“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.
IV
He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because darkness hath blinded his eyes. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.
Geburah Plantation, 1863
OUT FROM THE GREAT HOUSE, Parson says. Into the oaks. Virgil is gone from us. Virgil, the most inquisitive, the most tender. Rebellious Virgil. Sent to fetch the mulatto, Virgil has instead gone promenading. The three of us watch him from Harvey’s window, entering the orchard, the mulatto at his side. The beautiful mulatto. The three of us sit and watch and bide, with only Harvey’s whitening corpse for company.