My Heart Laid Bare Part 7

Brothers and sisters by blood are brothers and sisters by the soul.

Do you doubt, children? You must never doubt!

To doubt is to already lose The Game.

Covet where you wish, but never in vain.

Would this earthly globe were but the size of an apple, that it might be

plucked, devoured!

(By one who has the courage to pluck, and to bite hard.) You cannot measure a live wolf.

Past?-but the graveyard of Future.

Future?-but the womb of Past.

It is never enough to have confidence in oneself; one must be the means of

confidence in others.

The first refuge of the clever man is G.o.d-their G.o.d.

The final refuge of the clever man is G.o.d-our G.o.d.

Never discover a strategy if another can be made to imagine he has

discovered it.

The world has been divided into fools and knaves?-yes, more precisely into

fools, knaves, and those who so divide the world.

To penetrate another's heart is to conquer it.

To penetrate another's soul is to acquire it.

Pity?-why, then cowardice.

Remorse?-why, then defeat.

Guilt?-the fool's luxury.

A gentleman will not soil his gloves, but will soil his hands.

A lady will not reveal her secret, except for the right price.

To us who are pure, all things are pure.

No success without another's failure.

No failure without another's success.

To feel another's pain is defeat.

To turn the other cheek, a betrayal.

In Aesop, the foolish vixen boasts of her numerous progeny and challenges the

lioness how many offspring she has had. The proud lioness says, "Only

one-but a lion."

The Game must never be played as if it were but a Game.

Nor the Game-board traversed as if it were but the "world."

Out of Muirkirk mud, a lineage to conquer Heaven.

To suck marrow, children, is our nourishment.

To such marrow, yet be heaped with grat.i.tude.

Yet never seduced, children, by the music of your own voice.

Control, control, and again control: and what prize will not be ours?

Die for a whim-if it is your own.

Honor is the secret subject of all catechisms.

For where there is love there can be no calculation.

For where there is calculation there can be no love.

And where The Game is abandoned, mere mortality awaits.

"As above, so below"-all on Earth is ordained.

And where ordained, blameless.

For, children, I say unto you- Crime? Then complicity.

Complicity? Then no crime.

And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness becomes light.

"THE MARK OF CAIN"

A day, and a night, and no word from Thurston. And no word from Harwood. And Abraham Licht hid the dread in his heart. Thinking, As I am a man, I must accept disaster no less than triumph.

Thinking, One day I will record it all. My Heart Laid Bare; a Memoir of Abraham Licht, American. I will shrink from no fact however shameful. I will speak in frank, forthright language. I will spare no one, especially not myself. A posthumous work perhaps. The royalties to go to my children. Not a pseudonymous work, for I am a man of pride. What I have done, I have done. What has been done to me, I have also done.

Yet not knowing how swiftly disaster would sweep upon him, though he prowled the marsh, sucking at his cigar for courage, rehearsing certain dramatic scenes of the memoir. And then there came a time when the family was in jeopardy, owing to a stupid blunder of the least talented of my sons . . . .

PAST NINE O'CLOCK of a warm, sulfurous midsummer evening, and the family still seated at the dining-room table; Abraham Licht at the head, and Katrina in her ap.r.o.n close by; little Darian and Esther allowed up past their bedtimes yet another night (for this was still a time of celebration); Millie's beautiful face aglow in firelight, and her hair no longer plaited but cascading over her shoulders; and Elisha, buoyant Elisha quite the dandy in a wing-collar shirt, tieless, his handsome face gleaming in firelight as for the benefit of Darian and Esther he recounted the sensational exploits of the notorious Black Phantom of Chautauqua Falls whom police in a half dozen states were hunting for his "Negro audacity" (as the Hearst papers described it) in boldly robbing three white persons of more than $400,000. The children listened wide-eyed, looking to their father to see how he reacted; for they knew that robbing was wrong-wasn't it?-yet, perhaps, there were times when robbing was admirable-was it? Even Katrina, who disapproved of such exaggerated tales, as she called them, couldn't help laughing, hiding her face in her ap.r.o.n. And Millie interrupted with little cries of delight, clapping her hands and declaring that she would have loved to be a witness to such a crime-"That is, if the Black Phantom wouldn't have robbed me of all my possessions."

Elisha, basking in the family's attention, said, frowning, "The man was said to be a gentleman, despite being Ne-grow. Apparently such is possible. De facto, it is not only possible, but is. So he would not have asked a thing of you, Millie." Saying to Father at the head of the table, "Isn't it true, Father, the Black Phantom robs only those who deserve to be robbed?"

Abraham Licht said, with satisfaction, "Certainly. But there are many so."

"Many so!"-Elisha grinned, and clapped his hands.

At this point Darian asked innocently, "But how do you know who deserves to be robbed?-how can you tell?"

All the adults laughed, though not cruelly.

"Yes," said Esther, anxiously, "-how can you tell? And do you shoot them? Is there a gun?"

"Why, Esther, what a thing to say," Abraham Licht exclaimed, not knowing if he should laugh, or frown, "-what a thing for a sweet little girl to imagine. Who has been talking of guns?" (In fact, Elisha had been talking of the gun the Black Phantom had used, demonstrating how it must have been brandished-according to accounts he'd read in the papers.) "Who has been talking of shooting? Unburdening fools of their excess cash is a very different matter from shooting them; for, after all, not even a fool deserves to be hurt. You can argue that a fool deserves our protection. A fool, like a sheep, is to be cherished."

Elisha said, continuing his own line of thought, "It is a tricky procedure, Darian, and Esther, for the problem lies in the fact that, of so many who deserve to be robbed, which in the United States of the present time is a considerable number of 'the wealthy'-the 'ruling cla.s.s'-only a small percentage ever are robbed; there are not enough trained robbers to execute the task. Mainly, these individuals are the ones who do the robbing. Not at gunpoint but through 'business.' So there's injustice. There's disproportion. Of the hundreds of persons at Chautauqua Falls who richly deserved to be robbed, only three were robbed. That's unfair!"

Again, the adults laughed. But Darian and Esther only glanced worriedly from face to face, their eyes ringed in fatigue from the late hour, and so much excitement in the normally quiet Muirkirk residence, and this sense of-what?-playful confusion, a complex and protracted joke or game they could not comprehend? Unfit for The Game. Seeing Darian's hurt, baffled expression, Millie leaned over to kiss him, saying, "Don't mind, Darian, if they tease. They are always teasing. One day, just you wait, you will do the teasing."

Since Millie's arrival home she'd been impressed, as she said several times, by her youngest brother's "prodigious gift" for music. She believed he should be trained professionally, brought to New York City and enrolled in a music school. Why, he might be launched upon a stage career as a sort of music-genius Tom Thumb-"Audiences would adore him." (Abraham Licht did not like this idea at all. Tom Thumb, he said, was a genuine midget-"And my son, I hope, is a normal child.") In any case, Millie said, she'd heard many professional pianists who played no better than Darian, and many who played much worse. And Darian would be only ten years old, and could easily pa.s.s for seven or eight. "I could present him on stage. I have just the idea for candlelight, and his costume," Millie said.

(On the first evening of Millie's and Elisha's arrival home, Darian had played the spinet for them, in the parlor; a number of the compositions Reverend Woodc.o.c.k had a.s.signed him, and Bach's "Inventions"; on the second evening, at their request, he played one of his own compositions-"Welcome Home." This was a strange piece with lengthy arpeggio flights, a crashing of chords up and down the keyboard, spirited, yet solemn; noisy, yet subdued; clearly, Millie and Elisha didn't know what to make of it, any more than Father or Katrina knew, but they applauded enthusiastically just the same. On the third evening, Darian played another of his own compositions, t.i.tled "Now We Are Happy," this time on a harmonica and an ingenious foot-operated drum of his invention, while Esther stood beside him humming several eerily high-pitched notes, wordless. In contrapuntal design rivalrous melodies rose and fell, rising out of nowhere and trailing gradually into silence . . . as if the final note could not be found. "Darian, how strange! How wonderful," Millie said, vigorously applauding, though with doubtful eyes, "-but when you begin your stage career, you know, you will have to play real music, by real composers. Music that pleases the audience's ear, not just your own.") Next day, to his relief, Darian was taken aside by Father, who told him to pay no attention to Millie. "The girl means well, of course. But things come so naturally for her, as for Elisha, she confuses you with herself; she imagines that a career as a musical 'Tom Thumb' would suit you, as it might have suited her. But don't worry, son, your father doesn't intend to expose you to the rigors of any profession, at least not without your consent, and not for a long time. For I've promised your mother . . . I am a man who does not go back on his word."