“I must ask you to decide quickly,” continued the antiquity man. “We
all have affairs. And if it should become necessary for us to answer
those questions of which you spoke, it would be better for witnesses to
be able to say that we were not in here too long this afternoon.”
Michael saw that, too. And all the blood in him quickened at the chance
of life. Life! His life had not been such a success. Why not wipe the
slate clean and start over again? It ironically came to him that Aurora
would call that romance--to be cornered here like a rat in a trap
while four men he didn’t know stared at him with a candle! But why, on
the other hand, should he give in to them? That was cowardice, even if
it was irony, too--to die for what he didn’t want and didn’t believe
in.... The immensity of the dilemma was too much for him. Irresistible
force, immovable obstacle--that flashed inconsequently into his head.
Was the light going out? The room grew darker. He tried again to clear
his throat. It suddenly came to him that he didn’t even know who these
people were, and what they wanted him to become....
The antiquity man reached forward, lifted the coffee-cup out of its
silver holder, and dropped it on the stone floor. Michael stared down
stupidly at the bits of broken porcelain. They were like the bits of
broken tiles. He wondered if his trousers were spattered....
The young man took his hand out of his pocket and opened the door.
V
How do I know? I don’t. I only know what Michael told me. Which wasn’t
much. He was like that, you see! Then he was too mortally afraid of
its getting back here. He wouldn’t open up as little as he did till he
heard Aurora had married again! And here you ask who and when and where
and why. O Lord! If you would only let a man tell his story and stop
when he is through!
However, even you must know that Constantinople enjoys quite a
reputation for liveliness, of sorts, and that it was particularly
lively just before and just after the German War. It was then that
I got out there, as a courier--while the armistice was on. Although
it was a good bit after the episode of the coffee cup, I saw quite a
number of people who remembered Michael. Of course a good many other
people and things had disappeared since his day--including, I suppose,
the antiquity man and his bombs. A few Turks or Tartars might have told
me something about that, if they lived to tell tales. But of course I
had yet to hear about the antiquity man--the interesting part of him,
I mean. And witnesses had seen Michael drive away from the _khan_ in a
closed carriage.
What no witness had seen was the number of the carriage, or the door
it drove to. And they told me another yarn about a carriage driving
full tilt at dusk into the open draw of the Bridge. I asked myself if
poor old Michael were still sitting in it. That version, at any rate,
is the one now accepted by Aurora. She has given up her tombstone and
her quatrain. She perceives that it isn’t every lady who can boast one
husband at home among the stars and another sitting in a brougham at
the bottom of the Golden Horn.
So I gave Michael up. Perhaps I did it the more easily because there
were so many other things to think about: couriering, relieving,
reporting--any number of odd jobs connected with all that mess out
there. They took me hither and yon about the Balkans and the Black
Sea, on errands that might have sounded quite fantastic before the war
plunged thousands of unsuspecting people into adventures a hundred
times more so. And one day I landed in Batum.
Everybody who lives in Batum swears it’s the dreariest hole on the face
of the earth. An English officer I met even sighed piteously to me
over the lost delights of Aden! However, I found Batum very amusing,
with its higglety-pigglety air of somebody having stirred up a piece
of Turkey with a piece of Russia and having turned the mixture out to
cool in a corner of the Riviera. To be sure, there are rather too many
Georgians and Lazzes and other queer customers prowling around; and
the Hôtel de France does too little to live up to its name. Also, that
cooling process will evidently take time. But the setting of cloudy
white peaks and a misnamed sea is quite worthy of the Riviera. And I
must insist that the Boulevard is a really perfect little park. You
should see how close the palms and the cypresses march to the white
shingle.
Well, I was warming a tin chair in that park one afternoon, watching
the operatic crowd, admiring the great wild hills of their Caucasus
through their mannered cypresses, listening to the incantation of their
Black Sea through their Glinka, and thinking of nothing in particular,
when I suddenly made two discoveries. One was that that Coon song we
used to sing about “Lou, Lou, I love you” came out of _Life for the
Czar_. The other was that Michael, our vanished reaper and binder, far
from having disappeared in the Golden Horn with Aurora’s phantom coupé
or from having otherwise evaporated, sat solid and sunburned in another
tin chair of the Boulevard, eyeing me. To be sure he was moustached,
uniformed, medalled, booted, disguised as a kind of bastard Cossack
with all manner of strange accoutrements and insignia. But it was
Michael. What is more he presently grinned, albeit a trifle sheepishly,
pulling up his tin chair beside mine.
“I was afraid you were going to be melodramatic,” he said. “As it is,
let’s have a chat.”
We had a chat. Tin chairs in parks always remind me of that chat. At
the time I thought it the most interesting chat I ever had. That was
before I proposed to Alice.
“I suppose they think I took the money, eh?” Michael finally asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “They think you took the money.”
“H’m. I’ve made it up to them without their knowing. So that’s all
right. And--what about Aurora?”
I told him about Aurora. He was longer with his “H’m” that time. Do
you know? I believe the fellow was human enough to be jealous of an
astrologer whom he didn’t envy! However, he ended by letting out
another:
“So that’s all right.”
“And you?” I ventured.
He didn’t say anything at first. He sat there fingering his gewgaws and
staring at the sea.
“How’s a man to know whether he’s all right or all wrong?” he finally
demanded.
“Hell!” objected I. “It isn’t your fault if you happen to be sitting in
Batum instead of in Zerbetta--or at the bottom of the Golden Horn. You
couldn’t have invented such an end for yourself if you had tried till
you were black in the face. That antiquity gang is responsible, not
you. But I bet--”
But I concluded not to. As for Michael, he continued to study the
afternoon blue of the sea. Down the edge of it a steamer trailed a long
dark line of smoke toward the West.
“I suppose I could go back home if I really wanted to,” he said, “now
that my antiquity man has pulled off his republic. Yet after all, what
good would it do? You can see for yourself--The worst of it, though, is
that I don’t really want to. You get interested in people, you know, in
spite of yourself--even when they have Jew noses and jabber Armenian.
I’d like to see their show through. Then they’ve been no end decent to
me. I’ve a vine and fig tree of my own--up Ararat way! I have a house
to live in, and a horse to ride, and a wife to beat. I do it, too.
I’ve learned that much,” he pronounced darkly, in a tone that struck
me at first as irrelevant. On consideration, however, I decided it
wasn’t. “Anyhow,” he went on, “I’m alive; and I can’t say I’m sorry.
The funny thing about it is that I never knew it till I came so near
stepping off. I’ve had some pretty narrow squeaks since then, too. And
my chances of dropping in my boots are still a lot brighter than yours.
All the same, it’s better than peddling those damned hay-rakes. But
once in a while,” the inconsequent devil blurted out, “I come down here
and listen to the band.”
Now can you imagine a man being like that? But if you ever breathe a
word to a living soul--!