Early in my employment I was attracted to a large framed parchment he kept hanging over his typecase. It was simply but beautifully printed; I knew without being told that he had set it himself:
THE BODY OF
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
PRINTER
LIKE THE COVER OF AN OLD BOOK
STRIPPED OF ITS LETTERING AND GILDING
LIES HERE
FOOD FOR WORMS.
BUT THE WORK SHALL NOT BE LOST
FOR IT WILL, AS HE BELIEVED,
COME FORTH AGAIN.
IN A NEW AND BETTER EDITION
REVISED & CORRRECTED
BY
THE AUTHOR.
When he caught me admiring it Tyss laughed. “Elegant, isn’t it, Hodgins? But a lie, a perverse and probably hypocritical lie. There is no Author; the book of life is simply a mess of pied type—a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. There is no plan, no synopsis to be filled in with pious hopes or hypocritical actions. There is nothing but a vast emptiness in the universe.”
I had been reading an obscure Irish theologian—a Protestant curate of some forsaken parish, so ill-esteemed that he had been forced to publish his sermons himself—named George B. Shaw, and I had been impressed by his forceful style if not his philosophy. I quoted him to Tyss, perhaps as much to show erudition as to counter his argument.
“Nonsense,” said my employer, “I’ve seen the good parson’s book, and it’s a waste of good ink and paper. Man does not think; he only thinks he thinks. An automaton, he responds to external stimuli; he cannot order his thought.”
“You mean then that there is no free will—not even a marginal minimum of choice?”
“Exactly. The whole thing is an illusion. We do what we do because someone else has done what he did; he did it because still another someone did what he did. Every action is the rigid result of another action.”
“But there must have been a beginning,” I objected. “And if there was a beginning, choice existed if only for that split second. And if choice exists once it can exist again.”
“You have the makings of a metaphysician, Hodgins,” he said contemptuously, for metaphysics was one of the most despised words in his vocabulary. “The objection is childish. Answering you and the Reverend Shaw on your own level, I could say that time is an illusion and that all events occur simultaneously. Or if I grant its existence I can ask, What makes you think time is a simple straight line running flatly through eternity? Why do you assume that time isn’t curved? Can you conceive of its end? Can you really assume its beginning? Of course not—then why aren’t both the same? The serpent with its tail in its mouth?”
“You mean we not only play a prepared script but repeat the identical lines over and over and over for infinity? There’s no heaven in your cosmos, only an unimaginable, never ending hell.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “That you should spout emotional theology at me is part of what you call the script, Hodgins. You didn’t select the words nor speak them voluntarily. They were called into existence by what I said, which in turn was mere response to what went before.”
Weakly I was forced back to a more elementary attack. “You don’t act in accordance with your own conviction.”
He snorted.
“A thoughtless remark, excusable only because automatic. How could I act differently? Like you, I am a prisoner of stimuli.”
“How pointless to risk ruin and imprisonment as a member of the Grand Army when you can’t change what’s predestined.”
“I can no more help engaging myself in the underground than I can help breathing, or my heart beating, or dying when the time comes. Nothing, they say, is certain but death and taxes; actually everything is certain. Everything. . . .”
Tyss never tried to conceal the extent of his activity in the Grand Army any more than he attempted to indoctrinate me with its principles. One illegal paper, the True American, came from his press and I often saw crumpled proofs of large-type warnings to “Get Out of Town you Conf. TRAITOR or the GA will HANG YOU!”
I knew that Pondible and the others who bore an indefinable resemblance whether bearded or not came to the store on Grand Army business, and I knew that many of the errands I was sent on advanced, or were supposed to advance, the Grand Army’s cause. Unwilling to face the moral issue of being, no matter how remotely, accessory to mayhem, kidnaping and murder, or the connected economic one of being unemployed, I simply refused to acknowledge I was aiding the underground organization, but looked upon my duties solely as concerned with the bookstore.
My distaste for the Grand Army bred in me no sympathy for the Whigs or for those who were generally considered to be their masters, the Confederates. My reading taught me conclusively that, contrary to the accepted view in the United States, the victors in the War of Southron Independence had been men of the highest probity, and the noblest among them was their second president. But I also knew that immediately after the Peace of Richmond, less dedicated individuals became increasingly powerful in the new nation. As Sir John Dahlberg remarked, “Power tends to corrupt.”
From his first election in 1865 until his death ten years later, President Lee had been the prisoner of an increasingly headstrong and imperialistic congress. He had opposed the invasion and conquest of Mexico by the Confederacy which had been undertaken on the pretext of restoring order during the conflict between the emperor and the republicans. However, he had too profound a respect for the constitutional processes to continue this opposition in the face of joint resolutions by the Confederate Congress.
Lee remained a symbol, but as the generation which had fought for independence died, the ideals he symbolized faded. Negro emancipation, enacted largely because of the pressure of men like Lee, soon revealed itself as a device for obtaining the benefits of slavery without its obligations. The freedmen on both sides of the new border were without franchise, and indeed for all practical purpose, without civil rights. Yet while the old Union first restricted and then abolished immigration, the Confederacy encouraged it, making the immigrants subjects, like the Latin-Americans who made up so much of the Southron population after the Confederacy expanded southward, limiting full citizenship to posterity of residents in the Confederate States on July Fourth 1864.
My reading of history—and by this time I had found there was no other study holding the same steady attraction for me—together with my strong revulsion to Tyss’s philosophy convinced me there had been a radical alteration in the direction of the world’s progress during the past century. It seemed to me humanity had been heading for longer and longer stretches of peace, greater intelligence in dealing with its problems, more of the necessities and luxuries of life more evenly distributed. But with the War of Southron Independence the trend changed, not into immediate and obvious retrogression perhaps, but certainly away from the bright future which had seemed so assured in 1850.
Take the pervasive fear of imminent war which hung over the world, a fear which was interrupted only by the outbreak of the conflicts themselves—which ranged from skirmishes between civilized powers equipped with modern weapons of extermination and barbarians with nothing more lethal than a bow or a blowgun, to global belligerency. This fear hung, ever more lowering and insistent as it became increasingly predictable that the antagonists in the great clash would be the Confederacy and the German Union.
Both could date their impetus from 1864 when the North German Confederation beat the Danes. From then on the expansion of the two countries was parallel; while the Confederacy worked its way methodically toward Cape Horn and westward through the Pacific, the German Union absorbed the Balkans and made a close alliance with the suddenly rejuvenated Spanish Empire. In the Emperors’ War of 1914–16 the Confederacy had the opportunity of stepping in and giving its rival a mortal blow, and the action would have been popular, for the majority of Southrons, like the inhabitants of the United States, were sympathetic to the cause of England, France and Ru
ssia. But for a variety of reasons the Confederacy stayed neutral, allowing the German Union to absorb Ukrainia, Poland and the Baltic States, northern Italy, western France and the Low Countries. The Confederacy took the reward of this course by annexing Alaska from Russia and attaching the crippled British Empire to its orbit in close alliance, so that the two great powers were fairly balanced. The attraction of even so minor a country as the United States not only meant much to either side, but almost surely meant the war itself would be fought on the territory of this new satellite.
Because of all this I realized the Grand Army was in a position to play a much more important part than any similar illegal organization in another country.
Just how it was using its opportunity was something of which I became only gradually aware.
IV
Among customers to whom I frequently delivered parcels of books there was a Monsieur René Enfandin who lived on Eighth Street, not far from Fifth Avenue. M. Enfandin was Consul for the Republic of Haiti; the house he occupied was distinguished from its otherwise equally drab neighbors by a large red and blue escutcheon over the doorway. He did not, however, use the entire dwelling himself, reserving only the parlor floor for the office of the consulate and living quarters; the rest was let to other tenants.
He had an arrangement with Tyss whereby he turned back most of the books he bought for credit on others. I soon saw that if he hadn’t, his library would shortly have dispossessed him; as it was, books covered all the space not taken by the essential paraphernalia of his office and bedroom with the exception of a bit of bare wall on which hung a large crucifix. He seemed always to have a volume in his large, dark brown hand, politely closed over his thumb, or open for eager sampling.
Enfandin was tall and strong-featured, notable in any company. In the United States, where a black man was an irritating reminder of a disastrously lost war and Mr. Lincoln’s ill-advised proclamation of emancipation, he was the permanent target of rowdy boys and adult hoodlums. Even the diplomatic immunity of his post was poor protection, for it was believed—not without justification—that Haiti, the only American republic south of the Mason-Dixon line to preserve its independence, was disrupting the official if sporadically executed United States policy of deporting Negroes to Africa by encouraging their emigration to its shores or—what was more annoying—assisting persecuted blacks to flee westward to the hospitality of the unconquered Indians of Dakotah and Montana.
Although I was somewhat shy of him at the first, I was drawn to him more and more. Nor was this entirely because he was as avid for reading as myself or because his excursions into learning were more systematic and disciplined. He had a quick and penetrating sympathy that was at times almost telepathic. Beginning with perfunctory interchanges when I delivered his books, our conversations grew longer and more friendly; soon he was advising me and I was learning from him with an eagerness I had never felt for Tyss’s proffered erudition.
“History, but certainly, Hodge,” he had no discernible accent but sometimes his English was uncolloquial, “it is a noble study. But what is history? How is it written? How is it read? Is it a dispassionate chronicle of events scientifically determined and set down? Or is it the transmutation of the ordinary to the celebrated?”
“It seems to me that the facts are primary and the interpretations secondary,” I answered. “If we can find out the facts we can form our own opinions on them.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps. But take what is for me the central fact of all history.” He pointed sweepingly at the crucifix. “As a Catholic the facts are plain to me; I believe what is written in the Gospels to be literally true: that the Son of Man died for me on that cross. But what are the facts for a contemporary Roman statesman? That an obscure local agitator threatened the stability of an uneasy province and was promptly executed in the approved Roman fashion, as a warning to others. And for a contemporary fellow countryman? That no such person existed. You think these facts are mutually exclusive? Yet you know that no two people see exactly the same thing, too many honest witnesses have contradicted each other. Even the Gospels must be reconciled.”
“You are saying that truth is relative.”
“Am I? Then I shall have my tongue examined, or my head. Because I mean to say no such thing. Truth is absolute and for all time. But one man cannot envisage all of truth; the best he can do is see one aspect of it whole. That is why I say to you, be a skeptic, Hodge. Always be the skeptic.”
“Ay?” I was finding the admonition a little difficult to harmonize with his previous confession of faith.
“For the believer skepticism is essential. How else is he to know false gods from true except by doubting both? One of the most pernicious of folk-sayings is, ‘I cannot believe my eyes!’ Why particularly should you believe your eyes? You were given eyes to see with, not to believe with. Believe your mind, your intuition, your reason, your emotion if you like—but not your eyes unaided by any of these interpreters. Your eyes can see the mirage, the hallucination, as easily as the actual scenery. Your eyes will tell you nothing exists but matter—”
“Not only my eyes but my boss.” I told him of Tyss’s mechanistic creed.
“God have mercy on his soul,” muttered Enfandin. “Poor creature. He has liberated himself from the superstitions of religion in order to fall into superstition so abject no Christian can conceive it. Imagine it to yourself”—he began to pace the floor—“time is circular, man is automaton, we are doomed to repeat the identical gestures over and over, forever. Oh, I say to you, Hodge, this is monstrous.”
I nodded. “Yes. But what is the answer? Limitless space, limitless time? They are almost as horrifying, because they are inconceivable.”
“And why should the inconceivable be horrible? But you are right. This is not the answer. The answer is that all—time, space, matter—all is illusion. All but the good God. Nothing exists but Him. We are creatures of His fancy, figments of His imagination . . .”
“Then where does free will come in?”
“As a gift, of course—how else? The greatest gift and the greatest responsibility.”
I can’t say I was entirely satisfied with Enfandin’s exposition, though it was more to my taste than Tyss’s. I returned to the conversation at intervals, both in my thoughts and when I saw him, but in the end all I really accepted was his original adjuration to be skeptical, which I doubt I always applied in the way he meant me to.
Frequently he became so interested in our talk, which ranged widely, for he thought it no frivolity to touch on any subject engaging either of us whether it might be considered trivial or not, that he walked back to the bookstore with me, leaving a note on the door of the consulate to say he would be back in ten minutes—a promise I’m afraid seldom fulfilled.
More and more as I came to know him better I felt I ought to tell him of Tyss’s connection with the Grand Army, an organization strongly prejudiced against Negroes. Timidity and selfishness combined to keep me quiet; I feared he might buy his books elsewhere and I should lose the benefit of his companionship.
I suppose I had known Enfandin for perhaps a year when I became better acquainted with some of the activities of the Grand Army. It began the day a customer called himself to my attention with a self-conscious clearing of his throat.
“Yes sir—can I help you?”
He was a fat little man with palpably false teeth, and hair that hung down behind over his collar. However, the sum of his appearance was in no way ludicrous; rather he gave the impression of ease and authority, and an assurance so strong there was no necessity to buttress it.
“Why, I was looking for . . .” he began, and then looked at me sharply. “Say, ain’t you the young fella I saw walking with a Nigra? Big black buck?”
I felt myself reddening. “There’s no law against it, is there?”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t know about your damyankee laws, boy. For myself I’d say there’s no harm in it, no harm in it at all. Always did like to
be around Nigras myself—but then, I was rared among um. Most damyankees seem to think Nigras ain’t fitten company. Only goes to show how narrerminded and bigoted you folks can be. Present company excepted.”
“M’sieu Enfandin is consul of the Republic of Haiti,” I said; “he’s a scholar and a gentleman.” As soon as the words were out I was bitterly sorry for their condescension and patronage. I felt ashamed, as if I had betrayed him by offering credentials to justify my friendship with him and implying that it took special qualities to overcome the handicap of his color.
“A mussoo, huh? Furrin and educated Nigra? Well, guess they’re all right.” His tone, still hearty, was slightly dubious. “Ben working here long?”
“Over three years.”
“Kind of dull work, ain’t it?”
“Oh no—I like to read, and there are plenty of books around here.”
Without apparent effort or management he drew from me the story of my ambitions and misadventures since leaving Wappinger Falls.
“Going to be a professional historian, hay? Little out of my line, but I don’t suppose they’s many of um up north here.”
“Not unless you count a handful of college instructors who dabble at it.”
He shook his head. “A young fella with your aims could do a lot better down South, I’d think.”
“Oh yes. Why, some of the most interesting research is going on right now in Leesburg, Washington-Baltimore and the University of Lima. You are a Confederate yourself, sir?”
“Southron, yes sir, I am that, and mighty proud of it. Now look a-here, boy: I’ll lay all my cards on the table, face up. You’re a free man, not indented, you said, and you ain’t getting any pay here. Now, how’d you like to do a little job for me? They’s good money in it—and I imagine I’d be able to fix up one of those deals—what do they call them? scholarships—at the University of Leesburg, after.”
The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century Page 22
