by Isaac Asimov
Sloan did some mental arithmetic. “You said that Captain O’Reilly was thirty-six when the club formed in 1898?”
“Yes.”
“Are you telling me that Captain O’Reilly is now one hundred and eight years old?”
“That’s right. Our oldest man.”
“And at ninety, you’re the youngest?”
“Yes,” Weatherlee said. “And I’m Custodian of the Bottle. According to our by-laws, the youngest surviving member is Custodian of the Bottle.”
Sloan finished his drink. “Just how many club members are still alive?”
“Ninety-five.”
Sloan stared at him for a few moments. “You mean to tell me that only three of you people have died since 1898?”
Weatherlee nodded. “There was Meyer. He died in a train accident back in 1909. Or was it 1910? And McMurty. He stayed in the Guard and worked himself up to full colonel before he was killed in the Argonne in 1918. And Iverson. He died of acute appendicitis in 1921.”
Sloan considered his empty glass and then sighed. “Care for a drink?”
Weatherlee smiled affably. “I guess one more won’t hurt. I’ll take whatever you’re having.”
Sloan caught the bartender’s eye and held up two fingers.
Weatherlee leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Actually this isn’t the original champagne bottle. I broke that in 1924.”
Sloan studied it again.
“It happened at our convention that year,” Weatherlee said. “I was riding the elevator at the time. In those days they didn’t operate as smoothly as they do now. There was this sudden jerk as the operator stopped at my floor. The suitcase I was carrying sprang open and the bottle dropped to the floor. Couldn’t have fallen more than a foot, but there it lay, shattered on the floor.”
Weatherlee shook his head at the memory. “I was absolutely panic-stricken. I mean here I was the custodian of the club’s bottle — a great responsibility — and there it lay, shattered on the elevator floor. Luckily I was the only passenger on the elevator at the time. No one but the operator knew what had happened.”
“So you went out and bought another bottle?”
“No. I didn’t see how I could duplicate it anywhere. The bottle was quite distinctive. Purchased in Tampa, twenty-six years before.”
Sloan indicated the bottle. “Then what is that?”
“It was the elevator operator who saved me,” Weatherlee said. “He went out and got an exact duplicate.”
“How did he manage to do that?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. He seemed a little evasive, now that I remember, but I was too overjoyed to press him. He was really most apologetic about the accident. Most solicitous. Took care of the mess in the elevator and brought the new bottle to my room fifteen minutes later. Wouldn’t even let me pay for it. Claimed that the entire incident was really his doing and wouldn’t accept a cent.”
Sloan took his eyes from the magnum. “You said something about Captain O’Reilly trying to break the bottle?”
“Yes. Last year at our meeting. I still don’t know exactly why he tried it. But I do remember that he kept staring at the bottle all evening. That year I was the Treasurer and I’d just finished reading my report. We had $4,990 in the treasury. Our dues are actually almost nominal, but still after all those years and compounded interest, it reached that sum.”
The bartender brought the drinks. Sloan paid him and took a swallow of his whiskey and soda. “So what about O’Reilly?”
Weatherlee watched the bartender leave. “Oh, yes. Well, just as I finished, he rose suddenly to his feet and began slashing at the bottle with his cane and shouting, ‘That damn bottle! That damn bottle!’ And then it seemed as though nearly everyone else went mad, too. They shouted and cursed and smashed at the bottle, some even with chairs. I really don’t know how it would all have ended if the waiters hadn’t rushed in and restrained them.”
“But they didn’t break the bottle?”
“No. It was most remarkable. The blows were really resounding, and yet it didn’t break. I thought about that all year. All this long year.”
Weatherlee took a deep breath. “I arrived here early this morning. I am not a drinking man, but on impulse I bought a pint of whiskey and took it up to my room. I just sat there drinking and staring at the bottle. I even forgot all about the bus tour. And then I don’t know what came over me, but I picked up an ashtray — one of those heavy glass things that are practically indestructible — and struck the bottle. Again and again, until finally the ashtray broke.”
Weatherlee took the handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket. “I was in a perfect frenzy. I rushed out of my room with the bottle, and down the hallway I found one of those maintenance closets with its door open. There was a hammer on one of the shelves. I put the magnum of champagne into the stationary tub in the cubicle and struck it again and again with the hammer.”
“But the bottle still didn’t break?”
Weatherlee dabbed lightly at his forehead with the handkerchief. “But what was most ghastly of all was that all the time I was trying to smash that bottle, I had the feeling that someone, somewhere, was laughing at me.”
He glared at the magnum. “And then suddenly, the conviction, the certainty, came to me that neither I, nor anybody in the club could destroy that bottle. If it were done, it had to be done by someone on the outside.”
Sloan frowned at his drink. “Just why do you want to destroy that bottle in the first place?”
Weatherlee sighed. “I don’t know. I just know that I do.”
They were both silent for almost a minute and then Sloan said, “This elevator operator. What did he look like?”
“The elevator operator? Rather a distinguished sort of person. I remember thinking at the time that he wasn’t at all what one would expect of an elevator operator. Rather tall. Dark hair, dark eyes.”
One of the doors of the dining room across the lobby opened and a waiter stepped out. He came into the bar. “Mr. Weatherlee, we’re serving now.”
Weatherlee nodded. “Yes. I’ll be there in a moment.”
Sloan waited until the waiter was out of hearing. “When did you say you broke the original bottle?”
“In 1924.”
“And nobody’s died since then?”
“Nobody’s died since 1921. That was when Iverson got his acute appendicitis.”
Sloan stared at the bottle again. “I’d like to join your club.”
Weatherlee blinked. “But that’s impossible.”
“Why is it impossible?”
“Well... for one thing, you didn’t belong to our National Guard company.”
“Do your by-laws say anything about members having to belong to that particular company? Or any company at all?”
“Well, no. But it was assumed...”
“And you did say that you never did fill your membership quota? Only ninety-eight people signed up? That leaves a vacancy of two, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, but you are so much younger than any of the rest of us. It would be unfair for us to have to compete with you for the bottle.”
“Look,” Sloan said. “I’m not a rich man, but I’ll match what’s in the treasury, dollar for dollar.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Weatherlee said a bit stiffly, “but if you should outlive all of us, and that seems likely, you’d get it all back anyhow.”
Sloan smiled patiently. “I’ll sign an affidavit renouncing all claim to what’s in the treasury.”
Weatherlee rubbed his neck. “I don’t know. I’m not the final authority on anything like this. I’m not even an officer this year, unless you want to count being Custodian of the Bottle. I really don’t know what the procedure would be in a case like this. I suppose we’ll all have to take a vote or something.”
He rose and put the magnum under his arm. “I suppose there’s no harm in asking, but frankly I think they’ll turn you down.”
Sloan put his ha
nd on the hammer. “Better leave this here with me.”
Sloan came to Weatherlee’s room at nine-thirty the next morning.
He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Weatherlee.
Weatherlee nodded acceptance. “To be quite honest, I was a bit surprised that the club decided to accept you. Not without exception, of course. Captain O’Reilly was quite against it.”
Sloan moved to the bureau and picked up the magnum of champagne.
Weatherlee blinked. “What are you doing?”
“Taking the bottle with me. You told me yourself that according to the club’s by-laws, the youngest member is Custodian of the Bottle.”
“Yes, but...”
Sloan opened the door to the corridor. He smiled broadly. “We wouldn’t want you to go around asking strange people to break it, now would we?”
When Sloan was gone, Weatherlee locked the door.
He went to the bathroom and began removing the make-up from his face. As he worked, a half century disappeared.
Maybe he could have taken Sloan for more than five thousand, but you never know. Getting too greedy could have blown the whole deal.
He smiled.
Finding the sucker was the hardest part of it.
But once you did, and learned approximately how much he could part with without undue pain, you went about arranging the set-up. That included going to the nearest Old Soldiers’ Home and offering to treat a dozen of their oldest veterans to a dinner.
And the old boys did so enjoy an afternoon out.
Two Postludes
by Isak Romun
Desmond Blinn carved a dripping slice of the rare beef, pushed it down on a piece of rye, put another piece of bread on top of the meat, and took great bites, his free hand feeling his stubbled face. A beer was nearby, warm now, poured out too long ago, just before he began wrestling with his thoughts. But he drank it lustily, driblets of pale amber upon his new beard turning into small reflective beads perched on the tips of stiff hairs.
It was a good meal, a good last meal, hearty and rough as his life had been; and simple, simple and direct, as he knew his death was soon to be. A strange man, Bohlmann, the leader; a man for little rituals, careful observances, precise ceremony. The traditional “last meal” of the doomed man’s choice, a case in point. What would take place soon? — a quick walk into the courtyard, Blinn’s hands tied behind him, two strong boys, each with a paw upon a shoulder, pushing him gently but with no nonsense to his knees; a long wooden slat upon which thick, brushed letters proclaiming the crimes of ingratitude, treachery, and betrayal of which Blinn had been accused and, in Bohlmann’s direct, thick-robed judgment, found guilty. And then, one gunshot up through the neck into the brain and eternity would fold out in front of Blinn.
Bohlmann had seen the method in a newsreel: Chinese Reds, the strips of wood calligraphed with records of infamy, executed by Nationalists — or the other way around; and the simplicity, not devoid of a certain economical pomp and high moral tone, was appealing, irresistible to his nature.
“Let us try that with the very next one we shoot,” he had said jollily, and Desmond Blinn remembered, with a tremor, for it was he who had accommodated Bohlmann, who bent down, aimed the gun upwards, and pulled the trigger, then stepped back quickly as the two burly boys, like pas de deuxing dancers, sprang off to the sides to escape, with Desmond, the squirting blood and the small flying pieces of brain.
And now, he, Desmond Blinn, would again be a participant in this final ceremony. For what? A woman. So foolish, for there were so many women. Bohlmann secured them and spent them like copper coins, and soon Blinn would suffer because he rubbed one while there was some sheen still upon it. The woman had been disposed of, thrown down a well and left to die there. Women did not get to participate in the Ceremony, only men — the ones against whom Bohlmann mounted huge accusations, driving himself up a spiraling curve of vengeful rage until, convinced of the utmost perfidy, he pronounced the awful sentence: the Ceremony.
“Tomorrow,” he had shouted at Blinn, his wet red mouth quivering with anger and expectation. “Tomorrow, at dawn.” It was always dawn, another nicety, another line in the format: a chiaroscuro effect cherished by Bohlmann.
But in the meanwhile, thought Desmond Blinn, there’s this splendid beef, cut from a cow stolen, slaughtered, and cooked over a great fire that day, and the rough, simple bread, and the beer, though warm, satisfying but almost gone. Might they give him another?
As Blinn went to the door of the cell in the monastery the band had taken over, he felt a keen exhilaration over how well he was taking this whole thing, enjoying the meat and bread, even rattling his agateware cup, chips of its coating flying about, against the short bars of the small opening in the door and shouting down the corridor, demanding more drink. And, by God, see that it’s good and cold!
He was certain he could hold out this way, relish what life he had left without indulging in false hopes that somehow it would go on beyond the approaching light, that at the last moment he would receive a reprieve and be welcomed back into the band. No, that would not happen, but Blinn would rob Bohlmann of some of the glee gained through the Ceremony. Hah! — for what was the Ceremony designed? Not to make a man stand tall and stare back upon his persecutor at that last moment, as against a wall to be shot or, rope around his neck, upon a nervous horse. No, the victim was pushed down, his head bent forward, the wooden slat a comical element in a piece already without dignity; and then in this ignominious position, almost fetal (strange, that), the muzzle of the gun was pushed up against the short nape hairs but not fired until Bohlmann, off to the side, fat and squalid in his canvas chair, his torpid face moving rhythmically to the steady chewing of browned sesame seeds, masking his inner elation, gave the signal. (Caligula at the Circus Maximus.) By this time, the miscreant was reduced to a quaking, screaming figure, explaining to Bohlmann, pleading with Bohlmann, assuring Bohlmann that whatever in the world he had done (and perhaps he honestly didn’t know), it would never occur again. Never.
If only you’ll let me live. That’s what they all said, thought Desmond Blinn as his cup ceased its insistent, cadenced ring upon the bars, and his knees felt a certain wateriness when he thought of those wretches, each now in his thoughts, remarkably, with his own face, the fear-stricken face of Desmond Blinn.
He wiped this vision of an uncongenial immediate future from the slate of his mind and struck up again the racket of cup against bars, calling out loudly (too loudly?) for more beer. Then he resurrected the images so recently discarded and ran them through a mental projector so that each, miraculously transformed now, showed Desmond Blinn as staunch, unbreakable, tight-lipped, and not without a trace of annoying wryness playing about his features, robbing Bohlmann of his pleasure.
For now, as one of his guards came padding down the corridor, Blinn knew, knew, that he would go through the Ceremony as these last pictures showed him, that he would deny Bohlmann the circus scene he coveted.
But the approaching guard ignored Blinn’s demand for more beer and pushed a face against the bars of the small opening and blew his sweetish breath into the cell as he whispered quick and precise instructions to the confined man. The guard was Pardrilone, an old-time member of the band.
Tomorrow it would be over, he told the prisoner, but not for Blinn. For Bohlmann. If the men didn’t turn from him now, he said, each would, in time, march screaming to the same fate that their leader planned for Blinn. Bohlmann was mad!
It was, after all, Pardrilone explained, not for a woman that Blinn was to die, but because he represented a threat to the leadership of Bohlmann, just as Bohlmann had been a threat to his predecessor. The woman had been emplaced to provide Bohlmann with an immediate cause for ordering Blinn’s extinction; and perhaps the woman’s as well, for Bohlmann was tiring of her.
This was why Blinn must be the center of the band’s revolt against their leader. The others were afraid or, weighted down by the awe in wh
ich they held Bohlmann, could not conceive of his overthrow being successful, as if he had been touched by divinity.
Blinn reeled back from the door and fell to his cot, weakened as much by the prospect of deliverance as others are of death. He had been ready for death. His was a readiness that was absolute, that was devoid of self-deception. He knew that never would he be as ready, that the conditioning of his mind and soul undergone in the hours spent in the dark cell could not be replicated at some future date, could not be turned on, turned off, by some psychic finger pressing a button.
“What’s the matter with you?” Pardrilone hissed through the bars. “Are you with us?”
Desmond Blinn nodded as he rose and moved back to the door. “How? The plan. Does Quesada know?” Quesada was a faraway revolutionary figure to whom the band of irregulars owed a tenuous allegiance.
“He’ll approve. Later. Here’s a gun. Loaded.” The guard shoved between the bars an ugly automatic pistol. “The clip is full. One round is chambered.”
“I’ll kill Bohlmann with this?”
“Yes. When I come to get you, I’ll tie your hands loosely. Make sure to wear your woolskin so it will hide the gun. When you’re out there, work your hands loose, get the gun out fast, and shoot him as he sits watching.”
“Right in his fat, pig face.”
“No,” Pardrilone cautioned. “Too chancy — you could miss. Place your shots in his chest, around the heart. Can you do it?”
Blinn said he could.
“Good. You will be our new leader. That’s the way these things go.”
The next day, the plan worked perfectly. But despite what Pardrilone said, Blinn fired at and placed two bullets squarely in Bohlmann’s face and watched with satisfaction as the force of the shots toppled the fat man over backwards, his wide buttocks still clamped in the arms of the canvas chair which went over with him as he skidded and rolled to a stop against a car some six feet distant. Some of Blinn’s satisfaction was stolen, however, by Bohlmann, who saw, in the instant between the appearance of the gun and its discharge, what was happening and looked at Blinn calmly, a hint of wryness about his lips.
