Just in his last year of high school.”

  Howard continued to study the card, wondering whether it would do any good to voice his disappointment.

  “What is it that he … does?”

  “He’s a clairvoyant.”

  “A clairvoyant,” Howard repeated dully.

  “Don’t ask me if he can help you, Mr. Scheim. I don’t know.”

  “May I ask what your relationship with him is?”

  She shrugged. “Living with an infant clairvoyant—when you don’t know what’s going on—can be a pretty unnerving experience. His parents went looking for guidance, and they ended up with me. I’ve become a sort of special aunt to Richard. He talks to me about things his parents can’t handle.”

  “I see.” He put the card and envelope in the breast pocket of his jacket and picked up his overcoat. “You’re going to talk to him about this?”

  “Yes. I’ll tell him to help you if he can but not to become personally involved in your project.”

  “He must have a lot of confidence in you.”

  She smiled affectionately. “He’s a rare one. He has the outrageous idea that, at the age of eighteen, there may be one or two things he still doesn’t know.”

  He opened the envelope on the northbound IC train. A note in Denise Purcell’s crisp handwriting was folded around “the outcome of the matter”—the Five of Swords:

  Mr. Scheim, though I don’t suppose you’ll take this seriously, I feel I should say it anyway. The “gods”—she, he, it, they—the creatures—you’re looking for are not (as movies like The Exorcist would lead you to believe) vile. How could they ever have gained power over human lives if they’d been merely vile? They’re dangerous because they’re attractive. This, I think, is why the author of Proverbs thought it necessary to write his warning this way: “But now, my son, listen to me, attend to what I say. Don’t let your heart entice you into her ways, don’t stray down her paths; many has she pierced and laid low, and her victims are without number. Her house is the entrance to Sheol, which leads down to the halls of death.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Howard’s presentiment about the weather proved correct. By morning the streets were choked with six inches of snow—enough to make traffic a nightmare but not enough to give the city a giddy snowbound holiday. Nevertheless he decided the detective business could do without him for a day and stayed in bed reading till almost noon, when he dressed and went out for a paper.

  The big news was the blizzard, which had mercifully left most of its bounty behind in Nebraska and Iowa. More snow was predicted for the afternoon, and a general school-closing had been announced before it was learned that this second wave of the storm would bypass Chicago to the south. Howard registered this fact a bit ruefully; with the schools closed, he could hardly ask for a better op
portunity to find Richard Holloway at home and available.

  He dug out the card Denise Purcell had given him, cross-checked the telephone number with the directory, and found that it belonged to an address on Astor, just off Lake Shore Drive and not an arduous journey, even on a day like this.

  He thought about the ten thousand dollars he was trying to pretend he was earning and then reluctantly dialed the number. The phone was answered in the middle of the second ring by someone who sounded out of breath:

  “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Uh, I’m looking for Richard Holloway.”

  “Junior or senior?” A sort of hoarse shriek.

  “Junior, I suppose. Whichever one is eighteen years old.” This amazing witticism was greeted with a braying laugh.

  “This is Richard Holloway, Junior. Who is this?”

  “My name is Howard Scheim. I’m a private detective, and Denise Pur—”

  “Yeah, I know, she told me.”

  “Ah. Well, I thought maybe, since you don’t have school today, we could get together.”

  “You mean today?”

  “It doesn’t have to be today, but—”

  “God. I’m real busy.”

  “As I say, it doesn’t have to be today. Whenever it’s convenient.”

  “Oh God!” The boy sounded as if he was being confronted by a major life crisis.

  “Look,” Howard began.

  “What’s your address? Where are you?”

  “I can come there. That’s no problem.”

  “No, you can’t come here. There’d be no point in coming here. God!”

  “Look, let’s not make this into a Greek tragedy. We’ll get together when you have the time.”

  “I never have the time. Not till after graduation anyway. What kind of computer do you have?”

  “What?”

  “What kind of computer?”

  “I don’t have a computer.”

  “Really? Well, look, I could give you a real good deal on a little XT, hard disk drive, a ton of software. It’s only 4.77 megahertz, of course, but it’s not a bad little machine, especially for a beginner. Five hundred dollars? The software alone has got to be worth close to two thousand.”