“I remember, I remember,” Hans said dreamily, and he slid off Mary Catherine's shoulders.
“Oh Hans, I promise to be totally surprised when you do it again,” she said. “And I promise to fill your sails with wind again. And I will find a way to unbruise your ego. I promise. I believe that all of us Duffeys will now be totally in love with each other. It has to be.”
“Yes, totally in love with each other,” Hans said. He kissed her tenderly and left.
Melchisedech Duffey himself came into the Rounders' Club then. And all of the people were so amused and bemused by the Duffeys that nobody noticed him immediately.
Three of the wonderful lady Duffeys especially were there. They had met and recognized each other only that evening and now they were the closest of friends for ever and a day. Since there was nothing at all prosaic about any of the three, they must be presented in poetry. They were: Dotty Yekouris of New Orleans.
Oh Dotty Y is droll and wry.
She walks with swing and trist.
She grins a lot, she turns you hot.
Her eyes are amethyst.
And Marie Monahan Schultz of St. Louis.
Marie instead has hair of red.
She's something of a stunt.
Oh how she'll stand you on your head!
She knows things that you dunt.
And Mary Virginia Schaeffer of Galveston.
Oh Mary V is quite serene.
She's happy and she's handy.
She's half as sweet as saccharine,
And twice as sweet as candy.
The originals of all these verses exist in old Chaldee which has a more intricate rime scheme, but we lack the scholarship to transliterate them. But it happened that it was this Mary Virginia who sensed the presence of Duffey in Rounders' and announced it with happy words.
“Oh, you come to us like a ghost and we hardly knew you,” this gentle lady said, but the chandeliers quivered from the sound of her gentle voice. “Oh, bring bread and wine, people, this is the Duffey himself, the Melchisedech!”
Time stood still then as the overly colorful and fun-loving Duffeys gathered around Melchisedech the high Magus who, they were all convinced, had at least a left hand in their own making. It was like lightning dancing between Duffey and the Duffeys. Outside of time there is no duration, 'tis said; no duration, but only a moment. But what a wonderful moment it was! Melchisedech knew all of them, and they all knew him with a knowledge from ancient days.
Then time began again in Rounders' Club. The band played ‘The King Shall Ride’, and an ample smiling lady came and swung Melchisedech Duffey up onto her shoulders and carried him through all the rooms of Rounders' and back again. The Duffeys gathered around her after Duffey was on his own feet on the floor again.
“Who are you, who are you?” they demanded. “How could you do that and we not know who you are?”
“I am a St. Louis lady and my name is Lucille Sisler,” she said. “And I came to work at the Rounders' Club when the club itself was only eleven days old. And I've worked in this pleasant place ever since.”
“But who are you really?” Mary Virginia asked. “Who are you in legend? Who are you in myth?”
“So far as I know I have never been in either of those things, pretty Mary Virginia,” she said. “Should I have been?”
“Of course you should have been,” Hans Schultz explained to her. “Nobody can be in life who has not been in legend and myth first. That is a requirement of being born.”
“I will have to plead innocence then,” Lucille said. “I didn't mean to take any shortcuts to being born. How will I find out what my name was in legend or myth?”
“Oh, we'll find it out for you, Lucille,” Absalom Stein told her. “Your true name is buried in your unconscious and in your dream life. How is your dream life?”
“It's bountiful to the point of overflowing. It's powerful, and it's mostly pleasant. My days are mostly devoted to delightful retrospect of my dreams of the night before. When I work in this pleasant club more than half of my brain is enraptured by my dreams.”
“This will be easier than I thought,” Absalom told her. “I'll meet you in one of your dreams just about an hour before dawn in the morning. That's when I dream most rampantly.”
“So do I. I'll meet you in one of my dreams then, if you wish. But how will that give me my ‘true’ name?”
“Oh, I'll ask you what it is. And you'll tell me. All inhibitions will be down then. You'll remember your real name and you'll tell me.”
“Thank you, Mr. Stein.”
After a bit all of the Duffeys drifted out. There were other clubs to conquer in St. Louis and other people to meet. Duffey drifted out with one faction of the Duffeys. And he returned about midnight with another group of people. These were Charley Murray who was co-owner with Duffey of the wonderful Rounders' Club, and his sister Monica Murray Stranahan and her husband Patrick Stranahan. Patrick and Monica were the parents of Vincent Stranahan who in just four more days (in just three more days if midnight had already struck) would marry Teresa ‘Show Boat’ Piccone.
“Is our son Vincent on the premises?” Patrick asked one of the old faithful retainers of whom Rounders' was always full.
“No, I'm sure he's not,” the old faithful retainer said. “He's out on the town with some of those Duffeys of whom the city is full.”
“It's his bachelor week. I don't know where that custom ever originated. The groom isn't supposed to see the bride-to-be for these several days before the wedding.”
“Oh, they keep to it pretty well,” the old retainer said. “In the day that is ending, the two of them have had only three dates here. They have a rather secluded alcove where they meet. Nobody except everybody knows when they are here together. The barely audible enchanting giggling of Show Boat is what gives them away. I'm told by one who travels a lot that it retains its barely audible quality all the way to Heaven. I hear the faintness of it right now, and I guess that she is still several blocks away.”
“Yes, she's on her way here with her father. Send them up to the thrice-special upstairs dining room when they come.”
Duffey and Charley and Monica and Patrick went up to the thrice-special room which was triply luxurious even by Rounders' Club standards.
“Why yes, I can hear her giggling now. She's only two blocks away,” Monica said. “Brace yourself, Duffey. She is the most wonderful of all your creations and you have never seen her. I first saw the gamin when she was ten years old, and I haven't stopped shaking yet, shaking with delight and awe mixed in equal quantities.”
“It's like an earthquake, quite low on the scale but determined to shake things up a little bit,” Duffey spoke, and his own face showed delight and awe in equal quantities. Then, all the doors and windows being closed as it says in scripture, the earthquake named Teresa and her father Papa Piccone stood in the midst of them. Or so it seemed; but in reality both doors to the thrice-special room now stood open (could Teresa and her father have come through both of them?) and the five windows on the east side of the room, those that now looked out on night-time St. Louis, had their shutters thrown open and banging in the wind. “But there isn't any wind tonight,” Duffey said.
“I am the wind,” Teresa said. “I am your number one fan, Duffey, so I claim proprietorship of a sort. We Duffeys have a saying that God made Melchisedech Duffey and Duffey made the Duffeys. And you made us well, Duffey, though people say that we're overdone, and I most of all. But we're supposed to be overdone. I can't fault your handiwork at all. But God's handiwork in you sure falls short. Come over here and sit in this chair and I'll see what I can do to fix things.
“God, God, listen to me. You've done a terrible job on Melchisedech Duffey. God, God, tell those people to come back tomorrow. This is more important. Look at how you've botched this good man. I've seen worn-out shoes that looked better than him.”
“God hears her, Duffey,” Monica Stranahan said. “Why, you're quite a bit bet
ter looking already.”
“Somebody bring me a looking glass,” Duffey said. “I want to watch God's work in action.”
Papa Piccone pulled a mirror out of his pocket. That old showman could pull almost anything out of one of his pockets. He brought the mirror to Duffey. Duffey looked into it and it shattered into a thousand pieces. (That part is true. Everybody saw it.)
(That part is not quite true. People didn't exactly see it shatter into a thousand pieces. It shattered into only thirteen pieces. It was a trick mirror that old showman Piccone had and it shattered into only thirteen pieces. And these thirteen pieces fit together again easily.)
Nevertheless, Duffey was getting better-looking by the moment. Everybody could see that. “That's wonderful, God,” Teresa chortled. “Did anybody ever tell you how wonderful you really are? Don't overdo it though. He's conceited enough as it is. Can you back it up just a little bit? Oh, that's perfect. Cut it off right there. Thank you.”
Why yes, Duffey was quite a bit better looking than he had been. He still looked like a worn-out shoe, it's true, but it must have been an incomparably better shoe that was now somewhat worn and scuffed. And it wasn't worn clear out. And Teresa was a genuine saint (lots of people had guessed this of her) and she had always been on quite familiar terms with God.
Nobody could adequately describe Teresa. She was sunburned quicksilver. She was fire and ice and holy wine. One description says that she was ‘dark and lithe and probably little’. So she may have been once, for about three seconds. When she had acts at her father's old STAR AND GARTER Vaudeville Theatre she had an act where she could go behind a screen and change clothes and appearance and size and voice and everything else in three seconds, and do it again and again.
But she was a Blue Moon person, a One in a Million Person. She was Duffey's Masterpiece. She was also one of God's Masterpieces. At the fabulous midnight supper there, Duffey had eyes only for Teresa, although he talked wittily with other persons at the supper without noticing that he did. Other voices, strange and mysterious, were adding interest to the conversations, but remember that both Teresa and her father were ventriloquists.
Then Teresa took Duffey into a little room off that thrice-special upstairs dining room. There she hypnotized, or otherwise occultly influenced Duffey, to sit on her lap, and she fondled him and kissed him.
“Wait, wait!” he cried out after a long while. “I shouldn't be doing this. You're a saint.”
“Of course I am,” she laughed. “Guys who never sat on a girl-saint's lap don't know what a really good lap is. Did you ever sit on a lady-saint's lap or have a lady-saint give you a piggy-back ride?”
“Yes to both questions,” Duffey said. “My wife in both cases. I'm as sure that she's a saint as I'm sure that you are.”
“That's wonderful. I'll meet her someday. Get on my back now.”
Teresa gave Duffey a piggy-back ride, and she carried him all around the little room and into the big thrice-special dining room.
“Oh, Teresa, I see that you and Mr. Duffey have become good friends,” her father said with pleasure.
“Isn't she wonderful, Duffey!” Monica Murray Stranahan spoke happily. “I was afraid that you two most extraordinary persons I have ever known might not adjust right away, but you mesh perfectly.”
And yet this girl Teresa had wonderful things in her that are deeper than the ocean and higher than the sky.
Melchisedech Duffey was up quite early the next morning, and he entered the Broadway Oyster House where there was said to be something going on at all hours. A big-nosed kid was sitting at a big table by himself, and at that moment he called out in a damnable accent and a loud voice “One hundred oysters please.” Such an order would have raised eyebrows in many eating places but not in the Broadway Oyster House. “How do you want them cooked?” a waitress asked him.
“What, what, is there more than one way to cook an oyster?” the big-nosed kid asked with a touch of alarm. “I've worked in a dozen oyster bars and I never knew there was more than one way.”
“Where are you from, lad?” called a big man who was probably the proprietor.
“From New Orleans.”
“Give him a hundred New Orleans style oysters,” the man ordered.
“Now wasn't that simple,” Duffey laughed as he sat down at the big table across from the big-nosed kid.
“Oh, I hardly knew you,” the kid said. “Did you suddenly get better-looking in the middle of the night last night?”
“Yes I did, through a certain saintly intercession that I don't completely understand. What Irish hero was it who ate one hundred oysters each of them bigger than a wagon wheel? It was one of the heroic labors he had to perform. Was it Finn McCool? Are you Finn McCool incognito?”
“No, I'm Finn McCool openly. But that was long ago.”
“Who else are you, Finn, and what are all the things in your pockets?”
“I'll show you,” the kid said, “though I don't understand your getting so much better-looking in the middle of the night. It isn't a case of overweening vanity you've suddenly developed, is it? You are an art dealer among other things. What do you think of this?”
“Mm mm, I don't think. I know. It's an original Van Ghi. Where did you get it?”
“I painted it, of course. I'm Van Ghi.”
“No, you're not. You're Finnegan. I don't see how you can stretch far enough to be Van Ghi, the least known painter of the best known pictures currently appearing in the country. Who else are you, Finn?”
Finnegan took big bundle after big bundle out of his pockets and they were all magic bundles, absolutely magic. The one hundred oysters began to arrive then. The eating of them was one of the heroic labors assigned to Finnegan as Irish hero, yes. But before Finnegan had been an Irish hero, several thousand years before, Finnegan had been Iason and Odysseus and others.
“This one here, Finnegan, has to be out of the future,” Duffey commented as he held another very large painting. “I am familiar with the style of Van Ghi, of yourself. He, you, haven't come nearly this far yet. It's something you might be able to do ten years from now. When did you paint it, or when will you paint it?”
“Oh, I don't know. It's a bothersome mystery to me. But keep it for me. I believe it will acquire meaning as the years go by.”
“My universe is about complete again, Finnegan. The circle is nearly full. The two foci are almost in place. You are one of them.”
“A universe with only two foci is like a stool with only two legs. It can't stand by itself.”
“But a metaphor with only two foci can stand by itself, and a universe has to be a metaphor before it is a reality.”
“All right. I'm one foci. Who's the other?”
“Teresa Piccone, soon to be Teresa Stranahan.”
“No, no, no, impossible. You don't understand your own jumble, Duffey, because the affair of myself and Teresa isn't any part of your jumble. Our interval is completely outside of time. It's an isolated happening. It was an alternate that was not used, a discard, a wonderful discard.”
“Possibly, Finnegan, since I don't know at all what you're talking about. Nevertheless, you two are the two foci of the coming reanimation of my universe. We will see.”
“I bet we won't.”
“Finnegan, my universe will soon be complete again. And, by a paradox which I don't quite understand, it has always been complete.”
The hundred oysters were all gone. With the help of a few new and kind friends, they had all been eaten. Finnegan left Duffey for a while then. And Duffey recalled what somebody (probably Stein) had said of Finnegan once:
“You could skin Finnegan and throw his pelt into the corner, and it would still crackle with aura and smoke with essence. But you couldn't find all his essence bottled in one place.”
It was likely on the day following hundred-oyster-day that Finnegan and Teresa finally met in the flesh. This was insisted upon and arranged by Monica Stranahan. Again, as when Duffey met
Teresa for the first time, there seemed to be small earthquakes. Finnegan and Teresa both knew that these were time-quakes however. The past and present and future times were all mixed up ridiculously. Again they both came to the meeting with trepidation that was made up of equal parts of awe and delight. But the difficulty was more serious than in the case of Duffey and Teresa. Between Teresa and Finnegan there was a wrenching enormity. Finnegan had tried to explain this to Duffey on oyster morning, that it was an alternate happening, a happening clear outside of normal time, possibly a rejected happening that had been left on the cutting-room floor and could not appear in the final version of the world scenario. But Finnegan could not find any way to tell this to the comparatively innocent ears of Melchisedech Duffey.
Well, in what was possibly an alternate and unaccepted version of things, Finnegan and Teresa had been acquainted. In fact they had been married for twelve years. They had an intense and mostly happy life in those twelve years. They'd had wonderful children. They had lived in grace and joy. They compared their memories of those twelve years now, and their memories agreed all the way to the oil-cloth on that little kitchen table to the broken back step off the back porch of the house.
But there was no room for those twelve years in any chronology. Teresa was just twenty-two and a half years old now. She remembered clearly at least every day of the last twenty years of that time. And there were countless people who remembered the lively Teresa, the daughter of the Show-man who ran the Star and Garter Burlesque Theatre. Teresa was everywhere, she knew everybody, she was known. There was no room in her life for those twelve years with Finnegan.
Finnegan was somewhat older and much more of a wanderer, but he had a good memory of all his years and adventures.
There was no room for those twelve years, but neither of them wanted to give them up. Those years had been crammed with a love unlike any other love ever. Not to be equaled.
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 348
