by S. T. Joshi
“The impossible project?” I said. I patted the briefcase I held in my lap, then set it beside my chair. “Two steps forward and one back—on a good day. But the job becomes a little more likely. I’ve gone through the boring stuff first, property deeds, promissory notes, land survey carts, and so forth. Your father was cavalier in the matter of documents. My secretary is gathering all that up and you will receive it in bits and pieces, large bits and huge pieces, over the next two months. Quite a barrage of paper you fired at me.”
“I shudder to think.”
“Now I’m getting into the more interesting pages. One box contains journals your grandfather kept. Two are in a private code and one of those I’ve managed to decipher, a record of his gambling practices. Quite the poker player was Robert Axelrod Pasterby.”
“Cards and horses, favorite family failings.”
“He didn’t fail too often. If I read his ciphers correctly, he made a few of his poker friends feel the breeze cool upon their nether parts.”
“I’ve heard he was aggressive. Some folks claimed to be a little afraid of him, but to me he was Granddad. I loved it when he would pay me the least attention. When I was a kid no one spoke of his card-playing.”
“One of the journals is not in code. It seems to be a record of his dreams. That surprises me.”
Robbie smiled, as if to show a kindly tolerance for the foibles of his forebear. “We Pasterbys are supposed to be hardheaded men of business, but we have our quirks, just as others do. Granddad had a superstitious streak. I’ve heard that numerology and all that kind of thing influenced his gambling habits.”
“And then I came across a different puzzle. There is another box covered in dark blue velvet. It is in your second lockbox in the vault at First National.”
“Yes.”
“It has a trifling little brass lock I opened with a paper clip. Seth Holloway was with me, of course. One of the bank personnel has to be present when anyone besides the owner is in the vault with the lockboxes.”
“I know what you’re speaking of,” he said. “We called it Aunt Cassie’s Fit. My grand-uncle Harold gave Aunt Cassie a lot of rather expensive jewels. He would surprise her at odd times, not at Christmas or birthdays or anniversaries. One random day he would place a little jewel case by her dinner plate and she would open it to find a necklace or string of pearls—”
“Or an emerald or blood ruby.”
“Oh yes. She was proud of her ‘loot,’ as she called this trove of baubles. No one knew how she finally figured out that every one of these sparklers commemorated an amorous indiscretion by Uncle Harold. They were stopping over at our house at the time and she became violently enraged. She snatched up the box she had ordered made for her treasures and went out onto the porch and flung them away into the front yard just at dark. A double or triple handful. That’s the family story, anyhow.”
“She must have been seriously angry.”
“Angry enough to separate from her husband and take up with some fellow over in Hydesville none of our family had ever heard of.”
“Were all the jewels recovered?”
“Yes. But it took a long time. Years. The children, the servants, everyone kept looking. They found them all. Anyhow, they found everything that matched the inventory my granduncle had drawn up for his own use.”
I brought a cardboard folder from my briefcase and laid it on the desk. “His inventory is included among your papers. But there is one piece unaccounted for.” I pushed the folder toward him. “Robbie, have you seen this object before?”
When he opened the cover his face changed instantly. Surprise and puzzlement showed in his expression. Also chagrin. His complexion paled slightly and he drew a quick intake of breath.
At last he said, “I recognize it. I don’t know whether I’ve seen it or not.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think I must have seen it when I was very young, but when I try to capture the memory, it goes away. It goes dark. I was supposed to see it, but I’m not sure that I did.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What time is it?” He looked at the tall grandfather with the old-fashioned pendulum standing in the corner. “Quarter of five. What the hell, let’s have a drink.” He pushed back his chair and went to the big mahogany sideboard with its array of decanters and glasses. “This calls for Scotch.” He poured three fingers into two etched glasses and brought one to me.
“You seem alarmed.”
He paced about before sitting again at his desk. He raised his glass. “Cheers.” His voice was glum.
“Cheers.”
He sighed. “I’m not as superstitious as Granddad and I do not record my dreams. Fact is, I hardly ever remember them. When I wake up at six-thirty I may be able to recall a detail or two, but I can’t put them together. By breakfast time they’re gone from my mind for good.”
“The photo reminded you of something.”
He placed his hand on the folder and took a thoughtful sip of whisky. “But occasionally over the years I keep having one dream. It must have come to me a dozen or so times. It is very real—and yet it is not real at all.
“In this dream I am in the woods. It is not nighttime, but it is very dark. A storm is gathering. I can feel the air growing cooler and hear a scrabbling all around me in the weeds and underbrush. It sounds like squirrels playing about, but I don’t see them. Lots of squirrels. The sound grows louder and louder.”
“That would be frightening. How old are you in this dream?”
He blinked. “I never thought. I’ve always taken for granted that I’m the same age as when I’m dreaming. But now that you ask, I must be quite young because everything looks large. The trees are extremely tall and most of the bushes are taller than I am. But I am more bewildered than frightened at this point. I have to keep walking, or trotting, because I need to get out of the woods. I am supposed to be somewhere, in a certain place.”
“You have to reach a goal?”
“Yes. No. Not exactly. There is a place outside these woods where I’m supposed to be. But it is hard to get there because the ground begins to slope and I have to climb uphill. Hard going. The scrabbling sound grows louder and the sky is getting darker.”
“You say you are bewildered. I would be scared.”
“Then I break free of this grove and there is an open space before me, a big grassy hill with some sort of building at the top.”
“What does it look like?”
“Large. White, I think. It is indistinct. And between me and the structure, whatever it is, stands a statue of a man. Tall and dark and commanding. Then I know that here is the place I’m supposed to be so that I can receive the delivery.”
“Delivery?”
“Something to be given to me. Handed over. Or spoken to me. A message or maybe a thing. I don’t know.”
“Thing? An object of some sort?”
“If I can reach the statue, I’ll know what it is. But that doesn’t happen.”
“Why?”
“Before I get there, when I’m still about fifteen feet away, the statue bursts into flame.”
“Then?”
“It falls to the ground and the fires go out and there is a woman beside it with a cloak around her, flapping in the wind. Her cloak looks like big black wings. I keep on till I reach the fallen statue.”
He paused for a long moment and took a bracing dosage of liquor.
We sat silent until I said, “But this sounds familiar, Robbie. Wasn’t your grandfather struck by lightning in the front lawn of the house? Doesn’t the lawn slope down into the woods there? It’s still pretty much the same as it was in those days. Isn’t his death something you might have witnessed? How old were you when he died?”
“About seven, I think.”
“So this would have taken place fifty years ago. When did this dream begin occurring?”
“I can’t be sure. Maybe twenty years back.”
“If you witne
ssed his death when you were so young, you would have lost a lot of the details. You wouldn’t want to remember too clearly what took place.”
“Maybe.” He thought. “But that’s not the end of the dream. I ran to the figure and leaned over and looked. It was not Granddad. It was a statue with most of the face blasted away. The statue was toppled over backward. The face would have been looking at the sky. It was a naked man carved from some kind of black stone, holding a white key in the left hand.”
“Key? Would that be the artifact in the photo?”
“Yes.” He took it up again. “This is it. But I didn’t really see it in the hand of the statue. I just saw something white and thought it must be a key.”
“What kind of key? What did it open?”
He frowned. “And then the winged woman in the cloak said, ‘Take it up. Bear it away. Now it is with you.’ But when I reach for it, the dream ends. Each time at that point. And that’s all.”
“Do you grasp the object? Or touch it?”
“I don’t think so.”
I said, “Did you notice that you changed the tense at the last part of your story?”
The cool half smile. “Are you suggesting that I watch my grammar?”
“Perhaps that particular part is most vivid, most urgent in your mind”
“Yes. Perhaps.” He turned the picture upside down and gazed. Then he placed it in the folder and closed the cover. “But I’ve never seen the actual object. How could it get in with the jewelry?”
“I don’t know. I came to ask if I could show this photograph to Professor Olsen. If it really is ancient mid-eastern, he might be able to tell us something.”
He sighed. “I don’t see how that could hurt. I want to see the thing first myself.”
“Of course. And if I find related documents, would it be all right to run them by him?”
“Well—as long as they are not extremely personal. Love letters and that sort of thing.”
“I promise not to share the amorous intimacies of Robert Axelrod Pasterby Number One.”
“See that you don’t. We wouldn’t want the learned professor to die of shock.” He took up the folder, paused, and then passed it over.
“I’ll bring the artifact to your office tomorrow. Is there anything else in that motley heap you’d like to see?”
“Not that I know of. But don’t leave till you finish your drink.”
“I won’t,” I said and kept my promise.
3.
THE HANDSOME AND FORMIDABLE OLGA WAS clearing our table and proffering dessert menus. Olsen said, “I hear good things about the key lime pie. I only take coffee for dessert, but I pass the tip along.”
“Thinking to assert myself, I’ll take the pie,” I said.
Olga smiled and departed.
“You were going to trace Pasterby’s connection with the Opener,” Olsen said. “Have you decided what is permissible for me to know? I have no personal interest, except as I am concerned with the safety of the community.”
“You spoke of danger. Is it so grave as that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.” After this disclaimer, I unfolded the narrative I had pieced together about the appearance of the artifact amid Aunt Cassie’s cache and the recognition of it by Robbie. I felt free now to relate his dream of the dark trek through the woods, the statue that caught fire, and of the cloaked or winged woman and her baffling words. “If it were more a recollection than a dream, we could imagine that the artifact was found on the lawn by one of the kids and put in with the jewelry by mistake.”
He repeated the phrases: “Take it up. Bear it away. Now it is yours … Is that correct?”
“Those are the words he says the woman speaks.”
“What did she look like? Was she familiar to him?”
“I don’t think he knows. He was very young in the dream, the same age then as he was when his grandfather died.”
“Struck by lightning with the woman in attendance.”
“She was present. I don’t know that she was in attendance.”
“I now request that you go through the Pasterby records and other papers as quickly as possible.”
“Well, there’s a fair amount—”
My pie was placed before me. Accompanying Olsen’s coffee was a shot glass of dark liquid that he poured into his cup.
“This is an urgent matter,” Olsen said. He gave me a keen look. “The woman in his dream who stood over his grandfather when he was killed by the blast was undoubtedly Leetha Choney.”
“Not possible. Leetha Choney is Robbie’s housemaid at the present time.”
“That name, Choney, is a corruption from Italian, something like Braccione or Guiccioni. Probably Sicilian in its recent forms. But the Choney line originated in the mid-east, probably in ancient Sumer, and has spread widely in eastern and middle Europe and has set up habitation latterly in the U.S. and Mexico. They are a private clan, keeping to themselves, except in circumstances where they attach in a speciously dependent role to some local landowning dynasty. The local populace thinks of them as ‘gypsies’ because that term has no real definition.”
“That is the case in Queen City,” I said.
“Well, now for one of Professor Nut’s wild hypotheses.” Olsen smiled, a trace of ruefulness in his expression. “I believe I have been able to trace this particular family branch back to the most ancient times. Not this singular Choney branch itself, but the large kinship or unorganized clanship to which it belongs. They are numerous and the situations into which they fit themselves are similar from place to place. In their relationship to prominent families, they fulfill customary roles.”
“Roles?”
“I can’t say precisely what these are, but they are important in establishing a connection with their ancient gods.”
“Ancient—”
“If you can, please bear with poor, demented Doctor Goofy for a few minutes. My reading of an immense amount of historical evidence suggests that only a few very isolated cultures ever die out completely. Most of them transform, absorbed into later national and tribal cultures. Though amalgamated with these larger communities, they never entirely lose their peculiar characters. These elder remnant cultures are carried from one place to another over the millennia by a certain few clans or families. The Choneys are still linked with one of the oldest of civilizations and its customs.”
“This is not easy for me to conceive,” I objected. “I have had experience in trying to track down scattered family members in regard to legacies of property and money. Trying to find a grandnephew once removed is a tedious and sometimes impossible task. I don’t see how anyone could trace a family line over four thousand years.”
“You would be looking for a single individual, trying to find primary connections. I need only to find certain large patterns of relationship. Within these large patterns are subsets. I work through these until I come across the most fitting set of circumstances. Then I locate primary subjects, the living descendants of the most ancient lines, and observe what I can. One of the distinctive patterns is that an outsider woman of strong will and mysterious background is insinuated into a respectable family and gains power within it and, finally, over it.”
I pushed away my plate and settled back in the booth. “That particular situation is well known in the South. Do you think it applies here?”
In antebellum days and for some decades following, a plantation owner would occasionally take one of the female slaves as concubine. If the relationship were openly known, this woman would gain real, though illegal, authority. She would give orders to the other slaves, male and female, and become the reigning mistress of the household. The owner’s wife might then desert the farm and retreat to the safety of her own family. Sometimes she would sue for divorce. But the usual case was that the legitimate wife would live on at the plantation and fade away as a personality, ruled harshly by her brutal husband and his shameless mistress
. When the husband died, the legal tangles were so complicated they could never be resolved, especially if the slave mistress had borne children by the husband. Without clear property rights declared, the farmlands fell into disrepair, then into ruin, and became east prey for speculators. Dozen of once-substantial family farms degenerated into marshes and briar patches.
So this arrangement is disapproved by society. It occasions head-shaking and tongue-wagging and in tacit broad recognition that wrong has been done. But the drama is so embedded in the history of the region that is has been accepted, though with glum silence and averted gaze.
“The situation is not identical with that of Grandfather Pasterby,” Olsen admitted. “Slavery was long gone when the old man came into possession of his holdings. But his position was the same as an old-time slave owner, and institutional habits hang on. The Choneys may not be so economically dependent upon the Pasterbys as they seem to be. I believe they are not, but at first they would have been, for the pattern is set. Each new generation produces a new Robert Pasterby who is supplied by the Choneys with a new Leetha.”
“There are documents to support this history,” I said.
“Some day I must look at them. But now the duty lies with you. If you would please go through as many of them as you can over the weekend, perhaps you could give me an informal report, or at least a sketchy description, on Monday. Please look particularly for any financial arrangement between the two families in which one has gone back on his word and betrayed the other. If we can find that out, we may have gained some advantage. The danger is more imminent than you realize.”
