But all at once his powers to direct adventures in the secret room failed: an ice-wall rose before them, the sleigh raced on to certain doom, that night radios would sadden the nation: Mr Mystery, esteemed magician, and Joel Harrison Knox, beloved by one and all, were killed today in an accident which also claimed the lives of six reindeer who… r-r-rip, the ice tore like cellophane, the sleigh slid through into the Landing's parlor.
A strange sort of party seemed in progress there. These were among those present: Mr Sansom, Ellen Kendall, Miss Wisteria, Randolph, Idabel, Florabel, Zoo, Little Sunshine, Amy, R. V. Lacey, Sam Radclif, Jesus Fever, a man naked except for boxing-gloves (Pepe Alvarez), Sydney Katz (proprietor of the Morning Star Cafй in Paradise Chapel), a thick-lipped convict who wore a long razor on a chain around his neck like some sinister crucifix (Keg Brown), Romeo, Sammy Silverstein and three other members of the St. Deval Street Secret Nine. Most were dressed in black, rather formal attire; the pianola was playing Nearer My God to Thee. Not noticing the sleigh, they moved in a leaning black procession around a gladiola-garlanded cedar chest into which each dropped an offering: Idabel her dark glasses, Randolph his almanac, R. V. Lacey the snipped hair from her wart, Jesus Fever his fiddle, Florabel her Kress tweezers, Mr Sansom his tennis balls, Little Sunshine a magic charm, and so on: inside the chest lay Joel himself, all dressed in white, his face powdered and rouged, his goldbrown hair arranged in damp ringlets: Like an angel, they said, more beautiful than Alcibiades, more beautiful, said Randolph, and Idabel wailed: Believe me, I tried to save him, but he wouldn't move, and snakes are so very quick. Miss Wisteria, fitting her little crown upon his head, leaned so far over she nearly fell into the chest: Listen, she whispered, I'm no fool, I know you're alive: unless you give me the answer, I shan't save you, I shan't say a word: are the dead as lonesome as the living? Whereupon the room commenced to vibrate slightly, then more so, chairs overturned, the curio cabinet spilled its contents, a mirror cracked, the pianola, composing its own doomed jazz, held a haywire jamboree: down went the house, down into the earth, down down, past Indian tombs, past the deepest root, the coldest stream, down, down, into the furry arms of horned children whose bumblebee eyes withstand forests of flame.
He knew too well the rhythm of a rocking-chair; aramp-arump, hour on hour he'd heard one for how long? traveling through space, and the cedar chest became at last confused with its sway: if you fall you fall forever, back and forth together, the ceaseless chair, the cedar chest: he squeezed pillows, gripped the posters of the bed, for on seas of lamplight it rode the rolling rocker's waves whose rocking was the tolling of a bell-buoy; and who was the pirate inching toward him in the seat? His eyes stung as he tasked them to identify: lace masks confounded, frost glass intervened, now the chair's passenger was Amy, now Randolph, then Zoo. But Zoo could not be here; she was walking for Washington, her accordion announcing every step of the way. An unrecognized voice quarreled with him, teased, taunted, revealed secrets he'd scarcely made known to himself: shut up, he cried, and wept, trying to silence it, but, of course, the voice belonged to him: "I saw you under the ferris-wheel," it accused the pirate in the chair; "No," said the pirate, "I never left here, sweet child, sweet Joel, all night I waited for you sitting on the stairs."
Always he was gnawing bitter spoons, or struggling to breathe through scarves soaked in lemon water. Hands coaxed down curtains of slumbering dusk; fingers leanly firm like Zoo's rambled through his hair, and other fingers, too, these with a touch cooler, more spun than sea spray: Randolph's voice, in tones still gentler, augmented their soothing traceries.
One afternoon the rocking-chair became precisely that; scissors seemed to cut round the edges of his mind, and as he peeled away the dead discardings, Randolph, taking shape, shone blessedly near.
"Randolph," he said, reaching out to him, "do you hate me?" Smiling, Randolph whispered: "Hate you, baby?"
"Because I went away," said Joel, "went way away and left your sherry on the hall-tree." Randolph took him in his arms, kissed his forehead, and Joel, pained, grateful, said, "I'm sick and so sick," and Randolph replied, "Lie back, my darling, lie still."
He drifted deep into September; the blissful depths of the bed seemed future enough, every pore absorbed its cool protection. And when he thought of himself he affixed the thought to a second person, another Joel Knox about whom he was interested in the moderate way one would be in a childhood snapshot: what a dumbbell! he would gladly be rid of him, this old Joel, but not quite yet, he somehow needed him still. For long periods each day he studied his face in a hand mirror: a disappointing exercise, on the whole, for nothing he saw concretely affirmed his suspicions of emerging manhood, though about his face there were certain changes: baby-fat had given way to a true shape, the softness of his eyes had hardened: it was a face with a look of innocence but none of its charm, an alarming face, really, too shrewd for a child, too beautiful for a boy. It would be difficult to say how old he was. All that displeased him was the brown straightness of his hair. He wished it were curly gold like Randolph's.
He did not know when Randolph slept; he seemed to vacate the rocking-chair only when it was time for Joel to eat or commit some function; and sometimes, waking with the moon watching at the window like a bandit's eye, he would see Randolph's asthmatic cigarette still pulsing in the dark: though the house had sunk, he was not alone, another had survived, not a stranger, but one more kind, more good than any had ever been, the friend whose nearness is love. "Randolph," he said, "were you ever as young as me?" And Randolph said: "I was never so old."
"Randolph," he said, "do you know something? I'm very happy." To which his friend made no reply. The reason for this happiness seemed to be simply that he did not feel unhappy; rather, he knew all through him a kind of balance. There was so little to cope with. The mist which for him overhung so much of Randolph's conversation, even that had lifted, at least it was no longer troubling, for it seemed as though he understood him absolutely. Now in the process of, as it were, discovering someone, most people experience simultaneously an illusion they are discovering themselves: the other's eyes reflect their real and glorious value. Such a feeling was with Joel, and inestimably so because this was the first time he'd ever known the triumph, false or true, of seeing through to a friend. And he did not want any more to be responsible, he wanted to put himself in the hands of his friend, be, as here in the sickbed, dependent upon him for his very life. Looking in the handglass became, consequently, an ordeaclass="underline" it was as if now only one eye examined for signs of maturity, while the other, gradually of the two the more attentive, gazed inward wishing him always to remain as he was.
"There is an October chill in the air today," said Randolph, settling overblown roses in a vase by the bed. "These are the last, I'm afraid, they are quite falling apart, even the bees have lost interest. And here, I've brought an autumn specimen, a sycamore leaf." Another day, and though the air was mild, he built a fire by which they toasted marshmallows and sipped tea from cups two hundred years old. Randolph did imitations. He was Charlie Chaplin to a T, Mae West too, and his cruel take-off on Amy made Joel double up on the bed, finally absorbed in laughter for its own sake, and Randolph said ha! ha! he would show him something really funny: "I'll have to fix up, though," he said, his eyes quickly alive, and made as if to leave the room; then, releasing the doorknob, he looked back. "But if I do… you mustn't laugh." And Joel's answer was a laugh, he couldn't stop, it was like hiccups. Randolph's smile ran off his face like melted butter, and when Joel cried, "Go on, you promised," he sat down, nursing his round pink head between his hands: "Not now," he said wearily, "some other time."