Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

“ You’re here,” he said slyly.

The man in the sidecar laughed, and the sound was echoed by a low chuckle from the sentry box. He walked to the box quickly and peered into the blackness. The gateman disparaged him with the same clicking sounds the man in the sidecar had made. “Here now. Here now. You’ve no business with me.”

He went back to the gate and placed his hands, wide apart, on two of the iron bars. “Please,” he said gently, “could you stand up a moment? I must be sure you’re the duke.”

“Oh, so that’s it. You are an anarchist. Probably want to get a shot at me. Let me warn you, the gateman is armed. Now, what is it you want?”

He hesitated.

“All right. All right. I’m the duke. Isn’t that right, gateman?”

“That’s right, sir,” said the gateman sepulchrally inside the dark sentry box.

“There. You see? Now go ahead with your business. I’ve got business too, you know.”

It was ridiculous. If they chose to play with him he would be helpless. They would not care enough about his claims even to reject them. This was no disinterested duke on a yacht. Sick at heart, he thought wearily of the man who wanted to have his face on postage stamps.

“What is it, please?” the man in the sidecar said.

All he could do was to tell his story and hope it was the duke to whom he was talking. “Very well,” he said. “I can only assume that so wise a man as the duke would not send a servant to hear business as urgent as my own.” Again the gateman laughed, though this time the sound was muffled, as though he had put his wrist in his mouth.

It would be best to begin quickly, he thought. Addressing himself to the concealed man, he told him first of the medallion, then of Khardov’s oblique hints, and finally of his own great expectations. Spoken aloud, it did not sound like very good evidence even to himself, but the man in the sidecar did not interrupt him and he hoped that he had struck some responsive chord. He finished by adding that he was satisfied that he had no legitimate claims in any of the other countries he had visited; it seemed to him that this added somehow to the force of his claim in this country. “There’s one other thing,” he said. “You see, there’s a strong resemblance between myself and the duke.” He waited for some response from the man in the sidecar. Finally there was a long, loud laugh. He stood in terrible confusion as the laughter of the man in the sidecar mingled with the laughter of the gateman. Soon both were laughing and coughing uncontrollably.

He turned to go. As he walked off, the laughter stopped and a voice called out clearly behind him. “No, no. Don’t go. Let’s have a look at you.” He turned around. The man had stepped from the sidecar and come out into the open. He had a full beard.

The duke came up to the gate and stood there looking at him. “Well, well,” he said finally. “There is a resemblance. Not as striking as all that, of course, but we’ll see, we’ll see. Let’s have a look at that medallion.”

He waited to see if it was a trick.

“Come on, come on,” the duke urged.

He walked back to the gate and again took the medallion from beneath his shirt. He did not remove it, but standing very close to the gate and turning the medallion sideways, handed it through the bars to the duke. The duke held it in his palm, studying it, turning it over to look at its back. Finally he let it go and the medallion swung back, clanging against the bars. He slipped it back inside his clothes and buttoned his shirt wordlessly, finally adjusting his tie.

“This is marvelous,” the duke said. “A pretender. Why, we haven’t had a pretender in the family for over two hundred years. I wonder if we still know how to deal with them. We used to be very good, you know, very efficient in a crude sort of way. Stabbings, hangings, forest ambushes, that sort of thing. That will all have changed by now, of course, but we’ll work something out. A pretender . I’m delighted, sir.” The duke thrust his hand between the gateposts. He hesitated, then shook the outstretched hand. “Well, now,” the duke said, “come inside. Gateman . We’ve much to talk about. This Khardov is quite a man.”

He got into the sidecar with the duke and was driven by the gateman back to the main house, the duke talking animatedly to him all the way.

“Let’s see now,” the duke said when they were sitting together in the book-walled study, “you’ll have to decide whose son you are. Have you thought much about that? Rupert’s? Edward’s? Eleanor’s? My own, perhaps, had not an unfortunate hunting accident disqualified me from kingmaking. It’s a delicate point in your scheme. You see, it would not have been worthwhile for anyone outside the immediate family to have done you in. A prince’s boy, that would be the very thing. Earls have more children, of course, but standing so far down in the line of succession, they’re rarely in anyone’s way. We’re all quite comfortable with earls, really. They make splendid, non-competitive cousins.”

“I was wrong to come,” he said. “I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

“Not at all. I perfectly understand. You want to be a king. Or a prince. Or even a duke, eh? I know. It’s very important. Blood is the one absolute left us.”

“Please,” he said.

“The World’s Last Pretender. That’s quite a title in itself. The one man so thoroughly detached from the way things are that he still aspires to a way of life which everyone else long ago dismissed as legitimately desirable. That’s refreshing. Why, it’s more — it’s flattering. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“All right,” he said. “I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

He returned to the docks. It was not clear to him why he felt as he did but he was surprised to realize that he was not angry. He felt only weariness and a wish to be done with things. He had banked all these years neither on evidence, nor on manufacturing a case, nor on logic; blood itself was his case, the medallion its only sign. Nothing else had mattered. He had banked on recognition, had trusted in a consummation which would come about simply because there were no alternatives. His physiognomy was his scarlet pimpernel, his strawberry of quality on rosy backside. If there were to be resistance he would no longer put forward his claims. It was strange, but in all this time the duke’s laughter had been the only valid argument against those claims. Had he been what he thought he was, there would have been no laughter; there would have been only the meeting of eyes, the swift joy of reclamation.

That evening a man asked to see him. He went wearily to the foreman’s office, and as he stepped into the dim room he made out the forms of several men sitting around a cold and ancient stove. They spoke to each other in low tones. Seeing him, one looked up.

“Come over here, fellow, would you? There’s a man,” he said.

“Yes?” he asked.

“What’s the story?” another said quietly. “You got anything on the duke?”

“What’s that?”

“We’ve heard,” someone else said.

“Let’s have a look at that badge. How about it?”

“Who are you men?” he asked.

“Journalists.”

“Reporters, fellow. Now what’s it all about? You’ve got claims against the Crown? What’s there to it?”

“ ‘DOCKER WOULD BE KING,’ ” a man said, reading an imaginary headline. “ ‘IMMIGRANT CARGO HANDLER SAYS HE’S NATION’S RIGHTFUL MAJESTY!’ ”

“ ‘PRETENDER HAS MEDALLION WHICH TRACES LINEAGE TO ANCIENT DAYS OF KINGDOM.’ ”

“‘ “AMAZING RESEMBLANCE TO DUKE” SAYS DUKE’S OWN GATEMAN.’ ”