This was not the least of Virgil’s paradoxes.
His scheme (for of course Virgil had a scheme) was revealed to me through a series of casual asides, so subtly and yet with such insistence that I soon understood them as a deliberate appeal. Without offering anything, on his side, but his stone-faced attention and his trust, he was asking me to harbor his secrets for him—; even, perhaps, to abet him in his plan. And it was one of the greatest shocks of my nineteen years on this earth that I found myself — just as tacitly, at first, and just as indirectly — agreeing to his terms.
Soon his hand lay open on the table. The part I was to play was this—: to convince the Redeemer to look into Virgil’s blighted eye. That was all. Virgil had been waiting for a session for months on end—; normally the Redeemer could go no more than a fortnight without one. It was their custom, Virgil explained, that the two of them be alone — completely solitary and immured from the least distraction— when that eye of his worked its wonders. He was sure the Redeemer would choose to conduct him away from the house—; down to the landing, perhaps, or off into the woods. This was all that he lived for any longer—: one half-hour, perhaps less, with the alpha and omega of his hate.
After a few weeks more, when I’d finally come to accept that I’d been left behind on 37 like a half-eaten cup of porridge, I gave my assent to Virgil’s plan. Perhaps I acted childishly, out of injured self-opinion—; my pride has ever existed in false proportion to my station. But there was more at play than that. To betray the Redeemer meant to become — if only for an instant — his full and indefatigable equal—; even, in a sense, his better. And I wanted to become the Redeemer’s better with all my body and my brain.
ALL OF THE ABOVE IS FOOLERY. I have no idea why I conspired with Virgil Ball to murder that man, who to me was as a pharaoh resurrected from the clay. .
The Omega and the Gifle
MY CHANCE CAME AT LAST ON THE TWELFTH of October, Virgil says.
I was sitting on a cot in my slant-ceilinged cubby, picking stones out of the treads of my India-rubber boots, when Delamare appeared in the open door. I invited him in but he paid me no mind. His shirt was mis-buttoned, which itself was cause for wonder—: I’d never before seen him with a hair out of place. His expression, however, was tranquil as a lamb’s.
“He’ll be coming up to see you,” he said. “He’ll be coming up directly.”
My heart spasmed in my chest. “That’s fine,” I replied. I knew straight-away, of course, that he meant Morelle.
“Watch out for Harvey. I passed him on the stairs.”
“I will. Thank you, Oliver.”
“No need for that,” said Delamare. He lingered in the door a moment, looking neither at me nor away. Nothing about him bespoke conspiracy—; he showed as much emotion as a heifer in a pen. My mind gradually flooded with disbelief. Could Morelle truly be coming, that same damp autumn afternoon, that I might take him into the woods and kill him? The thought was utterly preposterous. No scheme of mine had ever run half so well.
“I’d best be off,” Delamare said, stepping out into the hall.
“Stop a bit, Oliver!” I whispered. But he’d already shut the door.
I was woefully ill-prepared to receive my visitor. My revolver had been left behind at Shiloh—; an antediluvian musket, its barrel longer than my leg, was the nearest thing to an instrument of death that I possessed. I turned in a slow circle, giddy and short of breath, in the exact center of the room. How on earth was I to do it?
My eyes finally lit on the grime-covered pier-glass next to the room’s sole window. It was dull and cheaply made, but the cypress tree outside was reflected in it like a Turkish dagger. Without another thought I laid it on my bed, threw my quilt across it, and shattered it with the butt-end of the musket. It made no more noise than a tea-cup dropped onto the floor. I threw back the quilt, chose a likely-looking sliver, and slipped it into the pocket of my vest. No sooner had I done so than a knock sounded on the door—: Morelle’s knock, swift and self-assured. There was nothing for it but to let him in.
I found him standing somewhat stiffly in the hall, sporting the same Napoleonic cap he’d worn when I’d first laid eyes on him. I opened my mouth — to thank him for coming, perhaps, or to invite him in — but I could manage nothing better than a grunt.
“Virgil!” he said, beaming up at me. He pronounced my name with an odd emphasis, as though introducing me to some other.
“Thaddeus,” I said hoarsely. I had never before called him by that name.
He gave a quick nod, as though I’d returned some manner of pass-word, then turned briskly on his heels. “Come along, Virgil! A conference!”
I pulled my boots on as quickly as I could and followed him. He led me matter-of-factly out of the house and across the lawn, making a bee-line for the woods, as if he were impatient to be murdered. I did my best to keep up without appearing over-eager—; I’m sure I failed grotesquely. It made no difference, however. No-one happened upon us, no one got in our way, no-one called after us from the house. The world seemed as ready as I was to be rid of Thaddeus Morelle.
He spoke not a word till we came to a small, damp clearing, oblong in shape, with a fallen tree at either end of it. We were perhaps a mile from the great house and as far again from the river. Dusk had yet to fall, but in that close, somber place it seemed the last minutes of twilight. Morelle sat me down on a moss-eaten stump and stood directly across from me, studying my face. The false twilight deepened. Time shuddered, gave a barely audible sigh, then halted altogether.
I’d begun to think we might remain in that attitude — a tableau vivant of mutual distrust — until the last day of judgment, when all at once Morelle thrust his hands into his waist-coat and drew forth a candle-stub and a tin of sailor’s matches. His close-set eyes never left my own.
“Is it right?” he asked, as tradition demanded.
The words had a different meaning, in that little glade, than they’d ever had before—; and I had a different answer. “It’s right,” I said.
I could hear his surprise when at last he spoke. “It’s right?” he repeated. “Exactly as it stands?”
Our ritual had been fixed from the beginning. I was to say it wasn’t right, no more, no less—; and he was to re-arrange things till it was. I said nothing further now, and he continued to stand stock-still above me, breathing whistlingly through his nose. I might easily have attacked him then—: we were perfectly alone, at least half a mile out of ear-shot, and there was a new quality to Morelle, a sort of dull uncertainty, that did a good deal to embolden me. But I wanted to move through the steps as we’d always done. I believed in my gift now— believed in it as fervently as I’d once doubted and disparaged it — and I wanted to catch another glimpse, however fleeting, of what the future held. Perhaps I’d see the Child from Shiloh—; perhaps I’d see myself, or Clementine. Perhaps I’d catch a glimpse behind the scaffolding of the Trade at last, and see with my own eyes what was hiding there.
I was adrift on these and other musings when there came the dry rasp of wood against wood and a match flared to life within an inch of my left eye. The pain was worse than it had ever been. What was more, I saw nothing to reward me for my suffering—: no figures, no landscapes, not even the customary shapes. Only a pulsing web of faint red lines, the precise hue and texture of my pain.
“What is it?” came the Redeemer’s voice, as if from the top of a ravine.
“Nothing,” I answered, digging my fists in to my eyes. “There’s nothing there at all.”
As soon as I’d spoken the match-flame was blown out.
“Of course there isn’t!” Morelle chirruped. He was suddenly in the very best of spirits. “How could there be, Kansas, when there never was before?”
I rose wobblingly to my feet, my eyes and brain still addled from the light. “I’m tired of your parlor games, Thaddeus. If you have something to tell me, tell it to me plain.”
He lit another match and brought it to his face. “That peeper of yours never had a gift, dear K.” He covered his left eye with his hand. “Unless you count blindness, of course. Blindness can be a blessed gift. It prevents you, for example, from seeing the gifle headed in your direction.”
“The which?” I said.
His clapped his hands. “The gifle, sirrah! The gifle! The custard-pie!”
I felt the old haplessness returning. “But our meetings,” I protested. “Your tables, Thaddeus—; the matches, the shapes—”
“Were a way of getting you to do the unthinkable for me—; nothing more. And you did do the unthinkable, Virgil, didn’t you!” Slowly, gloatingly, he worked his thumb into his nose. “It was Parson’s stroke of genius, naturally. ‘Ball is a believer,’ he said to me. ‘Use him.’ And Parson was right, as always.” He gave a low whistle. “I must say, Kansas, for a rationalist you sure were an easy fish to fritter. The development of your mystic abilities took a single afternoon!”
The match-flame sputtered and expired. My thoughts flew back to that star-crossed run to Memphis—: the Yellowjack, the coffles, Trist’s box of samples, the Pendleton Hotel. Would I have made the run— would I so much as have considered making it — if my own eye hadn’t spoken for me? And there had been countless such instances, great and small, from our meeting at Stoker’s Bluff to the present hour. I might never have entered Morelle’s service at all, in fact, if he hadn’t made such a fuss over my affliction. Over my old, fat, imperfectly blind left eye, ugly as the devil’s arse by candle-light.
And yet, I thought, forcing myself to return his pig-eyed leer—: your power over me remains imperfect. There’s one point that you haven’t troubled to consider.
“I did have a vision, Thaddeus. On board the Hyapatia Lee. Have you forgotten? I had a vision, and you had no part in it. You were a hundred miles up-river that night, with all your tricks and gifles. ”
“Oh! Not so far away as that, dear K. I had a rendez-vous that same evening, in point of fact.” He lit a third match, regarded it a moment, then let it drop. “At Madame Lafargue’s.”
I must have known all the while, in some back larder of my brain, that Morelle was the caller Clem had been so keen to escape. I must have known, as it failed to move me now. I simply shrugged my shoulders.
“I had a vision, Thaddeus. I saw the world—this world, not any other — and it made sense to me at last. I saw myself surrounded by it, engulfed by it, spinning in it like a pebble in a creek. And then I saw the muck about me in the water—: I saw the Trade.” I brought my fists out of my pockets. “I even saw the two of us, it seems to me, together in this glade.”
Morelle guffawed. “Seen the future, have you, and all under your own steam? Far be it from me to take it from you. But do me this small favor—: look at your face in the pier-glass tonight, when you shuffle back to your cubby, and ask yourself what blessed good it’s done you.” He raised a hand carefully, palm upwards, as though cradling a tea-cup—; then he turned it over. “I’ll never understand you, Kansas. Your blindness was the only gift you had — the only one, do you hear? — and you tossed it in the gutter.”
He turned his back on me, then, with a world-weary shrug, as though mortally exhausted by my idiocy. My right hand stole into my waist-coat pocket and took hold of what was hidden there. “I don’t think I can look into that pier-glass anymore, Thaddeus,” I said.
Something in my voice made him stop short—; but he chose not to turn about. He was never to look me in the eye again.
“I can’t say I blame you,” he said at last. “You’re done for.” He ran a finger along his collar. “It’s in my nature, sadly, to be the end of things. Where I exist no other thing can flourish. No other ambition—; no other intrigue—; no other love.” He sighed. “Most importantly that, perhaps. No other love.”
This was more than I could stand. “I’m not the only one to suffer from hallucinations, you shanty-town Napoleon,” I spat out. “I’m sick of your damn self-religion.”
He clucked at me. “Religion, dear K? Not at all. Our Lord Christ Jesus, if you recall, proclaimed himself the alpha and omega of all things—; I aspire to the omega only.” He shook his head. “You’re done for,” he said again, stifling a yawn. “But don’t fret—: the Trade, dear Virgil, will survive you.”
“Contrary-wise, you won’t,” I said, driving my weapon into the flesh above his collar.
Morelle let out a single bright squeak, as of a mouse crushed under a boot-heel—; then he dropped face-forward into the moss. That was all. I crouched beside him and turned his head toward me. His face wore a look of uncomplicated horror. He spasmed soundlessly for perhaps a minute, spat out a purplish froth, and died. There was no magic in his passing, no nobility, no wit.
For a time I neither moved nor spoke, staring down at the corpse to fix the fact of it in my mind. I was amazed at how convincing, how self-evident his killing seemed. The world had tipped for an instant, had shifted in its cradle slightly to acknowledge the great change, and that was all. That was all—; but it was all-encompassing. The long and blood-besotted reign of that tiny monster over my life was ended. And I myself, bungler that I was, had brought it to a close.
“Who’s the omega now,” I said into the quiet, “if not Virgil Ball?”
As if in answer, a twig snapped close behind me. An unmistakably human sound. At any other time, my heart would have leapt into my wind-pipe—; just then, however, I felt exalted and serene. The world had shifted in its cradle, after all. Past experience did not apply.
I turned my head slowly in the direction of the sound. A man was there, half-hidden by the nearest trees. He was a clot of heavier darkness, a silhouette at best—; but I recognized him straight-away. It was Goodman Harvey.
He said nothing, did nothing, only let himself be seen. His mute-ness was both an overture and a threat. I’m beholden to you, Virgil, he seemed to be saying. I’m grateful to you for ending my bondage—; and you must be grateful to me. Be grateful to me, or I’ll tell.
There was nothing for it, I realized, but to kill him.
“Come over here, Harvey,” I said. I said it softly. But he turned and disappeared into the pines.