More Than Melchisedech

by R. A. Lafferty

  Then Letitia came to them again. She said that they must be off. There was very much to do. They found Charlotte and Gloria Mullens playing bridge against Lily Koch and a strange, ashen-haired, smiling, slim girl. Duffey was startled. He had heard her mentioned as being in the club, but he hadn't been able to spot her before. He knew who she was: the skinny countess to whom Charlotte had referred, and the earlier countess of mind-plundering encounter. Duffey knew her from Sebastian's mind. He even knew how it would be to kiss her.

  “This is a friend,” Sebastian said of her to Duffey. “She is someone I used to speak of, Melchisedech, and you never believed in her. But she is real. She is the Girl Countess.”

  Duffey kissed the Girl Countess and she kissed him. It was just as he had remembered it.

  “We must go,” Letitia said.

  “And I must go,” Lily told them. “Take my hand, Sebastian, but beware. This small Charlotte is weird beyond anything in the world.”

  Duffey kissed the girls: Gloria (somehow he knew it would be the last time he would ever see her), Charlotte (there would never be a last time for his seeing her), and the countess again (after all, she was special; she was the only countess that Duffey had ever kissed). And he left with his Koch girls.

  But Duffey and Lily and Letitia were all in laughing wonder in the street.

  “The Mullenses, that is to say the Cavendishes, make their living as card sharks,” Duffey explained.

  “Of course they do,” Lily said.

  “And Sebastian is the absolute expert at everything,” Duffey added.

  “Of course he is, and so is his countess,” Lily said. “And she's as much a mentalist as your Mullens girls. They love each other, I can tell, but it will be bloody cutthroat. It will be the battle of the century, and we are missing out on it. Do you know what the Countess said about the two of you? She said that it was so nice when a couple share the same psychoses, especially when they're all about the belief that you can create the scenes and people who are around you. She says that the only danger is that the bottoms of both of your worlds will fall out at the same time.”

  “Oh I know that,” Letitia said, “but it's always the same world with us and the same bottom. But the Countess has her own psychotic beliefs. She believes that she's real. But Sebastian made her up a long time ago, and Duffey took her up then. And it was myself who projected her into the Chicago scene. Sebastian was clear thunderstruck when she appeared in Chicago, and he still is.”

  “Oh Letzy,” Lily worried, “sometimes you really believe in your private fancies. And Melky will not be a corrective to you. He'll abet you. And finally you won't even know what objective truth is.”

  “I don't know what it is now. I only know that it isn't. There is no such thing, my gilded Lily, as objective truth or objective fact. The whole world is made out of subjective private projections. Some of them become consensus projections, but they aren't really objective even then.”

  “Oh Duffey, cut her tongue out if you can do it without scandal,” Lily said. “The rest of her is priceless, but sometimes her tongue isn't worth fifteen cents a pound. You two are my treasures and you are made out of pure gold. But there are individual coins in you that are counterfeits even if they are made out of true metal. Some of those coins have the Crown and Image of ‘The Royal Malarky of Salem’ on them. We will eat together late tonight, and then we will go to a late show somewhere. Oh, you don't know how much you are loved, you two!”

  Lily left them then, and then went about the appointing of their new house. Duffey bought tools and lumber and good cherry wood paneling. With a few hundred deft strokes he would be able to do wonders to those upstairs rooms.

  They took time off to visit City Hall, and St. Malachy's, and an insurance company, and a bank, and a lawyer. Then they cleaned up…

  “Damn it, Duffey, the hot water doesn't work,” Letitia protested.

  “Did I say it worked?”

  …and changed clothes and went back to the old Lily/Letitia apartment…

  (“Oh, it will be so lonesome and desolate here,” the spirit of the apartment was moaning, “Where can I get me another sister? Where can I get me a husband? How will I live alone?” )

  …where the spirit Lily had a candle-light supper set out for them.

  It was a wonderful supper. Lily cried and blew her nose. And Letzy said that it was the most wonderful condiment spread over everything and that they should market it. “But how much can you produce a month, Lily? We have to know.”

  They went out to Morgenstein's Comedy Music Box on Randolph Street and saw an extravaganza. When they came out of there, a paper boy was calling the midnight edition ‘Double Murder in North-Side Hotel’.

  “Get me one, Duffey,” Lily said. “I love murders. I so envy those whose lifestyles allow them to indulge.”

  “I don't love this one,” said Letitia who was prescient.

  “Neither do I,” Duffey moaned. He got a paper from the boy. His hands shook so much that he spilled coins all over the pavement. Then Lily had to take the paper from him to read the story.

  Yes, it was Gloria and Manolo Mullens who had been murdered in that same little hotel that Duffey had moved out of that day. It was a particularly savage assault. The two had been tortured first. Then the two skulls had been crushed as though great spikes had been driven into them, but the murder weapon was not found. And there was no trace of the girl about nine years old who was believed to have been with the Mullens since their coming to town.

  The Mullens were known gamblers, the paper said, and it was surmised that there might be underworld connections. Three slant-faced men had been seen about the hotel, and people said that they did not belong there.

  “Do you think that Charlotte got away?” Lily asked.

  “Of course she did,” Letitia said, “but she shouldn't have pulled the other two into her danger. They were tortured to get information that they didn't have. But Charlotte was already away. The killers didn't know that their target was a little girl or a little midget. To them she was only the mysterious ‘brain’. They somehow had the name ‘Mullens’ from the mind alarm, and the name of the Mullens' hotel. Charlotte is in a pre-selected hideout, and I bet she gives the nuns there holy hell.”

  “Did she really steal the millions?” Lily asked her usually psychic sister.

  “Yes, and she will own it all securely when the coast is clear. Then she will be the fascinating millionaire mendacious midget of our acquaintance.”

  “What was the weapon?”

  “I can't quite see that part,” Letitia said. “There's a sort of sea spray that comes between. I can't tell what the cruel hooked thing is.”

  But Duffey recognized the destruction of the cruel hooked thing. It was the boat hook in the hands of one of the three slant-faced stevedores of Duffey's dream or psychosomatic trance of that very morning. And he recalled with nausea Charlotte's dream-or-trance words:

  “Aw, ugh, it always sickens me to hear a boat hook crunch into a skull like that.”

  5

  Melchisedech Duffey and Letitia Koch got married. It was a nice wedding.

  Has there ever been on earth a true golden age, either particular or general? Yes, there have been dozens and dozens of particular golden ages. These usually involve small areas and small numbers of persons, but they can be absolutely authentic. One of them was in a portion of North Chicago in the years 1925 to 1935. Then it continued as an electrum age (gold and silver mixed) till about 1946. There were some minor disasters in this electrum section of it, but there were none in the pure gold first section.

  Some of the persons who made up that golden age were Melchisedech Duffey and his wife Letitia (they were central to it, and in a sense co-creators of it), her sister Lily Koch, their parents August and Elinore Koch. And their friends Sebastian Hilton, Margaret Hochfelsen (she was the ever-young countess), and the associate Gabriel Szymansky and his wife Miriam and his son Kasmir. This Kasmir or Casey was one of Duf
fey's prime ‘creations’.

  There were the arty friends of the golden age: Hierome Groben, Nicky and Vicky Van Horn, Fanny Warneke, Mordecai and Elvira Scott, Cassius and Mona Greatheart, Bruno Schnabel, Otis and Sheryl Pentecost, Leo Ring. There were the bookish and literary friends generally, some of them being newspaper people as well: Christopher Tompkinson, Demetrio Glauch, Clarence Schrade, Leo Crowley, Tony and Evelyn Apostolo, Rollo and Josephine McSorley, Norman Shipman, Januarius and Elena O'Higgins.

  There were the musical friends going from the operatics to the rag-timers and the Chicago-hots and the string-band people, composers, players, stagers: Linus Aloysia, Basil and Dorothy Noah, Rufus Weaver, Enniscorthy and Mary Sweeny, Newbold and Audery McGeehan, Andy Paige, Vitis and Emily Karger, Cletus Kenealy. All those were good people.

  There were the ecclesial or vineyard or churchy people: Thomas Chroniker S.J., Tim and Gale Tuthill, Sister Mary Cornelia (Sullivan) Foster and Alma Ruch, Dan and Nan Donovan, Sister Mary Aurora (Rittenhouse), Martin and Katherine Redwine, Frantz and Elaine St. Clair. It was the vineyard people who kept the world turning. All other persons in the world were parasites upon the labor of the vineyard workers.

  There were the theatrical people: Nemo Cobb, Anna Louise McCutcheon, Duke and Jenny Colfax, Leander Crane, Jim and Rosemary Hogan, Beverly Boyd, John and Fisher Nolan.

  There was the Monster Giulio who was outside of categories.

  There were the people of a scientific bent: Mark McClatchy, Cyril Holland, Catherine Quick, Morris Poor, Horatio and Mildred Burgandy, Sherman Slick, Silas and Maud Whiterice. You just don't meet people like that every day.

  There were the confidence and gamine friends: Charlotte Garfield (yes, she's the millionaire mendacious midget again), Gideon Sedgewick, Mary Regina Toast, Ralph Kirby, Ira and Rebecca Spain, Victor Ryan, Homer and Evangeline Durban, Fred and Helen Batavia. These were all of the better grade of confidence people.

  There were the very young friends who came into the bookstore or were around the neighborhood: Mary Francis Rattigan (Ah, look out for that one, she was one of Duffey's quasi-creatures created by a talisman that only half-worked), Mary Catherine Carruthers (Ah, look out there again, she was one of Duffey's true creations by a true talisman), Hugo Stone (Damn that kid anyhow!), Ethyl Ellenberger, Margaret Stone (She was not Hugo's sister as she used to brag sometimes; she was just barely his cousin).

  There were the sporty people: Tom (Big Bear) Rogers, Herbert Conger, Calvin Bonner, Enos Dorn, Angelo Cato, Henry Chadwick, Mike and Peggy Conner (golf), and Peter and Jenny Reid (tennis).

  There were the college and university people: Jerome and Grace Plunkett, David and Dinah Joyce, Susan Parker, Cicero Brazil, Jasper and Jane Howe, Isaac and Mary Lightfoot, Judley and Pauline Peacock.

  There were the money and commerce people, or anyhow the rich people: Adrian Hilton (he was an older brother of Sebastian), Shawn Mallow, Pat and Lois Tyrone, Mary Kay Pack, Julian and Bernice Edgewater, Mary Carmel Hooligan, Clement and Irene Temple, Vincent Finnerty.

  And then there were the slippery people. Pleasant they were, competent they were, interesting they were. And slippery they were. Larry and Olivia Hallahan, Ben and Shirley Israel, Marjory Redfox, Elmo Sheehan, John and Alive Calumet, Hermione (she was so slippery that nobody ever did know her last name).

  The heart of the near-north side Chicago golden age was the seven rooms of Melchisedech and Letitia Duffey, and the shops below them. And the Koch's galleries two blocks down the rich street, not the poor street. Yet it was around the doorways of the poor street that the people and their interests coalesced.

  Above the poor shops on the poor street there were many apartments that were fine on the inside, and many of the golden age people lived there. There were little ratty eating places on that street. There were other eating places that looked almost the same on the outside, but the rats in them picked their teeth with gold toothpicks. There were a number of sly pigs along there, for as long as prohibition lasted, and some of them were good music and good entertainment places.

  The people of the Duffey nations found themselves interesting. They found their gatherings and meetings their comings and goings and entertainments, their cafés and shows and studios and saloons and open-handed houses and apartments, their small part of the city all to be highly interesting. And they set their seals forever on those streets and corners and buildings and parks. A stranger there even today will know that people of peculiar awareness were once there.

  Melchisedech and Letitia designed that shanty-and-gold neighborhood as they designed other things, events and life scenarios and persons themselves. Duffey had a natural gift for creating people complete with their surroundings; and one of his creations, Letitia, had the gift even more strongly than he had.

  “The purpose of life is the creation, arrangement, and staging of interesting and awareful scenes, and then entering into them to play vivid parts,” Duffey said.

  “Luffy Duffey, you say that all so well and you say it all so often,” Letitia told him. Duffey never had a disagreement with any of the Kochs, not with father August, not with mother Elinore, not with Lily, certainly not with Letitia. Melchisedech fell in love with his mother-in-law Elinore at first sight when she threw her arms wide and give him the biggest kiss in town. This was the gesture and act that all three of the Koch ladies had. Lily would sometimes do it with walk-in customers in the Gallery. And it is always good luck to be in love with your mother-in-law. Elinore had style.

  And the father-in-law August Koch had a pleasant sort of integrity and a rich competence. He also had many old European ideas, such as dowry.

  “It is one of the things that we must not neglect,” he told Duffey. “It is good to settle these things; it is good to make the transfers of money and property early. I am very pleased with you, Mr. Duffey. The figure I have in mind…”

  “I know the figure you have in mind,” Duffey said. “I'm a mentalist. Set it at one quarter of that. And set it so that we can draw only the interest on it for a period of twenty-five years.”

  “I hate to do that,” August Koch. “You will have difficulty reaching your proper station of life under those conditions, and I believe that persons should reach their proper stations while they are still young. There are also certain pieces of art that must fall to your share. You are something of an art dealer and you may be able to make those choices by yourself.”

  “I will make the choices with the help of Letitia and Lily.”

  “Yes, of course,” August said. He was an extremely muscular man in the German style. Very neat, very imposing, very proper.

  “There is one other thing, Melchisedech,” August said. “Let us walk in the back street and talk about it. You are the only other man in the family so you must help me decide things.”

  They went out and walked in the back street, the poor street that Duffey's shop opened on. There was the smell of lilacs there. Many of the poor people along the street grew lilacs. These were dust-covered bushes, and often they were broken and bruised by people coming and going. But it is the bruised bushes that have the sweetest smell.

  “It's about Lily,” August Koch said. “Somewhere we will have to find a husband for her. I know that she wants to marry and is pained that she has not found a husband.”

  “But Lily can marry anyone she wants to. She has everything.”

  “Prospects for a husband she does not have. Oh, she has beauty and brains and charm and goodness and wealth. It would seem that these things would be enough. They aren't. I do not know why men will marry one sort of woman and not another. It really seems that none of the women whom men marry are really of top quality, excepting my wife, and yours, of course. What do you think it will take, Melchisedech, to get a husband for Lily?”

  “Only a little willingness on her part. I can think of a hundred good men who'd marry her if she'd have them.”

  “Think of a hundred and first man then, Melchisedech. I am sure that the one hundred are
somehow rejected, by whom I do not know. I will lay out a dowry of one million dollars for a good man who will marry her. If that sounds crass, then I am a crass man. But I love that daughter. Think of the man for her, Melchisedech.”

  “A million dollars wouldn't matter to the one I think of, Sebastian Hilton.”

  “They were engaged once, in a sort of way, I believe. Possibly they still are. But they will not marry. It's the fashion of young people of their circle to believe that Sebastian will die young. But I am assured by his father and uncles that he is in near-perfect health.”

  “Maybe he will die in near-perfect health then,” Melchisedech said, “but I'm one of those who believe that he will die young. I get things out of his future, up to a point, and then I do not get any more of them. That cut-off point isn't very far in the future.”

  “Be careful of the mentalist bit, Melchisedech. You won't know your own future, and you won't know any other future effectively either. I get things out of your future. Many things that you have always depended on will collapse. There's a bridge nearby that's an allegory of you. The props will be and are being knocked out from under that bridge one by one. And the props will be knocked out from under you at the same time. You and Letitia also get your pick of the townhouses, you know.”

  “We'll make our selection of that soon, but we won't live in it for the first few decades.”

  “And think about a husband for Lily, Melchisedech. As the only other man in the family, you must counsel me on these things. Oh yes, and I've brought you a Christ.”

  August and Melchisedech went and got it. They put it with seven other Christs in Duffey's Priceless Item Room.

  “Etenim Pascha nostrum immolatus est Christus!” Duffey said in sudden amazement is he saw it there with the others, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.”

  “Yes it is powerful and it is sacrificial,” August Koch said, “but you will still ask, as Kipling's devil asked ‘Is it art?’ Were the other seven from the first?”