Hans and Marie, Henri Salvatore, Dotty and Mary Virginia, they were overwhelming. Even Absalom Stein was overwhelming tonight.
Just when had Absalom Stein outgrown his grubby pupa form as Hugo Stone? Or hadn't he been one of the many mouthy little Stone brothers and cousins anyhow? Yeah, Absalom was Hugo. But what, by all the compounded mysteries, was this Stein doing with the others of them in St. Louis. How did he even happen to be acquainted with the other talismanic children? There was a wealthy and lurid Jewishness to him such as has not been so powerfully expressed since the times of the Elizabethans, and then only on-stage. In life, there had never been such a type before. Absalom gave the impression that he was wearing a quantity of splendid jewelry, and he wasn't wearing a single bauble.
The lavish talk that these people poured out! If only it could be recovered it could be bottled and sold. If it could be created again after it was gone, then you would have something. But even the creator Duffey could not create it again. As with all demiurges, angelics, cavern spirits, pure intellects, monsters, the extraordinary conversations of these splendid animations could never be recalled later.
Hans Schultz was a thunder-head out of mythology, a holy ox in the manner of Aquinas himself. But he was such a clash of bulky colors and bulky speed and bulky fellowship! He was too loud.
There was bad and overdone art in every one of them except Mary Virginia. They weren't such things as Melchisedech would put on the market with his reputation for taste behind them. They were such things as he would keep for his own gusty enjoyment and cry out “Gad, what genius I had when I did them!”
Henri Salvatore, the Fat Frenchman from the Swamps, was the center of gravity of any room or building he was in. He was this by sheer weight. Henri was a whopper in color and texture and movement and sound. But balanced proportion was not in him at all.
And Absalom! “Absalom, take off that purple cape with the scarlet lining! It's just too much!” Oh, but he wasn't wearing a purple cape with a scarlet lining at all. He was wearing a simple unfigured sports shirt. It was just something extravagant about him that gave Duffey the impression that he was wearing the outlandish get-up.
The twelve talismanic creations of Melchisedech Duffey were these:
Finnegan, who was the salt of their lives, who was properly named John Solli, who was (hold onto yourself) the son of Monster Giulio. He'll be here tomorrow.
John Schultz who was Hans.
Henri Salvatore, who was going to give Duffey the scenario for the rest of his life.
Vincent Stranahan, the son of Patrick Stranahan and Monica Murray Stranahan, who was going to get married Saturday.
Casey Szymansky, now seen for the thousand-and-first time, and seen with new eyes.
Dotty Yekouris.
Mary Monaghan Schultz.
Mary Virginia Schaeffer.
Teresa (Showboat) Piccone.
(Give those girls more space than that and they'll run away with it.)
Absalom Stein.
Mr. X.
Twelve of them. There was a puzzle how Duffey could have been spiritual and magic father to Mr. X who claimed to be a bit older than Duffey. The answer was that Mr. X was an unrepentant liar who was actually slightly younger than Duffey. There had been the case of Duffey, when he was very young, giving a talisman to an Italian man who was selling some kind of confection out of a hokey-pokey push-cart. But X must be reserved for later.
2
The Animated Marvels left, suddenly, a with a great flourish. And people smiled their ‘ain't-they-something’ smiles.
Then another of them came in with a group.
Charley Murray came into the Rounders' Club with his sister Monica Murray Stranahan and her husband Patrick Stranahan. And with them was Papa Piccone of the old Star and Garter Theatre. And another person, quite special.
Charley Murray had given orders for a supper to be served in a thrice-special room upstairs. Charley was the acting manager of Rounders'. Duffey was only the King of the place, and the founder, and the half-owner.
The other person with Charley's party was a talisman-child, and her coming set Duffey to quaking in a pleasant terror. This was the daughter of Papa Piccone, the incipient daughter-in-law of Monica and Patrick Stranahan, She was the god-daughter of Beth Keegan, Duffey's old girl. She was Teresa (Showboat) Piccone. She was as much a central creation of the Duffey Corpus as was Finnegan. Duffey's creations had these two foci.
Aw c'mon, no one can describe her more than to say that — well, she was sun-burned quicksilver. She was fire and ice and holy wine. She has been described as ‘dark and lithe and probably little.’ Well, in her own setting of the dazzling and larger-than-life people, she might have been called little. But in the world itself she might not be. She was of fair size and greatly compromised beauty. The compromising was done by her grimaces and pleasantly ugly facial contortions. But if one could ever get her face to stand still, then she had a thunderous beauty. And in no setting could she ever be called quiet. She was —
No, no, not now, maybe not ever, not in detail! It's dangerous.
“If her specifications were known, then some Magus other than Duffey might make another one of her, and one was enough,” said Patrick Stranahan. “Oh my God, how one of her was enough!” Patrick loved his future daughter-in-law. So did Duffey love Teresa. She was a blue-moon person, not to be encountered more than once in a lifetime. Look at the others instead. It is dangerous to look too long at Teresa. You'll get welders' eye-burns. There are infra-red rays and other things coming out of that blue-light phenomenon. Look at the others. Teresa was talking constantly. Duffey did not hear her words. He heard only the cadence of her voice.
Duffey knew Patrick Stranahan well. Patrick used to come into the Rounders' Club while he was still quite a young man, even before Duffey had sold a piece of the club to Charley Murray. And Duffey had known Monica Stranahan, the wife of Patrick, the sister of Charley, for a very long time. He used to love to kiss her for the serenity she gave. She still gave it.
And Duffey had known Papa Piccone (he already had the name ‘Papa Piccone’ when he was twenty-two years old: he seemed older) in the old, old days. He was and is and would forever be till its destruction the proprietor of the Star and Garter where everyone went for the shows when they were young. Beth Erlenbaum, the ivory statuette, had used to work at the Star and Garter, and she was kindred of the Piccone family. But Duffey had never seen this Teresa Piccone before. And then she was gone suddenly, and he wasn't sure that he had seen her at all.
“Oh, I hardly ever get a good look at her myself,” said Piccone her father.
The men were talking. This might have been the same night, upstairs after supper, when they had withdrawn to the trophy room for cigars and brandy and Irish whisky. Or it might have been another night in the big club room at Stranahan's house. It may even have been at Charley Murray's place.
Likely it was several of the nights of that week run together, and the men were talking about weighty subjects. Duffey and Bagby and Murray and Stranahan were there, along with Piccone and Father McGuigan. Stein was there part of the time, or one of the nights. And Finnegan may have been there part of the time.
“We come to the crux, to the crossroads,” Patrick Stranahan said. “But the crossroad sign, and the various arms of it, point: ‘To nowhere’, ‘To easy house’, ‘To crossbar hotel’, ‘To the charnel house’. There is blood running down the gaunt tree-piece of the crossroads sign. Some of it is fresh blood, some of it is old and slow-flowing, some of it is placental blood. We had supposed that we had come to the end, for a while, of the rivers of blood. The crossroads sign-post indicates otherwise.”
This Patrick Stranahan, a lawyer man who was just rich enough to come hardly into the Kingdom of Heaven, was a very large man, bigger than any of his four sons. He has been described in another place as “a big, hairy man. He rumbled when he talked. He even rumbled when he didn't talk. He had a large and busy stomach and
there was always something going on in there.
“As to the blood on the sign-post,” Duffey proposed, “Henri Salvatore says that the Devil is being released from his thousand-year durance very soon, possibly this week.”
“Henry guesses at the dates,” Patrick continued, “and likely at the year, though in all probability it was this year. Just a hundred years ago there was a rumor that the Devil had been released. Maybe that was some other devil, though the events in the past hundred years (1846-1946) indicate that flagrant evil was released into the world at that time. And now the noise is even more ominous. We have heard the big iron bolts sliding back for some time now, but there are a lot of bolts to slide and a lot of locks to unlock before the stout door swings open. That gaudy Stein also has some authentic private information, I believe, but he exaggerates. It doesn't really matter whether the Devil is released last year or this year or next year. The release is imminent, as we all know, and it was a condition that none of us will be able to live with. Some of us will be exalted and awakened by the assault of it, and some of us will be destroyed by it. But none of us will be able to live with it. We don't know just how much difference it will make. The Devil has carried on very effective warfare all during his imprisonment. But now it will be worse, and of a more immediate treachery.”
“The Monster Giulio told me recently that a rigged council of Teras-folks had drawn up a petition for the release of the Devil,” Bagby said, “so it wasn't just the humans of the narrow definition who have been bespoken by false leaders to petition. Groups of half a dozen other sorts of creatures also have joined in the foulness. Giulio was in St. Louis recently.”
“Giulio? He's been dead for ten years at least,” Duffey said.
“I didn't say that the creature wasn't dead. I said that he had been in St. Louis recently and had given me these reports,” Bagby growled. Bagby had never liked to have his accounts questioned. “My brother, I have my own communications and meetings, and you have yours. Giulio told me something else. He says that at the councils of the Teras, they have both the living and the dead in attendance, and he believes this gives better balance. I believe that the U.S. Congress should adopt a similar practice.”
“You know that Finnegan was the son of the Monster Giulio, don't you?” Duffey asked.
“No, of course I don't know it,” Bagby said. “The Finnegan who got into town today? He was here, and he left just before you got here, Duffey. Have you ever even met him?”
“No.”
“And yet you say that he was the son of Giulio the Monster who was a Teras. You have so much, you know so much, one-aspect-brother-of-mine, for one who knows so little.”
“I suspect that this Finnegan is another of your talisman-children, Duffey,” Patrick Finnegan said. “I myself have met this Finnegan long ago, when he shipped on the river, long before my son Vincent, who was his best friend, knew him. And as to Duffey's having created a brood of beautiful and bumptious people, I don't find this unlikely at all. I myself made a few people by the modified talismanic method before I made my sons and daughters from my loins. The latter thing precludes and shuts off the former, forever, always. Let us consider just what these creative conditions are.
“A non-creative human soul would not be possible. We all share in each others creations. We are even partly created by persons who may not be born for another thousand years yet. There is One who creates. And yet, on level 1-B, creation was a group effort and some are better at it than others. Some souls have more creativity than others. Not all souls are as resoundingly creative as others. Not all souls are as resoundingly creative as is Duffey. As to Duffey though: his creations are like a multitude of old, (no no, no old, of new and brightly painted) milk cans clattering down stone steps. They do make a noise!
“The mathematics of the talismanic-creation complex are fantastic. We are dealing with multi-dimensional equations with as many as thirty billion unknown and highly mysterious integers, in which equations every integer is a variable function of all the others. Yes, I believe that Duffey has conspicuously created my own son Vincent, and Piccone's daughter Teresa, and Finnegan, the son of the Monster Giulio (I also knew this Monster, and I once represented him against a motion to have him locked up), and big-brained Hans, and Casey, and many of those beautiful young girls also. But it all works both ways, or it works thirty billion ways. For I myself consciously created this Melchisedech Duffey, even though he was already fifteen or sixteen years old when I first met him. There's a lot more to him than there would have been if I hadn't muddied my creative hands with him. These additional powers that he got from myself and several others at that time aren't seen too clearly in him even yet, but they will be absolutely required in his future trials.”
Duffey remembered that he had picked up a little suavity from Patrick Stranahan, and perhaps other pleasant things.
“You are speaking in false context about any person ever creating anything,” said Father McGuigan. “You are indulging in unlawful metaphor.”
“Nah, man, nah,” Duffey said. “He was only putting into metaphor what was literal fact: that was Patrick's only offense in the present discussion. There was nothing metaphorical about my creations or about my kingship. I am a Magus, I am a sorcerer. I am a child of gold and minister of bread and wine. I am the Boy King, and I am the King of Salem. I command giants. I move with high royalty, and the trumpets know me by name. I have sat in Kings' conclaves with Solomon and Saul, and with Ptolemy and Chandragupta and Nebuchadnezzar, with Hsien and with Barbarossa, all the way down to — ”
“Were you drinking before you joined us tonight, Duffey?” Charley Murray asked him.
“Oh, I've been making a day of it, Charley. There was once a proposed — but never used — Anheuser-Busch ad which read: ‘After all, what else was there to do in St. Louis?’ I've been to all the places and enjoyed all the drinks. — Um — down to King Stephen of Hungary and Conrad the Second of the Germanies. I believe that they were the newest ones who came to the Kings' Conclaves while I still attended. What, Charley, are you implying that my powers had revived a bit today, and you think that it was only my drinking? But I can still work my golden magic. I can rub my hands together and then pour out anything you wish me to on this library table here. See, I rub my hands together! What do you want me to pour out here?”
“Coined gold,” Patrick Stranahan said. “Dated coined gold.”
“Any particular date, Patrick?”
“No. I'll not limit you there, Duffey. I know that magic is easily wilted by excess details.”
“You will notice that my hands are empty and my sleeves are rolled up,” Duffey said.
“Get with it, Duff, get with it,” Papa Piccone said. “I have a new magician every week at the S & G. You'll do nothing I haven't seen before.”
Duffey rubbed his hands together some more. Then he poured seven gold pieces out on the table. And Patrick Stranahan and the others examined them.
“These are all United States Five Dollar Gold Pieces,” Patrick said, “and all of them were minted about ten years ago. You could easily have had them on you, God knows why. And I recall that you used to do magic tricks.”
“No, no, it was Charley Murray here who used to do magic tricks,” Duffey said. “I used to do magic. I could have poured anything you asked me out of my hands, a baby dinosaur, for instance. I'd have done that if you'd asked me to. Now I won't.”
“I made a man once,” Papa Piccone said suddenly. Papa was named Gaetano, but nobody ever called him anything except Papa. “I don't believe that it was a metaphorical man. Right at the end of it, at least, before he broke up, he was real. So I know that the thing can be done. I create a lot of characters at my theatre the Star and Garter, at least one new one a week for more than thirty years now. Some of these are classics and they will live forever. Some of them are numb-bums and they do not have any validity at all. Even a burlesque character must burlesque something that was valid, s
omething that was possible, something that was within the human spectrum. It is only human things that can be burlesqued. Inanimate things can't be burlesqued, and animals can't be. Some of them, such as camels, are natural burlesques, but they cannot be burlesqued further.
“One of my worst failures was Oliver Oscar Omygosh. He was bad. He stuttered ‘O — O — O — ’. He had a big nose and a big rump, but neither of them was the right shape to be funny. He had fiery red eyes. He wore size fifteen shoes, and he was continually falling on his face. I was going to drop Oliver Oscar as no good after the third day and night of him, but I got a phone call after the late night performance. ‘This was O-O-O-Oscar O-O-O-Oliver O-O-Omygosh,’ some clown on the phone said. ‘You hold me up to o-o-o-opprobrium when you make fun of me on your stage. You make me an o-o-object of ridicule. I'm o-overly sensitive and this is a t-t-terrifying experience. I beg you to stop it.’ ‘Who is this?’ I demanded of the telephone. ‘Which clown is this? Jerry? Sam? Orlando? Pietro? Caspar?’ ‘This is O-Oscar O-O-Oliver O-O-Omygosh,” the telephone said.
“The next night (I had kept the character on) he came to see me back stage. None of the jokers I knew would have done a character that badly, even for a joke. Oh, his rump was big enough, but it just didn't have burlesque shape or style. I kicked him on it. It wasn't padding. It was him. His eyes were fire-red, but they weren't the gaudy orange-red of the make-up crayon. They were swollen red as if he had been crying. He had. His nose was big enough for the role, but it looked like cheap and wrong-colored Pleistocene such as kids use, not professional quality make-up putty. ‘Aw, get that silly thing off your face,’ I said. ‘I do hate slovenly workmanship.’ I swung at him flat-handed to slap that hopeless nose off. I brought blood from it, but I didn't slap it off. It was real, and he was real. He was exactly as I had envisioned him and made him, a hopeless botch, the worst character I ever made.
More Than Melchisedech Page 20
