Emperor of Gondwanaland

by Paul Di Filippo

Clifford and Muriel both rushed to contradict Frost’s self-abasing autobiography.

  Muriel said, “Robert Frost, you’re talking nonsense now. You’ve led a blameless life that hasn’t harmed anyone but yourself. You’re basically as healthy as a horse, despite your lack of sound nutrition and a little too much tippling. You’ve got ten, twenty, maybe thirty good years ahead of you, if you could only get out of your own way.”

  “Bob,” said Clifford, massaging the right side of his long jaw thoughtfully, “aren’t you forgetting one important item on the credit side of your ledger? You’ve got your current career to be proud of. As a writer of eldritch tales, you’re second to no one in this country. Haven’t Howard and I often said we’ve learned practically everything we know from you? Why, the complimentary letters that flooded into Weird Tales after the appearance of your short novel The Star-Splitter would have made any other writer’s head swell up the size of a first-prize pumpkin at the state fair! I know I’d kill for such a response to any of my stories.”

  Frost dismissed these encomiums with a disgusted wave of his hand. “Gothic tripe! Bogeyman stories for juvenile minds. What respect do such hackneyed supernatural exercises earn me from the world at large? I can’t interest any publisher in assembling my tales into book form. And even if I found a publisher, no reviewer or critic in his right mind would turn his attention to such a volume. How does such low regard consort with the stature a man my age should have attained? If my writing meant anything, surely I would have earned the world’s approbation by now. Perhaps I’d even be a teacher or lecturer, or hold some other respectable position.”

  Muriel registered her disdain for such high-flown fantasies with a demure snort. “What other honors would you have? Maybe to be the poet laureate of the nation, standing by the president’s side?”

  Clifford’s rough face expressed puzzlement. “Bob, what’s come over you? You always held your stories in higher regard than this. Haven’t they served you well on a personal level?”

  “Bah! They’ve been nothing more than momentary stays against confusion.”

  “But other people love them—”

  “Other people can go to hell! What have these readers ever done for me!”

  Now Muriel fixed Frost with such a stern look—so foreign to her jolly face—that even his self-indulgent, self-pitying fury had to wither and vanish. She withheld her words until she was certain Frost was listening closely.

  “Robert Frost, what you’re lacking is a human connection to ground you in this sad and wonderful mortal world. You’re always alone, even when you’re in company. Just you and that whirring intellect, exploring the chilly stratosphere. You don’t have anyone to nurture or take care of, someone who would do the same for you. I know you suffered a grievous loss when your wife and children perished. Lord knows if I’d hold up any better if I lost Clifford and the kids. But I do know this: there’s nothing wrong with you or your life that the love of a good woman wouldn’t cure.”

  Now Frost exhibited an air of bluff chagrin. “An old wreck like me go courting? Muriel, you must have been into the bathtub gin!”

  “Don’t accuse me of your own sins, Robert! I know what I’m talking about, and I know I’m right. That’s why I want you to come to a small party we’re giving tonight. Cliff was going to swing by after lunch and invite you if you hadn’t happened to show up on your own. There’ll be a woman there I want you to meet. Someone very sympathetic to your work. A lovely person, full of pep and common sense. But special in her own way, as well.”

  Frost could be seen debating the matter within himself. Clifford sought to sway him by adding, “Mure’ll be making her lard-crust apple pie, Bob …”

  Frost got decisively to his feet. “I’ve got to go now.”

  “But Bob, why—” Muriel began.

  Frost tried to appear stern, but a small yet real smile further wrinkled his seamed visage. “Hell, woman, all the hours twixt now and midnight wouldn’t suffice to make me look attractive to a member of the opposite sex. But at least I can toss on a clean shirt!”

  Wearing his only decent suit, a sturdy brown wool outfit, Frost returned at dusk to the Eddy household, the first of the guests to arrive. He had indeed freshened his appearance, even going so far as to get a professional haircut. The toilet-water utilized by the barber filled the Eddy’s parlor with a gingery scent.

  But Frost was not in a jovial mood. Clutched in his hand was a letter, the obvious source of his irritation.

  Thrusting the letter under Clifford’s nose, Frost said, “Read this! It was waiting for me at home like a water moccasin in the reeds. Damn the nerve of that young whelp!”

  Clifford took the letter and began to read aloud.

  ‘“Dear Bob, I’m sorry to say that ye olde editor Theobald was not as mightily impressed with your latest effort, “Moth Seen in Winter,” as he has been with the majority of your previous conceptions. The piece seems oversubtle and strained to me. True, the apparition of a living moth amidst a frigid clime is a potent portent of the uncanny. But the hero’s rather tedious musings—pardon my extreme candor—on the fate of the moth take up much too large a portion of the story, blunting the climactic revelations, which are numinous enough already.

  ‘Now, you know that I have always been an advocate of restraint when depicting the gruesome. Suggestions of the eldritch are often more effective than outright portrayals of ichor and fangs. But one is hard-pressed to say exactly what happens to your hapless indigent poet at the climactic moment. Does he “cross the gulf of well-nigh everything” into the world of perpetual summer whence came the moth? Or does he merely die of inanition in the snowbank? Weird Tales readers will not stand for such shilly-shallying, I fear.

  ‘Now, please, Grampa Jack, do not take my words as other than a constructive goad to produce the exquisitely chilling work of which I know you are capable. Fergit the poetry, bo’, and shovel on the supernatural!’”

  Clifford looked up from the letter. His face bore a mixture of empathy and amusement. “Hell, Bob, you’ve gotten worse rejections than this. We all have! It’s just part of the game. It was only natural that Howard would drift over to the enemy’s camp once he got his hands on the helm of a real magazine. Don’t sweat a single crummy rejection. Just turn that story right around. I bet you’ll sell it to a better-paying market next week! Why not try the Cosmopolitan or Harper’s for a change?”

  Frost snatched the letter from Clifford, crumpled it, and tossed it into the blazing fire on the hearth that warmed the room. But after this gesture of defiance, he deflated.

  “That damnable story’s already made the rounds of every possible market. I dug it out of the trunk once Lovecraft took over, since he was the only editor who had never seen it before. Cliff, I’m dry. Drained of ideas and ambitions. I’m washed up, and ready to chuck it all.”

  Clifford clapped his friend on the back. “Buck up, Bob! Every writer goes through rough patches. Soon you’ll be pumping out better stories than ever before. I’m sure of it! But tonight you’re not to worry about such things. Tonight you’re just going to enjoy yourself. Muriel! Bring Bob a birch beer, please!”

  Muriel emerged from the kitchen with a quart bottle of Fox-brand soda pop and a glass. Lifting the bale, she tipped back the rubber-ringed metal cap and poured Frost his drink.

  “Robert Frost, I don’t want to hear another word about the business of writing tonight. You can talk about literature if you must—most of our guests will hail from the amateur-press crowd, after all—but only as an appreciative reader. And when you are introduced to that special gal I mentioned, try to remember that women appreciate hearing about something other than lousy word rates and balky editors.”’

  Once again, Frost responded to Muriel’s motherly admonitions. “Very well, I’ll try. What’s this filly’s name, by the way?”

  “Hazel Heald. She’s a member of our writer’s club and she’s coming down all the way from Somerville, Massachusetts, for this get-t
ogether. So treat her to some of that sparkling Frost wit you dole out so sparingly.”

  Frost was about to plead that his wits were all dull as horseshoes when a knock sounded at the front door. Clifford went to admit the second guest of the evening, who proved to be Ed Cole, from Boston, whose amateur journal, the Olympian, was a paragon of the amateur-press scene. Cole greeted Frost heartily and began to quiz him about the prospects of the Providence Gray Sox. Soon the two men were engaged in debating the relative merits of various ballplayers. As various other guests arrived, the small parlor became warm and noisy, and Frost appeared to be actually enjoying himself.

  By nine o’clock, Hazel Heald had not yet appeared, and Frost had in fact nearly forgotten the promise of her arrival. Then, in the midst of a game of laughter-provoking charades—Frost was one of the audience—someone tapped Frost on his shoulder. He turned.

  “Hello, Mr. Frost. I’m Hazel Heald.”

  The woman was not precisely plump, but was definitely well upholstered. Her short black hair formed a tight wavy cap on her head. In the face, she reminded Frost of no one so much as the female half of the cartoon urchins that advertised Campbell’s soup. Her round, cherubic, rosy features seemed more childlike than womanly. She wore a rather dowdy ensemble of dark-blue velvet jacket and skirt.

  Frost stepped backward out of the charades circle to respond to the introduction. Finding the Heald woman initially unattractive—Frost could not help contrasting Hazel’s florid looks with the delicate lines of his Elinor’s never-forgotten, classically beautiful face—the writer nonetheless summoned up all his good manners and responded graciously.

  “Delighted to meet you, Miss Heald. I understand you’ve been kind enough to express an interest in my foolish little stories.”

  “Please, call me Hazel. And I’ll call you Robert.”

  Frost was a tad put off by the woman’s presumption, but consented. “Very well, if you wish.”

  “That’s so nice. Indeed, I’ve enjoyed everything you’ve ever written, Robert. And I did not find your tales to be foolish at all. Quite the contrary. And I am no mere fan. Your work has conveyed a message to me. A message about all the pain you’ve endured, and how this pain has enabled you, however briefly, to pierce the curtain of reality and experience the cosmic foundations. In turn, I have brought an urgent message for you.”

  Having no idea what to make of this disconcertingly enigmatic talk, Frost attempted a flip attitude. “If you are going to present me with some sort of bill from a cosmic creditor, you’ll have to stand in line behind the mortal ones.”

  Hazel did not immediately respond. She merely gazed deeply into Frost’s gray-blue eyes. Her own eyes, Frost noted, were entirely gray, almost bestial or Pan-like. Gray of the moss of walls were they. Now, suddenly, they captured in miniature a flare from the fireplace, and for a moment Frost reeled as if drunk. When he recovered, Hazel had taken a step away, smiling tantalizingly.

  “We’ll speak more of this at the party’s end, Robert.”

  Frost returned to the gay crowd attempting to unriddle the mute actions of the charader. But he could no longer lose himself in the play. Whatever hypnotic trick that woman had played on him, the effects did not immediately evanesce.

  Around midnight, the party began to wind down. By ones and twos and threes, the guests took their hearty leave of the Eddys. As the mantel clock chimed one, a seated Frost looked up from melancholy contemplation of his own gnarled hands to discover that only the Eddys and Hazel remained in the room.

  Clifford approached Frost and said, “Bob, I have to confess that we’ve arranged this whole party just as a prelude to this moment. You see, our friend Hazel is a sensitive. She has certain talents, and she is here to put them at your disposal, for your salvation.”

  Frost climbed wearily to his feet. “Cliff, I have no idea what you’re driving at. But I don’t need any Aimee Semple McPherson preaching over me, trying to save my nonexistent immortal soul, if that’s your intention.”

  Muriel stepped in. “Hazel’s not a preacher, she’s a witch.”

  The simple unexpected word brought Frost up short, but he rebounded rather insolently. “A witch? Can you discern the contents of locked boxes then, or make common tables rear and kick like mules, like the trained performers of the Society for Psychical Research?”

  Hazel did not seem affronted by Frost’s disbelief. “No. But I can speak to the dead.”

  Frost collapsed nervelessly back into his chair. He gripped his hair with both hands and tugged harshly, as if to lift off the top of his head. “Now this has passed into sheer cruelty. You’re planting your boot in the face of a drowning man! Clifford, Muriel, you’re both false friends—”

  Muriel hastened to Frost’s side. “No, Bob, we’re not! We only have your best interests at heart. This is a chance you have to take, if you ever want to heal yourself. Let Hazel open up a conduit to the afterlife for you, and perhaps you’ll hear something that will help you. Please, Bob, try to approach this with the innocence of a child.”

  This last phrase triggered long-buried memories in Frost.

  He was seven years old when he experienced his first instance of clairvoyance. The actual object of his visionary glimpse was forgotten. But something brushed across his mind whose source he would never find. He easily recalled, however, how the incident upset him. He ran to the skirts of his beloved mother, Belle, and tearfully disclosed everything to her. Amazingly, she was not surprised. Belle was a Swedenborgian, a follower of a faith that easily accommodated such visions. She soothed her son, and actually made him relish the thought of such preternatural extensions of his senses. Thereafter, he welcomed any and all eruptions of the uncanny into his life. Indeed, many times while composing his poetry Frost felt himself to be taking dictation from some extramundane source.

  But of course all such numinous access had vanished twelve years ago, when the flaring, fleering demon had reared up at him from the pyre of his dreams. Composition of his paltry stories never involved any heavenly hand guiding his pen.

  Frost released his madman’s grip on his scalp and looked up at the three faces regarding him. The visages of the Eddys manifested only sincere concern, while Hazel radiated an assured and almost beatific good humor. Had Hazel urged him on then, Frost’s contrary nature would have made him refuse her help. But her serene silence had the desired effect.

  Frost’s voice was small but determined. “Show me whatever spirits you can, then.”

  The four assembled around the kitchen table, the room illuminated only by a single candle centered on a cracked plate atop the table. Hazel said, “Please join hands.” One of her own sought Frost’s, and he accepted it. Hazel’s small hand was a hot coal melting into the snowbank of his own.

  There followed no incantations or mummery, no incense nor convenient distractions that would allow trickery. Hazel simply closed her eyes, while her breathing fell into a deep cadence. Frost felt his own breath slowing to match hers. But then, as if a galvanic current had passed through her, Hazel gave a spastic jerk and her eyes flew open.

  And when she spoke, it was with Elinor’s immemorial voice.

  “Bob, I fear you are doing poorly without me.”

  Frost felt tears leaking from his eyes. He fervently wanted to believe he was actually talking to Elinor’s shade. But a residue of doubt afflicted him.

  “Elinor—if it is you, then tell me what gift I gave you when I visited you at school in 1894.”

  “I could never forget, Bob. It was that unique little book you had printed. Only two copies ever existed. One for me and one for you. Twilight, you titled it.”

  Frost felt simultaneously hollowed out and filled with some nameless glowing substance. “Dearest Elinor, yes, yes, it’s true! Since you were taken from me, I have been not a man at all, but just a shambling husk. Oh, why did such a tragedy ever have to befall us?”

  Elinor’s voice issuing from Hazel’s lips was calm. “We can’t know such things, Bob,
even after death. The universe splits and branches every instant, and whatever path we find ourselves on is our destiny.”

  “Are you and—are you and the children happy, Elinor?”

  “Yes, Bob, very happy. And I wish I could share our bliss with you. But I suspect that simply talking to me will not accomplish any long-lasting transformation of your heart. After we say goodbye, you’ll begin to waver and doubt the events of this evening. You’ve always been such a skeptic, Bob. Only the things you could touch or handle would convince you entirely. Or, what would be worse, you’ll set me up as some kind of lofty angel, and continue to martyr yourself to my memory. No, Bob, my voice alone cannot offer you the sure path out of your misery. For that, you must seek out the Nevernaught. Goodbye, Bob. I love you.”

  “Elinor, don’t go! I love you, too!” Frost jumped up, breaking the handclasp, as if to fly down unseen dimensions after the departing shade.

  Hazel blinked then, and spoke in her natural voice. “What happened? Was contact made?”

  Muriel recounted what had transpired during the seance. Hazel considered carefully the matter carefully before offering her response.

  “I know where the Nevernaught is to be found. Or, at least, where conditions are propitious for a meeting. Robert, will you come with me?”

  Frost knuckled his overflowing eyes. “Of course. What choice do I have?”

  March 29 dawned lush and welcoming. Birds twittered, pockets of remnant snow hidden on northward slopes gleefully cooperated with the heat toward their own dissolution, and a bustling, grateful, shirt-sleeved humanity reclaimed the sidewalks of East Providence. The winter seemed truly to have fled.

  At the Eddys’ early-breakfast table, Frost and Hazel shared the family repast of johnnycakes and bacon. Both visitors had bunked at Second Street after the seance ended. Hazel had bunked with the children, while Frost sprawled across the horsehide sofa, so exhausted by all that had happened as to be oblivious to its protruding springs. Now, considerably rumpled, Frost focused on imbibing his third cup of coffee, as he sought to concentrate his mind. The conversation with Elinor’s ghost, the odd injunction she had laid upon him, the sense of his life teetering on some precipice—all these issues preoccupied him.