Here was part of the canonical account of the affair: “Duffey rigged gas burners under it and filled it with water. He announced that he would keep the Big Pot boiling forever. He got a priest from St. Katherine's to bless it.” Such was the basis and founding of it. That had been the day before this. The idea was that people could put vegetables or meat or fish into the pot to boil, or that God would put these things into it secretly. And the resulting slumgullion in the pot would be available to poor people forever. But, in a full day, only six persons had taken rich soup out of the spigots of the pot, and all of these had been impelled by curiosity and not by poverty. None of them had been poor enough to be members of Holy Poverty. There had to be poor people somewhere in that city and that world. Where were they, where, where?
“There has got to be a turning point for the pot,” Duffey said. “Ah, that bird there in your painting, Finn, with what looks like a smaller bird in front of its mouth, is that — ?”
“What you take for a smaller bird is, of course, a bird-cry in its balloon,” Finnegan said. “It's a specialized bird, so it's saying a specialized message.”
“All right, what is it saying, Finn?”
“It is saying, ‘When the horse gets here, we will eat. And when the man gets here, then we will really eat’. That's the kind of bird it is, you see.” This, like everything else that Finnegan ever said, was prophetic.
The Widow Waldo came by then.
“I saw your light on and came in,” she said. The Widow Waldo never slept. She looked constantly for persons to visit with. In the middle of the night it was always this, ‘I saw your light on and came in’. In the day time it was ‘Your curtains were up so I was pretty sure you were awake, so I came in.’ The Widow was a wonderful and fair person. She brought a little jar of a new kind of coffee and made coffee for them all in the percolator. She had little cakes for them, cakes that she had just made. She talked in cadenced sharing for a while. Then she put three pounds of good hamburger meat into the pot and left. The Widow Waldo was moderately rich.
But it was about a month after this until the Pot managed to give itself its peculiar character and signature and flavor that meant that it would be a going concern. The first large animal to go into the Pot had been a horse, an ancient buggy-pulling horse that had hauled people around the French Quarter. It had died, and its owner had given it to the Pot. He had also given its old straw hat with its two ear holes in it to go in the Pot. This old straw hat had not finished living its life yet. It floated on the slumgullion of the Pot for weeks and even months and gave a character to it. People liked to look in to see if it was still floating there. This was the beginning of character and signature and flavor, but it wasn't the outstanding thing yet.
The Pot weighed a thousand pounds empty and nine thousand pounds full. It was ordained that it would never be empty again, once water and slum were put into it. A hundred bushels of barley had been put into it very early, and that gave the slum long-lasting bulk and a pleasant flavor. Later, rice would be used more than barley. Salt and onions, rough fish, country herbs and weeds were added constantly. But slum doesn't become slumgullion until a ‘big meat’ goes into it, and the horse was the first of that. Then there was a cow or two. (The six persons a day had increased to about six hundred after the first week or so, and quite soon went to several thousand.) Alligators went into the Pot then, and the famous Alligator Tail Soup was served on the side for several days. Quite a few rabbits and birds went in, and sometimes a sheep or goat or cow. Potatoes and turnips went in, and whatever the green grocers had of wilted or spoiled remnant.
There were a few razzers and jazzers around who would make brash comments about the Big Pot. And the jazzers were the pivot of the turning point when it came. Several of the jazzers fished three large bones out of the pot one day, and one very large bone. They made a big noise about what they had fished out, and anyone who was familiar with humans could see that these were conspicuously human bones. What would this do to the fame of the Pot?
Things like that can go either way. They may be taken in good humor or in bad. But in this case, there was strong suspicion, and grounds for it had been seen, that those jazzers who had fished the bones out of the Pot were the same persons who had put them in. These persons, in fact, were three medical students. And when they struck next, with the garish sign painted on the Pot, and painted tightly so that it would remain bright almost forever, “Cannibal Duffey's Irish Restaurant” , it was taken in good humor by almost everybody.
And something did improve both the actual taste and the reputation of the stew right about then. It may have been the human parts in it; it may have been something else. The stew acquired character and individuality, and it would retain these things forever.
And, as Dotty Yekouris said, what if an unfortunate cadaver did (now and then) find its way into the Pot? You've got to expect things like that in a large city. Everybody contributes what he can to the general weal, but some persons can contribute only themselves.
Duffey and Finnegan and Zabotski didn't finish rebuilding the room that early morning. That project, like the larger project of which it was a part, would go on for decades at least. They all had their distractions, for one thing. Zabotski, for instance, was courting the Widow Waldo.
Henri Salvatore had entered a seminary to learn how to rebuild the world. But he had put other people at the task in the meanwhile. Duffey and Dotty Yekouris began to publish a little paper named The Bark (in the sense of a boat or a ship). The first organ to take notice of The Bark (except for a one-shot burlesque of it named The Bite, and that was done by Absalom Stein with vinegar and kindness) was Casey's The Crock in Chicago. These two journals joined battle over the issue of how the world should be rebuilt. Duffey went about the project in various ways, and he picked up some allies. Stein had come down to New Orleans just at launching time, and Finnegan flew the coop and left. The two events were related. Dotty Yekouris was desolate when Finnegan left. Well, he would be leaving a lot, and she had a lot of desolation in store for her.
Letitia Duffey had arrived with the cream of the Duffeys' worldly possessions and with enough cash to carry things on for a while.
Mary Virginia Schaeffer belonged to the Schaeffer family that owned the Red Dog Motor Freight which ran from Galveston and Houston to Morgan City and New Orleans. It also covered Baton Rouge and Shreveport and Port Arthur and Orange and Beaumont. Mary Virginia transferred herself to the New Orleans terminal and worked with Dotty on The Bark and on other things, as well as for the Red Dog Motor Freight.
Soon, Margaret Stone would come down from Chicago to set them on fire.
And, one of these months or years, Salvation Sally would come from Australia to aid in the Salvation. But rebuilding the world is a difficult task even for a crew that contains a Fat Frenchman and a Magician-Sorcerer-Magus, and a Dotty Yekouris, and sometimes a Finnegan.
Duffey also formed associations with other persons who were building or inventing worlds or moments or situations or scenes. There was Joe Smith the vagabond painter who had begun, in Galveston, the famous triptych of Dotty O'Toole that Finnegan would finally finish. Joe Smith did not ever finish anything, but he had a disturbing excellence to everything that he did, and it was a necessary condition that every piece he did should be incomplete. He had left more than a dozen unfinished masterpieces with art dealer Duffey.
There was Adam Scanlon of New York and Groben of Chicago. There were Rita Tinder, Gilbert Brisbane, Crystal O'Boyle (the untraditional glass goblet lady), Neil Holway, Dorcas Whiteduck, Wesley Neosha, Pedro San Carlo, Jessica Shrike (that princess of porcelain), Mary Ann Goldbrook, Hugh Thatcher (the Yellow Kid), Humphrey Speckle, Peggy Munster, Elroy Redheart (wrought-iron work was not dead but only sleeping, and Elroy was waking it up with his hammering on its white-hot iron), Timothy McMasters, Alvin Huckster, John Bently Oatmeal (the Renaissance of Pottery had begun with him), Kester Coogan. Oh, those are some of the artists of the neighborhood a
nd the world (regione et orbe) whose work Duffey had for sale very early, and whose creative ideas contributed mightily to the Rebuilding Thesis of Duffey and his company.
These were the most talented artists to be found. At least five of them were among the hundred greatest American artists, and two of them (Adam Scanlon and the fly-the-coop Finnegan) were among the two greatest.
Duffey knew from the first that his part in rebuilding the world would be carried out largely within his own vocation as Art Dealer, yes, and Pawn Broker. He could influence the world uncommonly from the first of these vantages. There are flaming moments and scenes in every job, and the world can turn either way at every flame-point. Duffey may have realized sooner than anyone, except the Adversary Himself, the rabid and overwhelming attack that would soon be launched against all the arts. His Walk-In Art Bijou would be a flexible fortress against all such assaults.
Duffey didn't acquire all these clients immediately, but he had them all quickly, and he added and added and added to his list: Heloise Tantrum a really good sculptor, John Claxton who painted on slabs of slate, people like that. It must be understood that, while other characters and groups were following out their lives in normal sequence of the years, Duffey was in a creative stasis that disregarded the years. So he moved back and forth through them henceforth.
Duffey was continually struck by the fact that there was so much good stuff in the world. On the surface, Duffey had seemed more of a pessimist than the young people he was associated with. But, in the creative interior of him, that wasn't so. In rebuilding the world there were plenty of good stones available for reuse. It might be necessary to make only token acquirements from quarries. Or there might be enough stone so that none at all need to be quarried.
3
Another ally or counter-ally who came to help them or to harm them (to affect them anyhow) was Mr. X, that running rumor of a man. We have now arrived at the time of his first coming to them in New Orleans. Bagby had written from St. Louis that X was coming. Letitia had asked several times when he would arrive. And Duffey had never heard of him. No, he hadn't heard of him, but he remembered something about a hokey-pokey, Italian, push-cart confection man from when Duffey was about three years old. The first of the talismans had been given out by Duffey then, but what had that earliest of the talismans fruited in? Duffey had been working late one night. Dotty had said ‘Put him on the sofa when he comes; everything else is full.’ ‘Put whom on the sofa, dear?’ Duff had asked. ‘You are the most exasperating man I ever knew,’ Dotty said, and she went off to bed. And half an hour later, the sleepy Letitia arose.
“Aren't you going to let him in?” she asked Duffey inconsequently.
“Let whom in, butterfly?” he asked her.
“The X quantity at the door.”
“Oh, I didn't hear anybody knock.”
“What? You really don't understand that he would be too shy to knock?”
Letitia threw the door open. She threw her arms wide in the famous Koch gesture, and they remained wide and empty. But they couldn't be allowed to remain so.
“Dammit, X, I'm one of you,” she cried. She reached out and captured and enfolded the little man and gave him the famous biggest kiss in town. Oh, but then he melted out of her arms like tacky vapor, and re-formed at a safer place with a table between him and the danger.
“Oh, X, X,” Letitia laughed. “I thought it was only your wife that you were so terrified of. Is it all women?”
“No, no, that was not terror, gracious lady,” X said. “That was something else.”
X was at the same time a happy-looking and a wistful-looking clown. He seemed to be about the age of Duffey, probably a couple of years younger than the century. He was a mid-nineteenth-century, north Italian type though, a small nobleman come onto small days, wrapped in tattered elegance, and full of secret information.
“I am X,” he said. “Need I say more? I know everyone. I saw your Finnegan (he was in Chicago then) and others there. I saw the Pope in Rome and he asked to be remembered to you. He worries about your soul, you having so many feet in so many different worlds. I saw Levi van Wei in Paris and he said that he could take a couple more Finnegan pieces. I saw your sister, gracious lady Letitia, and she said ‘Don't tell her anything; make her guess’. I could not get to see the president. I don't trust him anyhow; why should I? I saw Fat Henri. I saw Teresa when I was in St. Louis with Bagby. But, my time being so limited, I can see only the most important people. I saw Sebastian Hilton and the Countess in Carpathia. I hope they will be able to do something about the situation there. I do not want to travel under false colors. I name you the fine and important people whom we both know, but I do not state that any of them would recommend me for anything. Really, I don't know who would ever recommend me.”
“I would,” said Letitia.
“I would,” said Dotty Yekouris who could always wake from the deepest sleep on the arrival of any real personage. “You have come to the right place, X. For about four days, that is, you have come to the right place here. Have I missed anything important, little person?”
X talked for about four hours then. And he talked pretty steadily for the four days that he was with them that first time.
“Doofey, I have two things here of the most utter importance,” he said after a while. When he had first come in, he had put a black box on the table there. And he had also set a canister or urn beside the box. They looked like art objects carefully wrapped.
“Both of these contain some things that you have seen before, Doofey,” X said. “Both of them contain things that are part of you, both in your past and in your future.” In this black box there was a gray box, and in the gray box there was a brown box. And he removed the gray box from the black and the brown box from the gray.
“Now we're really getting somewhere,” said Letitia. “But I know that box.”
“Where's the red box?” Duffey asked.
“Oh, you mean as in the magic act,” X rose to the allusion. “Yes, the red box is the one that appears and disappears. You can put it in any of the larger boxes, and close and then open the cover again, and the red box will be gone. But then it will be in one of the other boxes when you open that. I hadn't seen or thought of the red box for years, but I believe I can still do the trick. The brown box was full of other things too important to play tricks with.”
“The brown box is quite red enough,” Letitia said.
“Doofey, was the red box in the black box or in the gray box?” X asked.
“In the black box,” said Duffey.
“No, you are wrong,” said X. “It is in the gray box.” And X opened both of them. But it was X who was wrong and Duffey had been right. The red box was in the black box.
“I was known as the Great X-Capo when I was in Vaudeville,” X said. “I did magic tricks as well as escapes, but what you did was not a trick.”
“No, it was real,” Duffey said with some pride in his powers.
“Doofey, you more than anyone in the world should know what is in the brown box,” X said. “I have brought it from Chicago to you. Oh!”
The red box was gone suddenly, but in its place there were three red roses. A flamboyant car drove up outside at the same moment.
“It does not matter,” X said. “The red box was an intrusion by you, Doofey. It has gone back to whence it came, to nowhere. But the roses are nice.”
X took the three red roses in his hands. He gave one of them to Letitia and one of them to Dotty Yekouris. The flamboyant man from the car came in, and X gave him the third red rose.
“You are Hugo Stone the infamous communist from Chicago,” X said.
“A Red Rose for the Red,” said Absalom Stein, for it was he. “Is there a card on me in the Brown Box that you bring to Duffey?”
“Certainly, certainly, you are well documented there in all detail.”
“What's the last entry on my card?” Stein asked.
“A question mark, put there by mys
elf,” X said. “For some reason, you haven't been acting like the infamous Communist lately.”
“Oh, Casey Szymansky and I have traded souls,” Stein said. “Sort of traded. Sort of souls. It's done more than you would imagine.”
“Then Casey is now the infamous Communist in Chicago?” X asked.
“Exactly. And I'm the good guy,” Absalom said.
“I thought that Casey had been building up a history of funniness lately,” X mused, “Oh well, that was easily explained. Now in this brown box — ”
“It doesn't belong to me, X,” Duffey said. “It belongs to The Crock, and The Crock belongs to Casey and his friends. Did you steal it?”
“Certainly I stole it. They were not properly using the information that is in it. As to the other item, it was a pottery cigar box or urn with ashes in it.”
“Ashes?”
“Utter ashes. They belong to you, Doofey. I said that they belonged to you. Do you know in what sense it was that they belong to you?”
“Oh, those ashes! Yes, I know in what sense they're mine. I don't take up much room when I'm cremated and canned, do I? Did you steal them too?”
“I took them furtively, but it was not really stealing, since they belong to you in every possible sense. I knew that I would someday become a buddy, even an agent of yours. And, as there are so few of us who travel from that country to this, I thought I'd better bring them to you. But it was tricky, I tell you, Doofey, bringing them out of there.”
“Is it too gauche for me to inquire how these could be your ashes, and you still alive and functional?” Dotty Yekouris asked.
“An anachronism, that's what it is,” Duffey said.
More Than Melchisedech Page 25
