Canaan's Tongue (13 page)

“Wanting to purchase some niggers, were you?” I said in my most professional tone of voice. The two octaroons glared at me, unmoved. I could only guess how much they’d soaked him for already.

“Not
precisely,
Mr. Ball—; no,” Barker said, taking me by the arm. “Would you be so kind as to accompany me upstairs?”

“Only to talk business, Mr. Barker. None of your French amusements.”

Barker flushed deeply. “Naturally, Virgil. Yes. I’m up this way.” His voice dropped, for no apparent reason, to the flimsiest of whispers. “The
mezzanine,
you know.”

I followed Barker’s neatly attired back-side up the stairs, wondering what he wanted of me, how he could afford to stay at the Pendleton, and why in heaven’s name I’d agreed to come at all. There’d been nothing in our first meeting, certainly, that led me to think I’d stand to profit from another. I’d have written him off as a moderately cunning fool, best kept clear of, if not for the Redeemer’s reaction to his name—; it was this mystery, I decided, and nothing else, that kept me climbing the Pendleton’s gilt-trimmed stairs.

And yet, even as I recall that day—that fateful day which was to invert my life, which had up-ended it already, leaving me kicking helplessly in mid-air—I see that I had a second motive, more telling than the first. My confidence in Reason, under slow but relentless siege since my admission to the Trade, was suddenly on the verge of full extinction. That the Yellowjack should lay waste to one side of the city, then stop short, as if held back by surveyor’s tape, leaving the other side chaste and industrious and bright, was too much for my battered brain to fathom—; but I’d seen beyond all doubt that it was so. I’d begun to question the evidence of my clear, hale, unwavering right eye, the eye that had never once endeavored to deceive me.

The ascendancy of my left eye had begun.

Barker’s room proved to be a modest one, surely the least frilly in the place. Its windows faced due east, toward the plague-ridden precincts of the city. Since the hotel straddled the east–west line exactly, this meant that the room itself lay within that quarter. For some reason, however, I felt easy and secure. I went to the small bay-window while Barker made a show of fixing drinks. The view was all I expected it to be. In the alley-way below us, a man lay on top of a limp, shirtless woman, weeping and running his hands over her face and shoulders. They were perhaps ten yards below us—: I could see droplets of sweat on the man’s sun-burnt nape, yellow stains on his collar, and flakes of drying mud on the woman’s bare breasts. Her lips were slick with charcoal-colored bile.

“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Barker enthused, joining me at the window. “Close enough to spit on! Yet we feel absolutely safe.” He tapped the pane of beveled glass with his thumb. “There’s not been a single case of Yellowjack in the Pendleton, you know. The dividing line between quick and dead is straight and unswerving, from one end of Washington Street to the other—; the solitary exception is the east portion of this building.” He went back to the table, gulped down both the drinks he’d fixed, then poured out two plain snifters of whiskey. The room’s only chair had been brought to the bed-side—; Barker gestured toward it solemnly, then offered me a glass.

“Join me in a peck of nature’s restorative, Mr. Ball?”

I took the snifter from him warily. “Your good health, Mr. Barker.”

“Nothing to joke about, sirrah! Not in this sweet town.” Licking his lips, he added—: “I have my
own
theory about it all, of course.”

I took a sip of the whiskey and set my glass down immediately. Something had no doubt been distilled to make it—; what, however, was a mystery for the ages.

“What might your theory be?” I said once I’d recovered my voice.

Barker’s flat, pink eyes began to take on life. “Only
this,
Mr. Ball—: in Exodus 8, when the plague of flies is visited upon Egypt, it is mentioned—in passing—that a single land is spared the devastation. The name of that land, of course, was Goshen.” His eyes, if possible, turned pinker and flatter still. “Do you remember that much scripture?”

“My father was a minister,” I said.

This took him quite aback. “Was he, by God! What church?”

“Methodist.”

His face grew sly. “A comfortable church to serve, they tell me.”

“Not for me it wasn’t.”

“I don’t doubt that for an
instant
!” He fumbled a bit, unsure how to proceed. “The Methodists are, as they say in Cincinnati—”

“Exodus 8?” I said, cutting him short.

“Exactly so!” Barker cried. “You’re a
listener,
Mr. Ball! That’s capital.” He took a quick sip of his whiskey. “The land of Goshen, as we know, was spared because it had earned the particular favor of the Lord. But what would you
say,
Mr. Ball, if I told you that there was a second town, omitted mention in the Gospel, that was spared the plague as well?”

I watched him for a moment. “I’d ask you how you came to know of it.”

“Never mind
that,
” Barker said, affecting a merry grin. I saw, however, that his plump little hands were trembling. “Can you guess
why
the town in question—which, for convenience sake, we might refer to as ‘Sun-town’—was excused from duty, so to speak?”

To hide my interest—which by now, I confess, was keen—I picked up my glass and held it to the light. “I haven’t the slightest notion, Mr. Barker.”

“It was the center of a profitable trade,” Barker whispered, his breath tickling my cheek. “A very profitable one. So lucrative, in fact, that the dividends extended in all directions—; even unto the houses of greatest wealth and influence. Even, perhaps, unto those few—those
elect
—owed a favor from the Most High Himself.”

He took a long sip from his glass, cocked his head to one side, and spat the whiskey out onto the carpet. “A
case,
to put it coarsely, of Ammon collecting from his most hallowed Debtor. But I ask you
this,
Mr. Ball—and reflect a while before you answer—if that city existed in the current age, where, in your opinion, might it be?”

“Here, of course,” I answered blandly. But my heart beat furiously against my ribs.

Barker sat back with a gasp, as though I’d poked him in the belly with a stick. “You are a
wonder,
Mr. Ball! A natural wonder.”

“It
is
Memphis you’re dithering on about?”

“In a sense,” Barker said. “In a sense.” He held his glass to the light and peered into it intently, as if it were the oracle’s pool at Delphi. “Can you guess what I saw this morning, waiting for your steam-skiff to arrive?”

“Something portentous?”

He nodded. “A family of four, Mr. Ball, splayed out dead in the middle of the street. Rats had fed on their remains—: the softest, fattiest morsels only, leaving the rest to rot.” Here he paused a moment, pinched his features together, and sniffed at the palm of his right hand. He couldn’t have seemed more rat-like if he’d tried. “Even rats can be choosy, when Providence permits.”

“What of it?”

“Those self-same rats lay clustered in a puddle of black filth, not twenty yards away.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Dead as casket-nails themselves.”

“Must you speak in parables, Mr. Barker?” I said, making as if to rise. “I have very little patience for proselytizing—”

But Barker was already flushed with victory. “Touché, sirrah!” he squealed. “Touché!” He gave a peal of boyish laughter and brought his boots together with a bang—:

“How
does
the poet say—?

The flabby wine-skin of his brain
Yields to some pathologic strain,
And voids from its unstored abysm
The driblet of an aphorism.

“You’ll have no such driblets from
me,
Mr. Ball, I promise you! My meaning is simply this—: those who fatten themselves on the rotten,
ulcerated
matter of society—”

“I thought you wanted to talk about the Redeemer.”

Barker’s eyes narrowed. “That’s right, sir. I do. You appreciate straight dealing, I see.” He studied me for a time, then set his whiskey down. “I know you are disaffected with our friend Morelle. With your role in this back-water melodrama of his.”

I kept my face composed. “And how did you come by this knowledge, Mr. Barker?”

“From testimonies to that effect,” Barker said unctuously. “Acquired in the field.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Tut
tut
!” Barker said, waggling a finger. “Morelle isn’t the only one to take an interest in you, Virgil. I’ve looked into that eye of yours.
Both
of them, in fact.”

There was no hiding my anxiety any longer. “Who are you, Mr. Barker? A Pinkerton? A customs-agent? A missionary? A goblin? What in God’s name are you after?”

“Your
cooperation,
Virgil—; nothing more. Half an hour of your time.” He drained his glass with relish—a wax-cheeked, jubilant little gnome—and began to pace back and forth in front of me.

“I have no desire to dismantle the machine your Redeemer has set in motion—; never fear. Quite the
opposite,
in fact.”

“He did more than set it in motion, as I recall,” I said.

Barker spun suddenly about and caught hold of my chair, rocking it from side to side as he spoke—: “Have you not listened to a
word
I’ve told you? Not a single blessed word? The Trade existed long before Thaddeus Morelle stumbled onto it, sirrah.
Ages
before. It existed before you or I or that misbegotten dwarf—or even the Mississippi
itself
—had wormed its way out of the ether. The Trade, Virgil Ball, is an element—; a humor—; a
pre-condition.
” He swallowed once, then took a breath—as if to give himself courage—and continued—: “The Trade is as basic to life as carbon. It’s as ancient as the yellow fever, and easily twice as popular. Even you, with your great gift, are less than a
peanut
in the Trade’s design.”

“A peanut?” I said. “Then what use, Mr. Barker, could I possibly be to you?”

At this he crouched beside my chair and took me by the hand. “You have more and better talents, Virgil, than you know. You or Thaddeus either, blast his eyes.”

“Do you know the Redeemer well?”

“
Must
you call him that?” Barker’s right eye-corner began to twitch. “I know him, all right. I know old Taddy well enough.”

Taddy?

“Tell me about him,” I said. “Something I haven’t heard before.”

Barker gave a pinched little smile.

“As a youngish man, sixteen or so, Taddy overheard some soap-boxer—a disciple of phrenology, I suppose—say that the measure of a man’s genius could be read from the height of his brow. That same day he shaved a good two inches from his hair-line, thinking nobody would catch on.” He made a face. “That’s your ‘Redeemer’ for you, Mr. Ball.”

“That’s hardly the revelation I’d hoped for,” I said. “You have secrets, Mr. Barker, or you pretend you do. Sweeten the pot a little.”

Barker’s look darkened. “I need your help, Virgil—; I admit it. But I’ll have it from you whether you find the ‘pot,’ as you call it, sweet or bitter. I’ve made something of a study of you, you see. And I know even without consulting that magic lantern of yours that you’ll set my plan in motion.” He turned to face the window. “You’ll put down Thaddeus Morelle, for starters.”

“I’ll put down your granny.”

He held up a hand without turning. “You’ll kill Thaddeus Morelle—; you’ll put your eye at my disposal—; you’ll do as I say in all particulars. Firstly, because you’re a
follower,
born and bred. It comes easier to you to obey than to resist. Secondly, because I have the power to destroy the Trade, and you along with it, if I must. I have the knowledge and the willingness to do so.” He shook his head gently as he spoke, like a world-weary judge. “You have no say in your future, Virgil. Best accept that straight-away.”

I stuck my tongue out at his back-side. “Thanks for the whiskey, Mr. Barker. Best of luck.”

Barker only nodded. “Come to the window now.”

I rose from the chair at once, as if directed by wires, and joined him at the window-bench. He had said that I would obey him, and I did. Together we looked down into the alley. The woman lay just as before—: her companion was nowhere to be seen. Her legs were spread in a wide, awkward-looking V, as though she were passing water. But it was clear from her face that she had quit this life.

Barker took me solicitously by the hand.

“Life is fleeting, Mr. Ball, as any fool or Methodist can tell you. The things a man has
wrought
in his lifetime can, however—in the rarest of instances—bear the stamp of the ever-lasting. You and I could set a great many stones a-rolling, if we chose.” He let my hand drop and pressed his face against the window. In that instant he might easily have passed for the Redeemer’s twin.

“You’ll show me many things,” he murmured. His breath made little fleur-de-lys patterns on the glass. “We’ll journey side by side, my friend, into the vast and luminous Unknown.”

“You first,” I said, bringing Ziba’s pistol against his temple.

Barker’s body went limp at once. “Virgil!” he gasped. “
Listen
to me, Virgil—”

“You’ll not look into
my
eye, you dumpling-faced bastard.”

His face, reflected in the glass, was the picture of bewilderment. “Your eye?” he stammered. “But surely, Virgil, you understand that I was speaking figuratively—; your eye, as such, means
nothing
to me—; nothing whatsoever—”

“That’s right, Mr. Barker. And it never will.”

“Don’t be an
ass,
” Barker managed to squawk, but by then I’d already pulled the trigger. I had no desire to trade one Redeemer for another.

“God Taught It to Me.”

GOD AND SCIENCE WERE MARRIED one Sunday in Paris, Asa says. I myself was minister.

At the Académie—: as soon as Mssr. Horseface came up to the labs on his appointed rounds (Sunday morning, 6 May 1853) I flagged him to my table. Mssr. Trist, he said, his horse-mouth hanging open. Have you no other studies? Do you pass every waking hour on these premises?

He was standing at the north-west corner of the desk, width of a lady’s palm from my work, but still he did not see it. We might as well be out on the river, in a punt, I thought, and the idea brought a curse-word out of me. But it was a curse-word in English and as such out of Mssr. Horseface’s ken. What did you say, Mssr. Trist? he cheeped at me. He looked askance. Would you not care to retire to your dormitory, peradventure, and take a spell of rest?

I might just, I answered. I’m well satisfied with my work.

Very good, Horseface sighed, his eyes gone to the window. In that event, if you’ll permit me, Mssr.—

I’ve made a discovery, I said. A discovery of merit. I might go so far, in fact, as to announce that the merit of my discovery is such that this academy will never be forgotten.

His eyes spun back from that window you can bet. My dear fellow—, he began. I knew then that I had his ear—: more than that. I knew that I had him frightened and this knowledge did more for my pride than if he had stripped himself naked and got onto his thick, blotchy knees and petitioned me to explicate my researches. My pride was such that it spilled over, it over-spilled, I became wild at the merest thought of it. The school would be remembered now (by G*d!) and the unwashed son of an American river planter would have done it for them. They’d hate me openly but the pleasure of their hating would be lost to them. My dear fellow—, he said again. I held up a hand before he could run on and away.

Shall I tell you my discovery?

His eyes fell shut. His mouth fell open and formed a noiseless syllable. I could see it in the air above him—: O—U—I.

I shifted the ocular to one side and pulled the papers closer. I shuffled them a bit, arranging them so he might better follow faith and intellect on their little sack-race. I gave him a few moments but it was all too much and I spoke very sweetly, clipping my
s
’s in the manner of his home province (the Lorraine)—:

The difference between yourself and a nigger, Mssr. LeVertier, is the sum of a single molecule.

I thought at first he hadn’t heard me. He stared down at the topmost sheet, the one that outlined my methods and my protocols. The idea came to me that perhaps I hadn’t spoken it aloud, and I had just opened my mouth as wide as I could get it when he said—:

This
is what you’ve been about, then, all this time? This is the result of your first term at our academy? His black eyes dug into the paper.

Mssr. LeVertier—

What molecule?

A decatomic protein, I said. The wildness came on as I said it. C
₂
H
₂
Fl
₃
O
₁
N
₂
. The most beautiful compound I have ever seen.

Preposterous! he muttered. But a hum came out of him regardless. The crease of his lips was peaked and white. It twitched at both its ends.

Where did you find it, Mssr. Trist, if I may pry? May I ask you to reveal so much? His eyes were full upon me now and I could not stomach them. Kindly remove your eyes from me, sir, I howled, but again he did not hear. Did he?

In the blood, I suppose? Is that it? In suspension?

It was all I could do. Not blood, I said. Not blood at all.

What’s that? he said.
Not
blood? He was white all over. Speak up, little Asa. Speak. Have you forgotten already? Forgotten how?

Skin, I spat out, the sound cotillioning in my mouth. In the skin the skin the skin.

He went quiet as a pond. In the skin, he said. The wildness had gone from one breath to the next and I felt undressed and afraid. Please, Mssr. LeVertier, I said.

His eyes were gone already. They could barely stand to look. They wandered from my hands to my smock to the microscope to the bottles ranged transparently behind me. The bottles! I must get his eyes away from them.

Look here, Mssr. LeVertier, I said. I pulled the top sheet from my notes. Underneath lay my first sketch of the decatom. I coaxed his eyeballs down to it.

Merely a sketch, I offered.

He took up the paper with a twitch. Blinking slowly, like a horse, he held it high above his shoulder, as a school-master would a dirty drawing—:

This is the molecule, is it? Your protein molecule? Your pigment?

I shook my head. No, sir. Not a pigment.

Not
a pigment, Mssr. Trist? What, then, would you have it be?

I said nothing for a goodly while. I took a breath—:

His mark.

His mark, Horseface repeated. He lowered the paper. Whose?

G*d’s, I answered. Stamped in Moses’ time onto the flesh of his chosen peoples. The niggers and the Jews.

He laid the paper daintily on the table.

You see God in this, do you, you baboon?

It represents the Passion, I said. I spoke slowly and carefully, so that he might follow. Christ’s quartered host, superimposed over the Doric crucifix. It’s been tipped to one side, as you can see—: He is about to be taken down from the cross.

He was smitten. In others words, then, Mssr. Trist—

In other words, sir, He is dead already. I paused, seeing that he was not yet satisfied. I said—: Do you see now, Professor? Science and Heaven
do
agree.

Science? he said, staring down at the desk.
Science
taught you this?

G*d taught it to me, Mssr. Horsepiss, I answered, and gave a little bow.