Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

In the evenings, even from the first, he read a good deal. Khardov brought him the books — elaborate, heavy treatises on government; heroic, copious histories of an older world; statements of political philosophy; royalist tracts; the diaries and secret papers of personages in famous courts; and novels, many novels. It was the novels which he read with an increasing absorption. Gradually he began to return more and more of the other books unread and to demand of Khardov that he bring him still more novels. These were always romances, books with involved, old-fashioned plots. He had no illusions about their art, but he experienced a never diminishing satisfaction and excitement in the stories of depressed but golden lovers whose difficulties were invariably that they lived in worlds of frozen status. He read with a double tension. Delighted with the tales of the sons of struggling merchants, of traveling circus performers, and the strong, tanned boys of gamekeepers, he sensed in them, in their careful language, in their unaccountable benevolence in worlds fraught with evil and terror, in their almost jejune resistance to temptation, what their petite, soprano-throated girl friends sensed in them — a quality, an essence which would not submerge, which popped like a cork to the surface in even the wildest storms and displacements of their condition. For him it was not the wart or mole or scarlet pimpernel which in the last act of their drama finally brought recognition even from the enemy who stood to lose because the prince was found. It was not the superficial deformity, scar of quality so important to others that was important to him. It was rather a concept, the validity of which he came increasingly to recognize as he raced through the novels — a concept of blood itself. He knew his man long before the dullard others did, spotting them their familiarity with the telltale wound inflicted on the inner thigh by ruffians at birth. A man’s blood was his character, he knew. At the same time he experienced a real anxiety that for once the heroine would not find out in time, that the gypsy would be killed before things could work themselves out. But it was not the hero’s marriage which he longed for; he did not yearn for the pale and distant princess. He wanted one thing for the hero, one thing only. He wanted restoration. To him it was a daring and delicious word. He said it under his breath.

It was a pleasant life, but he knew, even from the beginning, that the sense of special condition he felt so deeply was not forever to be enjoyed passively. All right, he reasoned. I have known for a long time that I am different. But I know no more about myself than does a small child. I have no facts .

Instead of gratitude to Khardov he felt a growing resentment. The quality, the essence he could identify so easily in the heroes he read about, he recognized in himself. He was something —a prince of the blood — something other than what he seemed. To be grateful for a few fine clothes, for Khardov’s open deference, for the leisure he enjoyed, for the promise swinging on his chest, was foolish. Like feeling gratitude toward the clerk who hands out the money when one makes a withdrawal from the bank. What he wanted now, needed , was not the small change of personal assurance, nor Khardov’s blank checks on his specialness — conspiratorial drafts on a vague but somehow splendid future. He needed only what his blood demanded: restoration. If one wanted it for stranger/heroes in foolish romances, one insisted upon it for oneself.

Toward his twentieth year he went to Khardov.

“Look here, Khardov,” he said. “You’ve been hinting at things long enough. What is it you know?”

“Don’t be angry, sir. Please.”

“Angry? Of course I’m angry. You act more like a family retainer than a father. The things you know . Who are you? What am I to you?”

“Haven’t I provided? I’m not rich, you know that. But I have provided. You’ve never wanted.”

“I know that. I know all that. You’ve been very kind. But there are too many things I don’t understand. Please, Khardov. What do you know about me?”

“I know that you are worthy to be who you are.”

“Who is that?”

“Please, sir. I can only give things. The other I have nothing to do with.”

“Am I a prince?” he asked suddenly. “Is there a plan, Khardov? A prince, Khardov? Am I a boy of the bulrushes?” He spoke feverishly, excitedly, his voice shrill and unseemly in the little room.

“The world has tired of princes,” Khardov said sadly. He pointed in the direction of the watches, rioting, noisy and disorderly in his shop. “Listen. Listen, sir. Sundials on a green lawn were once enough. To know the hour, to distinguish, if need be, between morning and afternoon. That was all.”

“I know all that. What have I to do with that?”

“The world has thrown away its princes. It ships them downstream in baskets. The gypsies hide them.”

“Khardov, please,” he said impatiently. He looked at the obedient old man, so different from himself. Then he had an insight which seemed to explain everything. “Is this my country?” he asked. Somehow it had never occurred to him that he might not be in his own country. “Is this my country?” he repeated.

“This is no man’s country,” Khardov said. Again he pointed to the watches. “It is their country,” he said contemptuously. “This is no prince’s country.”

“Ah,” he said. “Khardov, no more mystery, please. We are tired of mystery.” He took Khardov’s hand and brought it, unresisting, to his breast. “The medallion,” he said. He released the hand. It fell swiftly, almost smartly, to Khardov’s side and came to rest ritualistically against the seams of his trousers. “Often I feel its weight,” he said. “That it will crush me.” He smoothed his shirt where Khardov’s hand had pressed against it. “At night,” he said slowly, “when I am sick with wonder about myself, I can sometimes feel a throbbing, and I don’t know if it is my heart or the medallion itself.” He heard, unpleasantly, the excitement in his voice and was oddly conscious of his body. Queerly detached, he sensed that his pupils were dilating and the eyes faintly, redly filming. His breathing, under his words, was choppy and passionate, indelicate as a lover’s. “I can’t stay on here,” he said, his voice rising. “I have my country to discover.”

“Things happen as they will,” Khardov said.

That night Khardov came to him in his room. He was not asleep. All the countries of the world jostled each other in his mind, their borders elastic, shifting endlessly, the continents tumbling from the globe like waxed fruits spilling from a basket. He was a conqueror, untried but powerful, seeing it all from the dizzying slopes of hope and expectation. Khardov stood patiently by the foot of the bed until he was noticed.

“Yes, Khardov, what is it?”

“For your journey,” Khardov said, extending an envelope. “Some money for you, sir. You will need money.”

He took the envelope and tore it open quickly. There was more money than Khardov could possibly have saved. The box, he thought, it wasn’t all used up. He held this in reserve.

“Thank you, Khardov,” he said. He watched the humble man still standing tentatively at the foot of his bed. Suddenly expansive, he got out of the bed and embraced Khardov warmly. “Thank you for many things,” he said. “You are a loyal man. We’ll not forget you.”

In a month he had left Khardov and the country he had always lived in but had never known. He was outward bound, determined to choose his destinations as one picks one grape from a cluster rather than another. For a year, while his money held out, he reeled across the world, his itinerary open, himself uncommitted to plans, his own vague ideas of destination easily deflected by any chance overheard conversation of cabin boys, travel buffs, monied widows on journeys of solace. He steamed into strange ports, many of them merely names to him, but each time the tugs pulled the great lumbering vessel into the narrow slip, he found himself on the deck beside the other travelers, those coming home indistinguishable from those, like himself, who were only tourists. For him, however, there was the excited hope that this time perhaps he had come home, and with the others he stared down into the upturned faces of the waving, cheering crowds gathered at the pier to meet the boat. At these times his joy was uncontrollable. His neck prickling, he grinned and laughed at the brassy anthems. It was a year of splendid arrivals.