“Very ingenious!” Bassermann exclaimed. “But how do you explain the inaccuracies and anachronisms with which Laquedem’s tale abounds? He confuses historical characters and juggles with time. I doubt if he could pass successfully a college entrance examination in history!”
“Probably not,” Aubrey remarked. “Laquedem is as human as we are. His brain is subject to the same errors as ours. His recollections are colored by his own personality. It takes two years to perform an ordinary analysis. It would take fifty years to analyze Laquedem in such a way as to unravel all the complexes which constitute his personality and to eliminate from his recollections the factor of human error. Incidentally,” Aubrey laughed, “the joke is on us.”
“How so?” Bassermann asked.
“We wished to discover whether the memory of the race can be reached through the subconscious. Unfortunately, of all beings in the world, we selected for our experiments the one man whose memory extends over two thousand years! We reached the end of his conscious life, but have hardly opened the portals of his subconscious.”
“Then,” Father Ambrose remarked, “you would say the experiment failed.”
“No. Like Columbus we set out to discover one thing and discovered another. What is your opinion of our experiment, Father?”
“I agree with you that Isaac Laquedem told the truth. He is indeed the Wandering Jew. I cannot tell how God wrought the miracle, but it is a miracle. By every sign and token he, Isaac Laquedem, is Ahasuerus.”
“Nonsense,” Bassermann exclaimed irritably, “he is a Russian conspirator.”
“Have you forgotten the sudden storm on his arrival? Do you recall the seven plovers and the broken bell? Don’t you remember how the wounds of the Crucified reopened when he entered the room? He is unquestionably the Wandering Jew.”
“Fiddlesticks,” Bassermann thundered. “He is a Russian spy!”
“I am inclined to agree with Father Ambrose,” Aubrey replied, “without accepting his supernatural implications. But if we are right, if he is the Wandering Jew, do you know what we have done– —?”
“Well?” Bassermann snapped.
“We have killed him. We have condemned him to death.”
“Killed him?” the other two added.
“Having traced the shock—the trauma of the psychologists—to its origin, we have broken the spell. The long chain snaps. The glands are restored to their normal function. The hypnotic command is dissolved. The curse, if it be a curse, is lifted. Henceforth Isaac Laquedem is like other mortals. His glands will function like ours. We have cured the patient. If our cure is effective, the patient will die…”
“No, my son, he will live on until Jesus returns. ‘Tarry thou till I come.’ Isaac Laquedem can find no peace until the Saviour returns to judge the quick and the dead.”
Father Ambrose made the sign of the cross. “Whatever our final judgment may be,” Aubrey said, “we have conducted together a phenomenal investigation.”
“That is no doubt true,” Bassermann said. “Laquedem’s analysis constitutes a complete mental chart of civilized man.”
“The world will be startled when we print our notes.”
“Startled and probably angered,” Bassermann added, rubbing his hands.
“Laquedem’s story,” Aubrey added, “sheds a new and colorful light on history, religion, sex, morality, occultism, rejuvenation, re-incarnation, recurrence of type. There is in Laquedem something of Don Juan and Casanova, and something of Faust. He is Faustian in that he attempts to face the problem of human life in its entirety.”
“Many writers have attempted to tell the story of Ahasuerus,” Bassermann remarked.
“Yes, but they confined themselves to one incident, or like Goethe, contented themselves with a fragment. This is the first time the story is told in his own words, and is told as a whole. Technically, especially in view of the manner in which we probed his memory by psychoanalysis, the recital of his tale presents almost insurmountable difficulties…”
“The story,” Bassermann remarked, “must be told backwards, or rather, it must be unfolded from the beginning. Isaac Laquedem told his life from maturity to youth. Such a procedure would be abstruse and difficult to follow. It is like reading through a mirror. We must begin with his youth and carry his life forward from its beginning to where it ends.”
“If it ends,” softly remarked Father Ambrose.
“Perhaps you are right,” Aubrey said. “His story can never end. The life of Isaac Laquedem is the history of human passion.”
“Will the Censor permit you to tell his story?” Father Ambrose remarked. “I hear that policemen in Boston and the chief of the lettercarriers in Washington are the arbiters of literature and morals in the United States.”
“We cannot destroy this most remarkable record in the history of psychology in deference to vulgar prudery,” Aubrey replied. “However bizarre Isaac Laquedem’s adventures may be, however curious the bypaths of his sensations, however exotic the labyrinths of his passion, there is nothing in his story that does not lurk somewhere in the subconscious of every one of us. His experiences are purely human. Nihil humanum…nothing human is alien to him.”
“I am less afraid,” Professor Bassermann remarked, “of the moralists than of religious zealots who may consider the confessions of Isaac Laquedem an attack upon all religion.”
“Only,” Father Ambrose interjected gravely, “if they do not read his confessions in their entirety. Every phase in his development is but a link in a chain. It may be the chain between man and God. Both mystic and rationalist will find in Laquedem’s confession the confirmation of their convictions.”
The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of three monks, pale and tottering. “These are the watchmen,” Father Ambrose remarked. “Now we shall hear how Isaac Laquedem escaped.”
The monks seemed to be unable to speak articulately.
Professor Bassermann looked into their eyes and examined their pulse. “These men are hypnotized,” he exclaimed. “It was thus that the Russian spy managed to get away.”
“This proves my contention. He is the Wandering Jew,” Father Ambrose asserted heatedly. “No one but a person with extraordinary psychic powers can hypnotize three men simultaneously. He has repeated for us the feat which freed him from the claws of the Inquisition. The Lord has given him supernatural powers to extricate himself from his predicaments that he may continue his pilgrimage unhindered.”
The three scientists remained silent for a while, watching the monks recovering slowly from a state bordering closely on catalepsy.
“You will take your notes with you, gentlemen,” Father Ambrose said sadly. “May I keep the shoes and the telegrams?”
“Of course,” the two answered.
“It will not be easy to step into those shoes,” Aubrey Lowell said softly.
“You exaggerate the size of his feet,” Professor Bassermann laughed. “These shoes are by no means enormous. It seems to me that they are his evening slippers…”
“Come, gentlemen,” Father Ambrose remarked, reminding himself of his duties as a host, “breakfast is waiting.”
The three men walked slowly toward the monastery. Their shadows mingled as if the three great divisions of human thought, absolute faith, absolute denial and pragmatic acceptance, were at last reconciled.
The aeroplane had left the skies unruffled, but in its trail seven plovers disappeared in the distance.
The sun, rising from the Ægean, hurled spears of fire at the golden cross gleaming undimmed and undaunted on the marble peak of Mount Athos.
THE END