Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“What makes you think I know?”

“My dear chap!… Are you joking?… Why, of course, it was your allusion to Judas.”

“Oh, I see—my allusion to Judas.…”

“—The piece that has fallen over, as you so nicely put it!”

“Oh—that!… So that is Judas?… But I didn’t, to tell the truth, know it at all. I knew nothing whatever!”

The Jew smiled at this with an excess of politeness, but the smile slowly faded.

“But—how extraordinary!… You really knew nothing?”

“As I say—nothing whatever.”

“But how on earth, then, did you come to speak of the piece that has fallen over?”

They exchanged a long look over this question, as if (absurd! Dace found time to say to himself) it was, somehow, of tremendous import. But decidedly, it was of tremendous import. Whether the man were mad or not—and for the first moment Dace clearly formulated to himself that possibility—or whether he himself was on the verge of madness, did not seem particularly to matter. What was remarkable, or uncanny, was the way in which their sanity, or madness, brought them, in every consciousness, together. That singular vision of the chessmen—how explain it? His mental eye reverted to it, and he saw it now more sharply than ever. He saw the criss-crossing of shadows among the pieces, he saw deeply carved on the crown of the king nearest him the letters “I.N.R.”—(and no doubt “I” was turned away from him); and there was Judas lying at the left-hand corner of the board, apparently on the point of rolling off. He put out his finger to it, tried to lift it—it was immovable, as if glued. But it must be moved! He felt the gathering within himself of a great wave of energy, all directed to a huge decuman crash against the implacable obstacle.… Then he removed his hand from the edge of the small taboret (which he had hardly noticed) and leaned back in his chair, once more with a sense of temptation undergone and partially resisted. But again, it was a yielding to some small faint beckoning, some fugitive far signal, that put the next words on his tongue.

“Well,” he said, and he laughed a little uneasily, “I’m sure I can’t explain it. But no sooner had you spoken of seeing the chessmen in dreams than I had, on the spot, a kind of waking dream myself. I’ve just had it again. I didn’t see all the pieces plainly—but plain enough was the piece which you say is Judas, and plain enough was the inscription on the crown of one of the kings.”

“You mean the letters—?”

“I. N. R. I.”

“Ah, yes. Exactly.… Rex Judæorum.… How extraordinary!”

“To put it very mildly!”

“What?… Oh, I don’t mean that.”

“I beg your pardon, then—but what do you mean?”

The Jew regarded him searchingly; Dace felt himself being slowly fathomed and gave himself agreeably to the experience, with a sense that he must keep still, let the plummet go straight.

“I mean”—the Jew was deliberate—“that while you see so much, without assistance—oh, certainly, quite without assistance—you nevertheless don’t see all .”

“All?”

“Yes—that’s what I find extraordinary.… When, downstairs in the shop, you suddenly asked me ‘And the piece that has fallen over—what piece is that?’—how could I but assume that your identification was complete?… I—as you saw—accepted you. And now, you say, you didn’t at all recognize the piece as Judas! Certainly, that is very peculiar. I must suppose, however, as all the circumstances urge, that you would, had you been given time, have named Judas yourself. Yes, undoubtedly that is the explanation.”

The look which the Jew turned on Dace shone with the most perfect innocence and trust, and he replied to it with a grave nod. The logic was reasonable—was it not? Yet something in what the Jew said perplexed and escaped him; he went over it slowly, aware that somewhere, in this small plausible structure of words, was one word which was not so much a “block” as a “window”—it let through a light which was disquietingly suggestive of a space beyond space, of a depth which yawned beneath the solid, a world that was, as he was at last to phrase it, “other.” He found this word quickly enough—it was “identification”—and looked hard through it. What on earth had he meant by it?… It was simply a depth, a gleam, and nothing more. Yet, for some reason, he decided not to challenge it—not, at any rate, immediately. Wouldn’t it be more fruitful simply to wait before it exactly as one would wait before a lighted window, to find out at last what it was precisely that moved on the other side? Was it not also essential that he should in everything take his cue from the Jew?

It was therefore with a sense of the imperative necessity of delaying, of somehow gaining time, that he rose from his chair as if merely to look about him. The room to which he had been brought was extraordinary—a museum in microcosm. The candle, placed on the white marble mantel precariously between a tall much-figured clock and a Han horse, lighted the chamber only sufficiently to show its richness and its confusion. The only cleared space was that immediately before the fire, where the two chairs faced each other obliquely on the worn Persian carpet: for the rest, narrow lanes led hither and thither among a chaos of furniture and oddments which, in the gloom, had amazingly the air of a jungle. Chairs stood on tables, ivories and pictures balanced on chairs, shields, swords, and suits of chain mail hung on the walls with tapestries and Chinese paintings. Half a dozen clocks were ticking confusedly, only one of them visible. And dust was everywhere, thick, gritty dust, deposit of decades—on the mantel, the clock, the floor, the tables, here and there finger-marked. Even the mirror was dusty. And Dace, feeling the eyes of the Jew upon his back, and looking into the glass above the candle flame, to examine the shopkeeper at his leisure, was able to see of him, in the veiled gloom, only the dimmest of outlines. He turned and faced his interlocutor.

“You have some fine things here,” he murmured. “That horse, for example.”

The Jew was inert. It was as if he knew Dace to be evading him. He stared a moment, then dropped his eyes.

“Ah—that little Han horse.”

He was not interested in the horse, that was clear; and did not intend talking of it. But as Dace again sank into his chair, sighing, the Jew leaned sharply toward him, and smiled. Dace was touched by something in this smile—it was singularly gentle and friendly, a little humble. Why was it, nevertheless, that it seemed so oddly belied by the eyes? For in the eyes, lidded like a parrot’s, something disquieting flickered.

“You do not yet altogether trust me—do you!” said the Jew, still smiling.

Dace laughed outright, but not entirely with conviction. He was still trying, as it were, to gain time.

“Trust you? But why on earth shouldn’t I? Is it any question—”

“Oh, not of business, no! Certainly not.… We are not concerned with business.… Isn’t it really,” he lowered his tone a little, “something very much more important?”

“Important?”

“Yes. Isn’t it at bottom simply the question of our trusting— completely trusting—one another?”

Dace looked hard into the little eyes, which, in intensity of meaning, seemed to blaze.

“Oh, that!” he exclaimed gently. He directed his unseeing stare at the fire in an effort to conceal his confusion. Where, where on earth, he cried to himself, am I going? He felt slightly dizzy, but managed to affect a calm. Whether the shopkeeper was a madman or a prophet seemed for the present a wholly irrelevant question.