The Six Messiahs

chapter 9

Eilleen tried to steal a glimpse of the sketch pad in Jacob's hand, but he shooed her away with mock annoyance. She sighed and continued to stare wistfully out the window as he instructed, only too accustomed to following a man's directions, watching his pencil working furiously out of the corner of her eye but unable to see the results. Oppressive heat shimmered the horizon line as the train pulled its way through a winding arroyo and began to climb from the flat, sandy landscape into broken promontories of rock.

What went haywire inside a man's head when exposed to a woman's physical charms? Eileen had been bedeviled by the question for years: Put an otherwise sensible man in the company of an uncommonly attractive female—she had enough perspective untainted by wishful vanity to include herself in that category—and the poor fellow was either rendered speechless or consumed by an impulse to possess and dominate her.

She rolled the issue around in her mind: Is this madness a reaction to something I'm doing or the work of invisible biological mechanisms? Either way, short of entering a convent there didn't seem to be a thing she could do about it; nature did not yield to logic. Sex itself wasn't the problem, anyway; it was these damn mating rituals. Better to be born a cat or dog and confine all the torment over who sleeps with whom to quick seasonal frenzies. Part of her sentiments looked forward to getting past the breeding years so she could be treated like any other human being.

On the other hand, old girl, she corrected herself—remembering her worn face in the mirror that morning and how welcome were the full thrusts of a man's attentions when she felt receptive—let's not be too hasty.

"Let me see if I understood you," she said, resurrecting a recent conversation. "You're a certified member of your clergy, doesn't that give you the authority to communicate directly with God?"

"Oh, thank heavens, no; only Moses and a few other Old Testament Jews were saddled with that responsibility, and even their conversations were usually filtered through some sort of intermediary; an angel or a burning bush," said Jacob, bent over his drawing.

"But there must be hundreds of Christian ministers in this country who believe they receive the word of God straight from the horse's mouth."

"Yes," said Jacob, with a sad smile, "I know."

"But if you have no contact with whoever He is, how can you claim to perform God's will?"

"A rabbi makes no such claim, my dear; that is far too important a job to be entrusted to professionals. If God speaks to anyone it is only through the voice of the human heart and everyone you meet has one of those."

"Theatrical producers aside."

"Not to mention certain neighborhoods in New York," said Jacob. "My people have a belief that the existence of the world is sustained by the righteousness of a small number of perfectly ordinary people who attract no attention to themselves and very quietly go about their business."

"Like saints, then."

"Hidden saints, you might call them, seeking no reward or recognition for what they do. Pass them in the street, you'd hardly notice them; not even they have the slightest idea they are performing such essential service. But they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders."

"Sounds more like a job for the Messiah," she said.

"This whole Messiah business is so terribly overemphasized. ..."

"You don't believe in the Messiah?"

"There is a tradition in Judaism that if someone tells you the Messiah has come and you are planting a tree, first finish planting the tree and then go see about this Messiah."

"Hmm. I guess if a fellow actually was the Messiah, the last thing he'd do is run around announcing it to people."

"Not if he wants to live until suppertime. If you look at the subject historically, this idea began because the Jews in Israel wanted a man with supernatural powers to fly down from heaven and rescue them; quite a natural response to a thousand years of slavery, wouldn't you agree?"

"I'd wish for a squadron of them."

"Then Jesus came along and, regardless of who you believe he was, the rest is history. But ever since in Western culture when we approach the end of a century, as we are now, a terror that the Judgment Day is at hand awakens in us this hunger for a savior to appear and set things right. And with it the strange notion that there can only be one of these persons."

"More than one Messiah?" asked Eileen. "But he's one of a kind, isn't he, by definition?"

"In Kabbalah there is an alternative idea that has always struck me as infinitely more reasonable: Within each generation that passes through this life there are a few people alive at all times—without any self-awareness that they possess such a quality—who, if events called upon them to do so, could assume the role of the Messiah."

"The 'role' of the Messiah?"

"In the same way we are all playing a part in our own lives: strutting and fretting our hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury, signifying God knows what. If you look at it from this perspective, in the great pageant of life the Messiah is simply one of the more interesting characters."

"So what sort of events might bring these Messiahs forward?"

"I suppose the usual calamities: cataclysm, pestilence, apocalypse. Our hero needs a good entrance. Although according to this theory, He would have been standing in front of us the entire time without anyone noticing."

"What happens to these people when they don't become the Chosen One?" she asked.

"They live out their days and die in peace, the lucky creatures."

"Never knowing about the part they might otherwise have played."

"For their sake let's hope so. Messiah; what a dreadful job. Everyone throwing themselves at your feet, asking you to cure their rheumatism. Pearls of wisdom expected to fall with every utterance. All pain and suffering and never a kind word in the end."

"Speaking of being nailed to a cross, would you mind if I moved? I'm on the verge of a crippled neck."

"Not at all. Nearly finished," he said, the tip of his tongue tickling his lip in concentration.

Eileen relaxed and turned to face the other direction, looking past Jacob out the far window. "Tell me: I've always been unclear on exactly what the Messiah is supposed to do for us if He does come back."

"There is a remarkable division of opinion on this subject. One school of thought has Him riding down from the sky in the nick of time to save the world from eternal darkness. Another believes He will appear wielding a vengeful sword to judge the wicked and reward the faithful, of which there are only about twelve. A third version says if enough human beings straighten themselves out and follow the path of goodness, He would show up at once and lead us all through the pearly gates."

"I guess it depends on who you talk to."

"Not to mention the two thirds of the world who don't believe in the idea at all."

"What do you believe, Jacob?"

"Since I have come to the conclusion this is an area about which I can only confess my staggering ignorance, I've decided it's far too important a question to be answered with any degree of certainty."

"Leave certainty for the fanatics, you mean."

"Exactly. I take a wait and see approach. I'll either find out when I die or I won't." He laughed heartily, turned his sketch pad around, and showed her the finished portrait. His hand was sure and his eye discerning: Her features accurately rendered, the high cheekbones, the dramatic arch in her dark brow, but the resemblance ran deeper than appearances.

He's captured my character, she thought with a jolt: the pride, willfulness, and deep-seated vulnerability. Penetrating the layers of accumulated toughness, Jacob had seen the romantic idealist submerged below. An actress spent unnatural amounts of time before the mirror contemplating the state of her face—constantly on alert, shoring up the battlements, fighting to stave off every line and slippage—but she had not seen this forgotten gentle quality in herself for so long, the sight brought tears brimming to her eyes.

Was that naive, fresh-faced girl from Manchester still inside her? She felt a fool, weeping over such long-lost territory, but that youthful part of her nature had been good and true and Jacob had seen it clearly. She looked at the kind, frank tenderness in his azure eyes and for once didn't worry about whether her hair was in a tangle or her makeup ruined.

What does this man want from me? she wondered. Maybe nothing. What a shocking idea.

She tried to hand back the portrait, but he insisted that she keep it. She looked away, dried her eyes, blew her nose—it sounded like a trumpet to her; how attractive—and swallowed a fractured thank-you.

"If you'll excuse me for a moment," said Jacob, rising from his seat. She nodded, grateful for a moment alone, and watched him walk away.

He needed a breath of air; that queasy throbbing in his chest again; the third time since leaving Chicago. She hadn't noticed, he was sure of that, but he'd felt the blood drain from his face like water from a bath. A desperate light-headedness came over him, his vision tightening down to woozy tunnels. He gripped the handle of the car door and pulled with what little strength he could spare. Standing on the platform between the cars, now that she couldn't see him, he dedicated all his energy to recovering....

Breathe, you old fool: worse, much worse.

He doubled over, swallowing great gulps of hot desert air, feeling it sweep ineffectively through the dry bellows of his lungs; heart throbbing with effort, missing a beat, losing its rhythm—

Come on, Jacob, enough of this nonsense, you have work to do.

—tingling in his limbs, fingers going numb, knees on the verge of collapse, he held on to the chains that ringed the platform, looked down at the bright ribbon of steel rushing by beneath the train; sweat ran down off his forehead, soaked through his shirt—

This is worse than before; this is worse than it's ever been.

—his balance grew precarious, his mind shutting down to a single thought: Hold on to this chain. If he lost his grip he would pitch right over the side. Darkness grew around him, eyes barely able to see, heart skipping like a stone, hearing nothing but the tidal roar of his turbulent pulse....

One more step; so close, death hovered above him as light as a feather.

Then like flood waters cresting, the crisis began to recede; his vision cleared, widened, black spots swirling away, his lungs pulled in a satisfying breath, desperation eased, feeling returned to his fingertips. He slumped against the wall, legs quivering, but he felt the pressure loosen inside his chest. Muscles cracked like straw as he regained his footing. Terrible weakness. Blasts of hot air dried the sweat on his forehead; he stepped tentatively across the platform and coaxed open the door to the next car.

Cool and dark inside; welcoming. He smiled weakly; not so bad, was it, Jacob? He had ventured closer to the brink than ever before. If that was death's hand on his shoulder, all he had to do was turn and face it. He'd always been averse to pain, but if this was all it took to leave, it seemed effortless. A matter of surrender not struggle: Let go and quietly slip away.

Jittery light angled in through a slatted window. Jacob settled onto a bench; his eyes adjusted, his surroundings came into focus. What are all these strange shrouded shapes? Where am I, in some purgatorial waiting room?

Then he remembered seeing the cargo being loaded at the station; a protruding sleeve of red velvet curtain, a bucket of spearheads pointing toward the ceiling confirmed it. Theatrical props and sets. Trunks, wardrobes; tools in the workshop of creation.

"What an appropriate place to die," he whispered.

He heard something moving in the corner, a rasping sound, metal on stone. Arhythmic, purposeful, owing nothing to the rocking of the train. Jacob listened a minute, rallying his strength, before curiosity overtook him. He stood and moved quietly toward the sound through a narrow passage between backdrops. To either side of him: glimpses of painted mountain tops, palace walls, an impossibly lush sunset.

The sound ended. Jacob stopped. Something rattled behind him. He turned slowly. The tip of a long knife lightly touched his throat; holding the weapon a man dressed in the blue uniform of a railroad guard. A whetstone in his free hand; the sound Jacob had heard, sharpening the blade.

The man's face: Asian. Chinese? Pale and strained as Jacob imagined his own must be. His tunic loosely buttoned; bloodstains below the shoulder turning the blue a rusty violet.

This is the one they were talking about at the station, Jacob realized. The manhunt, the killer with the sword. It looks as if I'm going to die in this place after all....

If that is the case, why do I feel so calm'?

His heart had not increased a beat.

Solemn concentration on the man's face gave way to an interest equaling Jacob's; clearly he perceived no threat from the old man. Slowly the blade came down and they regarded each other with increasing fascination.

"Forgive my intrusion," said Jacob. "I was looking for a place to die."

The man studied him. Jacob had never seen eyes that betrayed so little; flat and black, pure neutrality.

"One place is the same as another," the man said, fingers expertly finding and guiding the long knife into an ornate scabbard.

What is it about this man that feels familiar? Jacob asked himself. Obviously I've never seen him before—the thought was ridiculous—but he experienced a deep, quiet sensation of affinity.

"How curious," said Jacob quietly.

The man sat on a stool between the backdrops; out of necessity, Jacob realized, seeing the blood that had already spilled onto the floor. He had dressed the wound with a band of white cotton wrapped around his chest; left side, under the arm.

A second, longer scabbard lay at his feet, identical in design to the smaller one; black lacquer highlights shining along its edges, the worn silver hilt of a sword extending from its mouth. The man carefully laid the knife scabbard alongside the sword, adjusting them to mirror the same angle.

"Dai-sho," said the man. "Large and small."

"Large and small?"

"Katana, wakizashi," he said, pointing to the sword, then the knife.

"I see."

"It is called Kusanagi." The man gingerly leaned over and picked up the sword. "The Grass Cutter."

"Why is that?"

"Legend says it belonged to Susanoo, god of thunder; he carved the sword with lightning from a mountaintop. One day Susanoo went out to hunt and left it behind; the sword became angry and cut down every tree and blade of grass on the island. Why there are so few trees in Japan...." He stopped, closed his eyes, went pale as a shiver of pain ran through him.

"It's self-propelled, this sword?" asked Jacob.

The spasm passed; the man nodded.

"That's quite a sword."

"Honoki," the man said, running his hand along the gleaming scabbard. "Hard wood: cut from the last tree the sword chopped down. Same: fish skin; from a whale Susanoo killed. Habuki: the collar; keeps blade from wearing against the sleeve. This peg fastens blade to hilt, bamboo: mekugi. Metal pins cover the peg: menuki."

Sweat dripped freely off the man's forehead; his fingers trembled. He's reciting this inventory as a meditation, Jacob decided; to stay awake, alert. Maybe to stay alive.

"What is this?" asked Jacob gently, pointing to the pommel grip-

"Kashira."

"And this?" he asked, pointing to a plate resting against the scabbard.

"Tsuba. Separates blade from handle."

The man pulled out the sword a few inches to show Jacob the tsuba; an elliptical stack of fused metal plates half an inch thick with an oxidized red patina, its exposed surface exquisitely engraved with the double image of a fiery bird, each gripping in its beak the other's flowing tail feathers: one rising from and the other falling into stylized tongues of flame.

"This is the phoenix," said Jacob, amazed to find such delicate artistry as part of a deadly weapon.

"Phoenix," said the man. "Name of city." He tilted his head toward where they had come from.

Not without irony, realized Jacob; there's more going on inside this man than meets the eye.

"To fall and rise again," said Jacob. "From the ashes."

"Long way to go." The man shrugged, referencing his own reduced condition. He laid the sword down again beside its mate, took a shallow, painful breath.

"How badly are you hurt, my friend?"

"Gunshot. Hit in back, under left shoulder."

"Would you like me to look at it?"

"You are a doctor?"

"The next best thing," said Jacob. "I'm a priest."

The man's eyes brightened as his forehead furrowed in doubt. "You? Priest?"

"What, such a look I'm getting."

"You don't look like a priest."

"Priest, rabbi, what's the difference?" said Jacob, helping ease the tunic off his shoulders. '"Where did you learn to speak English like this?"

"From a priest; he was Catholic."

"Ah, well; you see, there are priests and then there are priests."

Dried matter saturated the rough bandaging around his back; fresh dark blood still oozed from its center.

"I am priest, too," said the man.

"Are you a Buddhist?"

"Shinto."

"So you are Japanese, then."

"You have heard of shinto?"

"I have read about it and I met shinto priests from your country last year, in Chicago. Which island are you from?"

"Hokkaido."

"These men were from Honshu."

"Hai. Big city men."

"Shinto means 'the way of the gods,' doesn't it?"

Jacob peeled the bandage away from the wound; the man flinched slightly as the last layer of muslin pulled a ridge of crusted blood off the injury; a small, round hole just below the shoulder blade. Bruising around the trauma; no redness or infection yet.

"Yes. Kami-no-michi," said the man, his voice betraying no discomfort at Jacob's probing. "Kami means 'superior'; the gods above."

The bullet had entered his back in the meat of a muscle, glanced off a rib, tumbled, and exited the side of the chest; another larger hole there, two inches below. The man's breathing unaffected, the lung must be all right, Jacob thought, feeling a bit ridiculous; what am I now, suddenly a surgeon?

"You can thank the gods above you're not walking among them now," said Jacob, his own frailties forgotten for the moment. "We need something to clean this wound."

"Alcohol."

"You're in luck; there's a whole car full of actors up ahead. Where did you find this bandage?"

The man pointed to a bolt of cotton gauze sitting in a trunk nearby.

"A regular infirmary back here." Jacob retrieved the cotton from the trunk and began folding a bandage from the bolt. "Tell me about this priest, the one who taught you English. ..."

"He lived at our temple. American missionary."

"Came to convert you, did he?"

"In the end we converted him; he is there still."

"One good turn deserves another. I'd better go get that alcohol."

Jacob didn't move for an awkward moment. Would the man trust him enough to let him leave? Apparently so: He didn't even turn around.

"Where did you read about shinto?" the man asked.

"A book in my library at home, translated into English, of course. I don't recall the title...."

"The Kojiki?"

"Yes, I think that was it."

"Where did you see this book?"

"One of the shinto priests gave it to me last year in Chicago during the Parliament; he said it was the first translation anyone had made."

"Have you seen any other copy?" the man asked, turning to face him with violent intensity. "In Japanese?"

"No," said Jacob, but the question made an odd sense to him; something coming together in the back of his mind that he couldn't quite define. "Why?"

The man stared at him with his strange matted eyes. "The Kojiki, the first book, was stolen from our temple."

"That's what I thought you were going to say," said Jacob.

SEPTEMBER 26, 1894

Our train left the Grand Central Depot at eleven o 'clock sharp this morning—Americans are nothing if not obsessively punctual. We're traveling on The Exposition Flyer, an express introduced last year to accommodate traffic back and forth from the World's Fair. We will cover the eight hundred miles to Chicago in under twenty hours; extraordinary, as are the train's lush appointments. Luxury of the first order. Competition for the customer's dollar drives everything here; bigger, faster, stronger; there's no end to this fetish for improvement, but in a country without much history their thoughts run inevitably, sometimes exhaustingly, to the future. But before they can consider themselves truly civilized, something must be done about their incessant public use of the spittoon.

The broad reaches of the Hudson River accompany us as we make our way north; the train has just passed the farthest outskirt of the City and what greets us is a riot of autumnal colors the brilliance and variety of which I have never conceived. If the Creator of our universe is an artist, He has emptied his paint box in these woods; reds, rusts, vermillions, violets, ambers and golds, all made sparkling and radiant by a brilliant warming sun. Hawthorne called this region home; Irving, Melville, and Fenimore Cooper as well; it is nothing if not inspirational. Major Pepperman, our indefatigable host, has termed this glorious weather an "Indian Summer." Not hard to imagine Indians living in these sheltering forests, doing whatever it is Indians do, paddling their canoes, shooting off arrows, scaling the craggy palisades that line the western shore.

I have just completed the morning's correspondence—letters to Louise; notes and gifts for the children; Martha Washington dolls for Mary, a splendid tin soldier set for Kingsley; now he can restage the American Revolution and continue to rewrite history. A wire from Louise yesterday makes no mention of her health; this of course, entirely without foundation, leads me to suspect only the worst.

New York City has left me knackered; another few days might have finished me off. What a pace! Amazing its residents don't drop every night and sleep where they fall. I have never visited a city whose residents were so confident, one might say arrogant, about their own significance. The city may well be preparing for greatness but they never let you forget it.

Two observations: Every man you meet on the street seems utterly consumed with baseball, a local game, apparently derived from cricket, whose elusive appeal they are equally incapable of conveying by any means of common speech. Their professional ' 'season'' has just concluded or I would certainly by now have taken in one of these contests, if only to sort out the dizzying and contradictory welter of rules and regulations its enthusiasts are only too eager to inflict upon the innocent. The second: In the heart of a neighborhood they call Greenwich Village, one of the earliest settled areas of the city, stands Washington Square; entrance framed by a graceful monument to their founding father, it is as charming and picturesque a green, and a virtual oasis of peace and quiet, as any city this size could hope to provide. If Holmes had ever found himself in America, I believe Washington Square is where he would have hung his hat.

We're quite the odd entourage; Lionel Stern sharing a sleeper compartment with Presto, the Maharaja of Berar— stranger bedfellows would be hard to invent—Innes and myself bunking in the next; Jack, alone, lugging around that compact suitcase Edison gave him as we left his compound: He has yet to reveal its contents to the rest of us. And poor hangdog Pepperman, clutching his wires and newspaper notices, believing he travels with the brothers Doyle alone, ready to retreat into wounded, sheepish solemnity—so incongruous in such a gigantic human being—whenever I invoke the desire for privacy, which on this trip will be often. Heaven forbid the Major catches wind of our actual mission; the anxiety might cause him to spontaneously combust.

ON BOARD THE EXPOSITION FLYER

Before reaching Albany, the train parted company with the Hudson and muscled west, taking on in its place the unwavering companionship of the Erie Canal. Buffalo, New York, came and went shortly after dinner: bloody steaks and great piles of mashed potatoes at Pepperman's table. He made a vain attempt to evoke the great spirit of adventure about their journey—"Look, Lake Ontario, one of our five Great Lakes; bet you've never seen a lake that big before!" and so on—but the man was once again left puzzled and slightly deflated by the Doyles' polite, lukewarm responses.

Occasional glances passed among Doyle and his companions dining at nearby tables—Stern and Presto together, Jack alone. The Major took no notice and consoled himself with an extra serving of strawberry shortcake, a dish new to the Doyles that prompted their most enthusiastic outburst of the trip, elevating Pepperman's hopes for an improved camaraderie only to have them immediately dashed when the brothers declined an invitation to repair to his berth for a few hands of whist.

Doyle had determined he must take advantage of their confinement on the train to lay siege to the wall of silence surrounding the lost ten years of Jack Sparks's life. Before venturing any further into danger, Doyle felt a compelling responsibility to crack the mystery of the man who was taking them there. Earlier attempts based on sincere, straightforward concern had failed; time to give subterfuge a try.

Doyle nicked a bottle of brandy from the bar and found Jack alone in his sleeper, reading by the light of a sputtering gas jet. Jack immediately concealed the cover of the book— a perfectly innocuous scientific treatise on the principles of conductive electricity—but secrecy was by now so second nature to him, under the seat it went, on top of Edison's mysterious suitcase.

Doyle ceremoniously settled himself across from Sparks; Jack refused both the brandy and an offered cigar, reached up and nozzled down the gas, bathing his half of the berth in a flickering half-light from which he watched Doyle with sharp, hooded eyes. Doyle said nothing and took no apparent notice of Jack's scrutiny, lit his Havana, savored his brandy, and feigned a high level of self-absorbed contentment.

Jack stared holes in him.

Fine; if all else fails I'll outwait you, Doyle thought; I made it through five years of medical lectures, I can sit here until one of us rots.

Jack grew uncomfortable under Doyle's mild, disinterested gaze; a single fidget, a restless finger of his mangled hand tapping on his knee. Minutes passed. Doyle blew smoke, smiled absently, peering thoughtfully behind the shade at the darkness outside.

"Hmm," he said, before closing the blind.

He glanced back at Jack and smiled again. Jack shifted in his seat.

Doyle ran a hand over the mohair seat, leaned over to inspect the seams.

"Hmm," he said.

Jack folded his arms across his chest.

Now I've got him on the ropes.

Doyle held up a foot and inspected the laces on his boot.

Jack exhaled heavily.

Time to apply the coup de gr&ce.

Doyle began to hum. Aimlessly, tunelessly. A bit of this, a snatch of that; nothing at all. Spikes driven under one's fingernails could scarcely have been more effective. Three minutes of this before ...

"I mean, really," said Jack.

"What's that?"

"Must you?"

"Must I what?"

"Are you deliberately trying to aggravate me?"

"Why, that's not my intent at all, Jack—"

"Good God, man."

"—whatever do you mean?"

"Barging in here. Brandy and a cigar. That appalling noise. This isn't the reading room of the Garrick Club."

"Oh, am I disturbing you? Terribly sorry, old man."

Another patient smile. Not the slightest twitch of intention to vacate. Jack looks away. Another minute elapses. Then. Begins moving his head slightly from side to side—silent humming—while he conducts the imagined music with small waves of his cigar.

" What?" said Jack, exasperated.

"What?"

"What do you want?"

"Not a thing; perfectly content, old chap; thanks, ever so—''

"Monstrous; rude; invasion of privacy. Not like you at all."

Then, as if a subject he'd been meaning to bring up had come rushing back into his mind, Doyle fixed Sparks with a benign physician's eye and paused dramatically before asking, "How have you been, Jack?"

"What sort of a deeply moronic question is that?"

"I can't honestly say I don't have my concerns about you____"

"Now you are really making me angry—"

"Perhaps if I express it this way, Jack: There are certain ... behaviors you exhibit that, as a doctor, one can't help but take notice of."

"What?"

"Certain symptomatic tendencies—"

"Stop mincing around and come out with it: What do you mean to say?"

Doyle regarded him with a thoughtful series of nods. "It occurs to me that in the years between our periods of acquaintanceship, you may have become mentally deranged."

Even in the shadowy haze, Doyle could see blood rush to his face like mercury up a raging thermometer; it seemed to require a supreme act of will for Jack to contain the violence that fireballed inside him. For a tense moment, Doyle feared his strategy had backfired and he might have to physically defend himself; he knew how to box but Jack knew how to kill. But instead of attack came the rigid pointing of a scarred and crooked index finger and a voice strangled with fury.

"You ... don't know ... a bloody thing ... about anything." Corners of Jack's mouth flecked with white. Snorting like an agitated bull.

"I don't know the facts, of course," said Doyle, somehow keeping his pitch at the same infuriating even keel. "All I have are my observations. What else have you given me to go on?"

"Would you like to hear that there were times when I begged whatever passes for intelligence in the Creator of this world to let me die? That I got down on my bloody knees and prayed like some simple-minded vicar to a God I don't even believe in? Is that what you want, Doyle? Because that would be true. And I am pleased to report that there is no God of the kind they try to sell us, because nothing bearing a resemblance to such a being would have left one of its creatures alive in such a state."

Right, thought Doyle, now we've primed the pump.

"So instead He ... left you alive to suffer, is that it?"

"What a stupid, common presumption: Didn't you hear a word I just told you? Regarding our fate no decision is made; no one presides, no being, no thing even bears witness. Can you begin to understand me?"

Doyle stared at him mutely: Let him talk.

"No great or lesser intelligence takes any notice of our existence whatsoever because we are alone, Doyle, every one of us, left adrift in cold and empty space. That's the dirty joke on the washroom wall: It's all a mistake; cruel, random, and senseless as a railway accident...."

"Human life?"

"I mean creation."

Jack leaned forward; the piercing lightness of his eyes like diamonds in the dark of the carriage. His voice fell to a whispery rasp. "Every stone, every blade of grass, every butterfly. Man most assuredly of all: no design, no underlying purpose; it's a folly, our so-called mind, a japery; if there's poetry in our nature, it bleats out of us with no more conscious intention than the babblings of an ape. But the world of man—society—conspires to keep this secret from us. Don't you find it curious? With all your scientific training?"

"What's that?"

"Animals are born with instinctual drives for survival and develop techniques to ensure it. Man is the only creature that needs to delude himself into believing there's a more elaborate reason he's alive; we flood our minds with lies and fantasies about love and family and a benign God in the heavens watching over us.

"But it's only a survival instinct, drilled into each of us from our first breath; it's vital to a society's survival that its members be prevented from discovering how squalid and meaningless their existence truly is. Otherwise we might lay down our tools, leave all this soul-destroying work behind, and where would your precious society be then?"

The silence lay deep between them, broken by the distant, rhythmic clacking of the rails. Jack never blinked, never moved his eyes from Doyle's: Doyle looked through them to darkness, thick and churning.

"Picture another possibility: What if the origin of our world is worse even than this? What if there is a Creator who worked to give our earth design, forethought, shape and contour? And what if this creature is completely and utterly insane?"

"Is that what you believe, Jack?"

"Do you know what you find, down here"—he stabbed a fist sharply into his gut—"when every article of civility, every habit, cherished memory, every manufactured shred of this puppet we assume ourselves to be is stripped off us like the skin of an animal?"

Doyle swallowed hard. "Tell me."

"Nothing," said Jack, his voice barely a whisper. "A void. No sight, no sound, no thought; not a ripple or the faintest echo. That's the secret at the base of the stairs no one is supposed to find. They warn you when we're young: Don't look down there, children; stay here by the fire and we'll tell you the lies our parents beat into us about the greater glory of man. Because they know coming face-to-face with that emptiness would obliterate every trace of who you thought you were like a beetle crushed under a jackboot."

Jack held up his ruined hands. "And this is the glorious mistake you see before you: I entered into the emptiness. I'm there still. And I'm still alive. And it means.. . nothing."

Sparks smiled, a death's-head grin, eyes shining with a diseased and twisted triumph. The train shot into a tunnel, plunging them into darkness. Doyle clenched his fists, not knowing if he was about to live or die, but he would have welcomed a physical fight, pain, anything palpable and real in place of Jack's spiraling fall.

"So with this cheery whisper in my ear, I greet each new dawn," Jack continued quietly, his voice worming sinuously out of the dark. "It never leaves, I have no relief, and in this way I go on living. Mentally disturbed? Don't waste your pathetic shopworn judgments on me, Doctor. Posing at enlightenment. No better than the rest of them; you put a name to what you can't begin to comprehend to push the darkness away. That's the first refuge of a coward. There was a time when I could expect more from you than the parroting of empty screed. Or has success seduced the better part of your mind as well as your pockets? Maybe that's it. They haven't cut you down yet; you're still a fresh face, drunk on the adulation of the masses. Prepare yourself, Doyle; a reckoning is due. They won't tolerate any success from one of their own for long. They cut down all the tall poppies."

The train left the tunnel; lights flickered back on. Jack sat only inches away; his eyes trained on Doyle, who didn't know how to keep the fear and disgust off his face. Doubt crowded in on him: This man's sickness was not only of the mind but of the soul, and its profundity crippled his ability to respond. Where had it come from? What had caused it? He had to press forward with his questions: "If you had come to such a pass, why didn't you take your own life?"

Jack leaned back, shrugged, and casually picked a piece of lint off his sleeve.

"This ... place ... is hellish but not without interest. Picture happening upon a street fight: You come around a corner and find two strangers trying to kill each other with every reserve of viciousness in their bodies. The outcome means nothing to you, but the flow of blood, the raw naked spectacle, rivets you; you can't tear your eyes away. Embrace the emptiness and it exerts the same mesmerizing hold on the imagination: How perfectly and regularly human beings embody a vast, horrific meaninglessness. It would almost qualify as tragic if it weren't so deeply hilarious; all the pomp, the effort, the strained, puffed-up self-importance of people, handing out awards to ourselves, parading around; achievement. Working, striving, worshiping, loving. As if it mattered.

"Why didn't I kill myself?" Jack laughed, a harsh, brutal rasp. "You might well ask. Because life is so cruel that it makes me laugh, and that's the only reason to go on living."

Doyle struggled to keep any judgment or emotion from his voice; any appeal to the man's fellow feeling offered no avenue to reach him now, if he could still be reached at all. "How did you come to ... this place?"

"Oh, I suppose you want the facts, don't you? Always the facts with you; fine, why shouldn't you have them? I won't spare you a detail. You can use them like bricks and build a wall to hide behind or put them into one of your little stories. I haven't read them, by the way; I gather you've used me as a model of sorts for your dear detective."

"I suppose that's true, in a way," said Doyle, feeling a rush of anger.

Jack leaned forward with an almost friendly smile and lowered his voice. "Then my advice to you is this, old boy: Don't incorporate a breath of what I tell you into your characters. People won't like to hear a word of it; not sentimental enough, no warm and happy turn. You know how to give them what they want: lies, gilded and framed like a hall of mirrors. Beware of telling them the truth: You'll kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."

Jack laughed again bitterly. Doyle felt himself go cold inside: to bear this much and now an assault on his dignity. Why should he subject himself to another word of this bullying? What lost quality in the man made him certain he was worth the trouble? The Jack he had so admired was nowhere in evidence; this one sounded like an utter stranger and like no one else now so much as Doyle's memory of his mad brother—and if Edison's moving pictures were to be believed, Alexander Sparks had somehow survived the fight at the waterfall as well. Twin ruptured souls, damned and irredeemable; blood ties run deep. This was not his business: easy enough to walk away and leave them both to burn in their private hell.

But a deeper responsibility rose up in him; if either man posed a danger to other people, to simple common decency, then Doyle knew his obligation to proceed along the path he'd chosen outweighed any wounding to his pride. He possessed reserves of faith and strength they knew nothing about and until proven otherwise he would continue to assume they were a match for the darkness that had flowered inside Jack Sparks. Doyle called on those reserves: If that flower could still be cut, Jack might be redeemed. He needed more information.

"Obviously you both survived the Falls," said Doyle matter-of-factly, giving him nothing to scorn. "Why don't you start there?"

Jack smiled as if the memory were fond. "And what a fall it was; endless, like flight or close to it, a dream of flight. Clutching each other, rocky cliffs whistling by as we dropped.

Pure hatred in my heart; the desire to kill him stronger than any emotion I had ever known.

"I didn't lose hold of him until we hit the river, two hundred feet, that's how far we fell together. Death seemed a certainty, but over thousands of years the Falls had carved a natural pool in the riverbed at its base. I went down into the depth; the concussion of the landing knocked me senseless. I felt a swift current near the bottom take hold and off I went, a leaf bobbing down towards the sea."

"And your brother?"

"I never saw him again. I came to nestled in a bed of rocks; black night around me. Who knows how much time had gone by? A day might have passed, maybe two. My eyes could make only the slightest adjustment; rock walls around and above me; no sky; in a cave, fed by this underground stream, the mountains there honeycombed with these pockets, as I discovered. I lay on the rocks for the longest time, unable to move, in a twilight state.

"A dullness crept over me, my entire body bruised, battered, but no single outstanding pain to speak of. Plenty of water beside me to drink as I needed. I crawled, then walked, defined the boundaries of my confinement—a space ten feet by twenty; I could barely stand and only in the center. My world reduced to that cramped chamber. Comforting really. Not much difference between a womb and a tomb.

"So at a moment when panic should have taken root I felt increasingly peaceful; when you live in darkness—sleep and move and wake in it—you come close to your own true nature. No distractions with that face in the mirror; dirt under your fingernails, the backs of your hands. Alone with your self, whatever that is. That ruling voice inside: Who am I? What am I? The first few days my journey began with those questions. Eventually I came to question everything. All the basic assumptions lose their potency, until you realize that all you have, all you are, is what is in your mind.

"I would have stayed there but I had no food, and as I explored my cave I realized there was no other way out; I would have to go back into the river. I waited, building my strength, and then took the plunge. The currents were more negotiable in these subterranean channels and I could swim for some distance in a number of directions, but in the pitch dark and not certain of a place to surface I had to constantly return to my cave. I've no idea how many days passed—how dependent on the cycle of light and dark is our perception of time—but my strength had reached as high a peak as it could without sustenance and would soon begin to dissipate. I staked everything on one last attempt.

"I dropped into the river, swam down into the deep, and passed the point of safe return. Living in the dark had raised my other senses to exquisite levels; I could detect the slightest variation of flow in the river so I let the water guide me: nothing to be gained by struggling. Minutes elapsed. Breath used up, I came very near surrender; how tempting to let everything go... at that moment I saw a light in the water and I called on the finishing kick I had held back. I lost consciousness as I broke the surface and drifted to shore. That's where I awoke, in a bed of bulrushes, like some antiquated Moses. Middle of the night, a secluded bend in the river.

"As my mind came back, I realized the most curious thing had occurred: Every concern, every burden that had brought me to this moment had vanished. I remembered each circumstance of how I had fallen and why, but I no longer cared. In its place, a lightness, a freeing up, a release from gravity. My family, my brother, my private torments. I hear your thoughts, Doyle: He suffered oxygen deprivation. Damage to the brain. Believe what you like; what I had undergone in that cave was nothing less than a second birth. A chance to create a new life. The dead weight of Jack Sparks slipped off me like the skin of a snake: If everyone thought the man was dead—-and why wouldn't they? the terrible fall, credible witnesses—I could quite easily oblige them.

"I saw stars above me in the night sky for the first time uncluttered by my private despair: An interior objectivity I had never suspected was possible—rock, water, tree, meadow, moon; each thing I saw just the thing itself and not some shadow colored by my inner demons—a release from every earthly obligation, every lingering nightmare. A voice spoke inside my head that I had never heard before: This way, it said; follow me. Clear and calming. Promising a peace I'd never known. I listened.

"I walked all night, through an alpine valley following the river. No concern about where I was going; my path assured, every footstep. Sure enough, I happened upon a deserted cabin; a shepherd's roost, stocked with supplies. Stayed there until the food was gone. My strength renewed, with the voice guiding me I walked two hundred miles south, down through the Dolomites, to Padua, then finally to Ravenna on the Adriatic Sea. Spring stirring in the air. I found work on the docks as a laborer and took a room near the canal. Ate at the same cafe every evening; black olives, thick dark bread, red wine. Lots of red wine.

"I'd spent my entire life hunting my brother: I had no idea this was the way most people live. They work, eat, sleep, make love. Never concern themselves with aspects of living they can't control—meaning, purpose; they're never questioned, easier to leave all that in the hands of an employer, the Church, the tax collector. Existing from one day to the next; part of the landscape, never straying far from the ground that produced them. So self-evident but for me an entirely new conception. Living among them gave me an experience of true grace. Days ran into months, spring into summer and fall. I worked my body to exhaustion every day, slept with as many women as I could manage, and worried about exactly nothing.

"Casting off all ties to who I had been allowed me to become anyone I wanted: What are we except what we imagine ourselves to be? One morning I woke with an impulse to move on: I made myself a sailor from the Isle of Man—forged the documents I needed—and signed on a merchant steamer, bound for Portugal. A restlessness wormed its way into my blood: Out of Lisbon, I joined a freighter shipping to Brazil, where I wandered the coast, working smaller ships until I finally found a world to lose myself in.

"Four years in the city of Belem, near the mouth of the Amazon River: an international port, dozens of cultures colliding in a thousand intrigues; equatorial heat, thievery and bad intent. Surrounded by jungle, and its influence seeped into the bloodstream of every human behavior: ruthless, predatory, vampirish. Who would have guessed you could find such authenticity in a city populated exclusively by liars? Not a single soul in the place paid the slightest allegiance to the truth. I felt immediately at home.

"I made myself an Irishman, a relative exotic in that hothouse: I used the name Doyle, an homage to you. My first job; a steamboat traveling up and down the river, transport to a rubber plantation in the Amazon basin beyond Manaus, deep in the interior near the Rio Negro. A local tribe worked the fields there for the Portuguese bosses; the En-aguas, the 'good men.' Fitting name for these people. I thought I had experienced a simple life in Ravenna; the En-aguas embodied simplicity. They live in thatch huts, raised ten feet off the jungle floor as protection from the floods. In spite of their long contact with the whites, they remain uncorrupted: almost no trade; everything they need is taken from the jungle.

"I spent all my spare time with the En-aguas, slowly ingratiating myself with the headman. They had information I wanted about local pharmacology; the breadth of their knowledge about extracted medicines and the properties of herbs astonished me. The tribal shaman, their priest, used a tonic brewed from a root, ayaheusco, in ritual ceremony. After gaining their trust, I eventually took part in one; this substance severs the mind from its natural moorings; as it takes effect, they say, your spirit leaves your body and the priest guides you to enter into the consciousness of an animal, a boa, a jaguar, whichever one you own a true affinity for: your spirit guide. I became an eagle, Doyle, flew above the jungle, felt wings beating at my sides, looked down at the treetops with the same keen vision, felt the sharpness of its hunger; I lived and moved in the body of this bird, every bit as tactile and vivid as any physical experience in my life."

Sparks's eyes glowed with zealotry: Now that Doyle had persuaded Jack to start talking, how painfully eager he seemed to share these experiences. How many years had passed since Jack had spoken a word of this to anyone? How many years since he'd been in the company of anyone he could trust? Doyle felt a sharp twist, realizing the depths of Jack's isolation and loneliness, how far afield he'd wandered from any sense of community. Could any man long survive so cut off and alone—Doyle knew he couldn't—even one as resilient as Jack?

"This experience confirmed the discovery I had been pursuing from my first moment in the darkness of that cave: that this consciousness which moves us is inside every aspect of creation, fluid and malleable, and our experience of it is transferable from any manifestation of life to another. Can you grasp the implications? If everything in man and nature is wrought from the same stuff, whatever you call it—Holy Ghost, the spark of life—if every molecule is informed by the same defining spirit, that means individuals are free to act according to our own private beliefs; there is no universal morality or supernatural authority that governs our behavior, and regardless of our actions we will experience no retribution from anywhere outside the physical realm. Shipwrecked on this earth like Robinson Crusoe.

"For anyone with the courage to liberate their conscious mind from the conforming pressure of society and remove all that conditioned rubbish, all that's left is free will. From that moment, you have the power to define what is good and what is evil. This is purity. A higher moral rigor that answers only to itself. What I needed now was a structure on which to exercise my philosophy."

"How, exactly?"

Jack nodded. "I had acquired a reputation, someone who could get things done. I was asked to work for a man I had heard about in Belem, a local thug, a boss in the underground. A perfect test for my theory; I took the job, admitting me into the secret heart of the city. Within a month, I was supervising the man's smuggling operations: goods lifted from every ship that docked; guns and ammunition stolen from the military. Money flowed but I lived simply, in a shack on the beach. Drugs, drink, every imaginable earthly pleasure available; crime stimulates these low hungers in our nature and depresses the moral impulse. Indulgences. Excesses. Flesh. A cycle that perpetuates criminal behavior. I watched; I did not partake.

"I kept a girl at my little shack, an extraordinarily beautiful girl I found on the beach one day. Her name was Rina; mixed blood, Indian and Portuguese. Sixteen years old. Her mother was a whore; she'd never known her father and she'd never spent a day in school. I had never met anyone like her. Sweet, simple, unquestioning. She had an uncanny ability to make me laugh. Rina intrigued me in a curious way; how any human being could be so utterly and complacently earthbound I found appalling and fascinating. Like her physical beauty, her ignorance had a round, sullen perfection to it that felt obscurely instructive.

"I made love to her every night for six months and began to feel really animalistically connected to the girl. It was then I realized I had never in my life been close to anyone before, certainly not a woman. One morning not too long afterwards I woke, saw the light striking her face a certain way, and decided never to see her again. That feeling of intimacy was claustrophobic, intolerable. I gathered my few belongings and left Rina asleep in my bed. That same night, I killed a man who tried to rob me in an alley; broke his neck and left him lying there like a weed. And these two events—leaving Rina, killing this man—linked together in my mind: free will, you see. I hadn't killed anyone in years. I began to think about murder a great deal. How easy it was, how often I'd done it in the past, how little it had ever troubled me. An idea developed that I should commit one murder in particular, with intention, of someone I knew, as an experiment. To see what I would feel."

Doyle took a slow, deep breath, hoping Jack would notice no change in his responses. He had been in the presence of such a fevered and alien personality only once before: Jack had drifted into territory that had entirely deranged his brother. Had their genetic similarities led them to the same divide? Had this kind of evil been inevitable in Jack from the beginning?

"I decided to kill the man who had hired me as his underling: Diego Montes. They called him Ah Aranha, the Spider. Montes had grown to depend on my cunning; he lived like an ignorant beast, little more than a bloodsucking insect, thoroughly corrupted, a despoiler, stealing life from everything he touched; a whoremaster, running strings of girls kidnapped from Indian villages in the interior, selling them until their looks collapsed, then casting them into the street like garbage. His face, the rattle of his septum as he breathed through his mouth, the drugs and liquor he ingested massively, even the stuporous way he ate, disgusted me. Carrying out his death sentence came to represent the supreme expression of my free will.

"I crept into his villa one night and cut his throat with a razor while he slept. It required little effort; I severed the vocal cords first so he couldn't cry out. When he woke, I pinned his body to the bed and watched the life drain out of it."

Lost in cool reflection, Jack looked as if he might be recounting a story about a book he'd read once. Doyle couldn't move.

"I felt calm. Empty. As pitiless as that eagle with a rat clutched in its talons. I sensed the presence of no sacred spirit or a soul leaving the body; no angels watched us from on high. And no remorse. All I felt was the harsh indifference of the jungle. I had the confirmation I was looking for. My experiment was a success.

"With one complication: a witness, a woman who had gone to wash up in the next room. I heard her move as I was about to leave. It was Rina."

Doyle must have looked startled.

"That's right, the same beautiful, ridiculous girl I'd been living with. Terrified by the crime she had seen me do. She was a whore now; Montes had recruited her. She cried and told me how she had fallen into that life in despair when I abandoned her. I should have killed her, too, right then, but her presence seemed so fortuitous, I reasoned it could not be coincidence, it must have a meaning that would eventually reveal itself. I suppose what actually influenced my decision most was a kind of tenderness. So I let her live. Helped her escape the house. Even made plans to take her with me when I left the country, which I intended to do immediately.

"And I was right. My finding her did have meaning. Two days later, twenty men who worked for Diego Montes captured me as I was waiting to board a ship to Belize. Rina was supposed to meet me at the docks; I had left her alone for half an hour to buy a hat and she had betrayed me. She cared nothing for me. But this was her free will at work, you see. Available to us all; no inconsistency.

"They clapped chains on me and threw me into a cage, a pit dug into the clay in the yard of the local prison, its mouth covered with steel plates. Darkness was not exactly the hardship to me that they anticipated. But this time without water, and the temperature during the day reached one hundred and twenty degrees. The guards used it as a latrine. Three days passed before they spoke to me. They wanted a confession; Rina had already identified me as the killer, but they were determined to hear it from my lips.

"When they thought the pit had sufficiently softened me up, they brought me into a room, empty, save for a square block of white marble in its center. Stained red. Arm and leg irons at its base. They secured me kneeling before this stone and laid my hands out across its surface. The guards took turns, stepped up onto the block and walked on my hands. Stomped on them. Some danced. Dropped heavy stones. I could hear the sinews snap, bones cracking, watched one finger as they crushed it beyond recognition, all pulp and matted fiber. This went on for hours. They enjoyed their work; skilled and honest craftsmen. I realized they did not intend to kill me until I had confessed; an odd outburst of fastidiousness.

"But I would not cooperate. The pain somehow remained manageable, and I had grown to fancy this free life of mine; I was in no mood to give it up so easily, so I continued to protest my innocence. Hands are extremely personal parts of our bodies, aren't they? Their abuse made me very, very angry. Finally, when I feigned an unconsciousness from which I couldn't be revived, they slipped the irons off and dragged me from the room.

"I kicked the first one, here, the bridge of the nose. A kill. A second tried to pull his gun; I sent him crashing out a window and followed him out before the others could fire a single shot. His body cushioned my fall. As alarms sounded and shots missed me, I ran to a corner of the yard where they stacked provisions. A stairway of barrels took me to the top of the wall and over.

"The prison was set on a peninsula, ocean on three sides. I made it to the jungle before they cut off the road. They were reluctant to follow me at night; their pursuit fell away the deeper I went. Undergrowth became too thick; I took to the river, upstream with the incoming tide. When dawn broke, I was miles inland; they would never find me. Now the pain began; I gathered medicinal herbs—roots, some bark; using my teeth, primarily—to treat my hands, numb the pain. Infection set in quickly in that dank, humid air. I couldn't chance a return to the city for a doctor; my friends, the En-aguas, the native people upriver, had knowledge of these things. Six days to reach them. By then I was half-dead. Spiking fever. Delirious."

Jack laid his hands out on his knees, fanned the remaining fingers, looked down at them dispassionately.

"Their medicine man cut off the two most damaged fingers.

Saved the others; I have no memory of it. When I woke two days had passed. My hands were covered with salve, bound with a compress of leaves. They asked no questions, I told them nothing; brutality was routine in their view of the outside world. Two months passed before I was strong enough to travel. Three of them paddled me downriver by canoe, disguised as a priest; the birth of Father Devine. They would take me north to Porto Santana, where I would take a tramp steamer to the Indies. But first I had business in Belem.

"With my friends' help, we filled the bottom of a wagon with black powder stolen from the military depot. Then I tracked down Rina in Belem. Working in a brothel. Drugs, looks decaying, her little life already failing towards a sad predictable finish. I took her out of there, tied her to the seat of the wagon, a gag in her mouth. Never said a word to her: What was there to say? There were no words. I looked into her eyes for a long time. She understood perfectly.

"At dark we sent two mules trotting towards the prison with the wagon behind; guards saw Rina on board and took the wagon inside their gates. They didn't see the burning fuse concealed beneath the floorboards and with her screaming no one heard it hiss. But you could hear the explosion for fifty miles."

Sparks paused, swallowed a deep breath. Circles under his eyes, black as paint. Was there regret behind his words? Doyle couldn't hear it, only the throbbing of his own heart.

"I was on board that ship the next morning, carrying papers taken from a man who had died upriver: a Dutch businessman, Jan de Voort. My story: traveling home after an accident ruined my hands. Another white European consumed by the jungle. Shall I go on?"

Doyle nodded: Who knew if Sparks would ever expose this wound again? Hold your tongue, he told himself. Remember how a patient left to ramble so often unwittingly reveals the secret of his ailment. He refilled his glass, hoping Jack would not notice how severely his hands trembled.

"I took my time moving north through the islands: Curacao Antigua. Hispaniola. No destination in mind. Soaking up sun. Rebuilding my hands, thrusting them again and again into hot sand. Drinking a great deal of rum. A new woman in each place, making conquests. Leaving when I tired of them, which never took long; they all want to heal a man in such a state. So predictable and tiresome. I couldn't bear that first bloom of disappointment on their faces when they realized no part of me was theirs.

"One day I landed in New York. What I'd intended as a brief stay turned into three more years of wandering, one identity folding neatly into the next; people don't ask many questions here. Take a man at his word if he can back it up with work.

"I committed no crimes. Ordinary man again. Six months as a surveyor in the Alleghenies; a groom in a Philadelphia stable. Drove a stage in the Ohio Valley for a year, through this same route we're traveling now. Stevedore on a paddle-wheeler down the Mississippi. One day I was unable to get out of bed. Looked in a mirror, didn't know who I was. An exhaustion of the soul had crept over me so steadily I couldn't put a name to it; every cell in my body depleted, used up. My hands ached constantly, the pain deep, rock hard; haunted by wholeness. I slowly made my way to New York. Enough money saved to last years in the way I'd been subsisting.

"With my brother dead, my only reason for living had been lost. I'd never known another; no compelling purpose for going on had come to me. It didn't occur to me that he might have survived. I no longer had the slightest idea why I'd been left alive. And I didn't care. I touched the bottom of the pit I had dug for myself.

"I went out walking one day, near where we were the other day, Lower East Side. March, this was, clear and blustery. I saw a Chinese man standing on the street. Tall, emaciated; he caught my eye as I walked towards him. Maybe he saw something in me, some obvious or subtle longing. He held up his hand as I approached; his fingers were strange, malformed, bulbous at the tips, like inverted bowling pins.

"Between his fingers nested a small packet of foil, the size of a silver coin. He didn't look at me; he didn't speak. He didn't turn when I stopped and looked back at him. He lowered his hand and went inside a door. I followed him; down an alley, a narrow flight of stairs. A cheap red paper lantern bouncing in the wind outside a door. Inside: wet brick walls, stale mattresses on the floor, bodies laid out, dozens of them, languid, moving like seaweed. The Chinese man unwrapped the foil and stuffed a dark plug inside into a long black wooden pipe. He asked me for money. I gave him some. He never looked at my face. Showed me to a mattress. Held the pipe for me and lit it with his malformed hands."

"Opium."

Jack nodded; he couldn't meet Doyle's eyes. "I quit the needle after I fell; that was part of my rebirth, part of the hell I faced in that cave as my body gave up the hunger. I'd quit and never gone back. Not even in Belem where it was all around and I had every opportunity. Not once."

Doyle offered no response: After all the rest, why does he so badly want me to think he's telling the truth about this?

"The pipe took away the pain in my hands. It filled the emptiness that had eaten away at me; a warmth, some feeling, anything—"

"You don't need to explain."

"—the pipe became my world; my world became that room. Three years. The most exquisite feeling when the hunger comes on and all you need is to strike a match. The ease of it. Never out of reach. If I'd found darkness before, now I dropped into the center of the earth. The man kept jade figurines by the beds; statues of gods, demons. You hold one in your hands after the pipe and stare at it, let the cool sheen of its surface come into you; patterns, crystalline swirls that solve the deepest mysteries. Peace you can't reach even in dreams. Time erased; only the now, that moment. I felt more love from that pipe than any human being ever gave me. The happiest moments of my life."

"But it was false, a false happiness. It wasn't real," said Doyle, unable to contain the greatest agitation he'd felt since their conversation began.

"Who's to say? It's only our perceptions anyway...."

"Rubbish; it's drug-induced, not a natural state. Surely you haven't gone that far adrift from common sense."

"Bless you, Doyle; consistent to the end. Let's have that feet-planted-firmly-in-the-garden-of-man's-innate-goodness nonsense from you now; I could always depend on you for that____"

Doyle could no longer restrain himself. "Why would you speak to me that way? What harm did I ever do you? You've done it all to yourself."

Sparks turned away: Was that the hint of a smirk or a grimace?

"So you added opium addiction to your curriculum vitae; bravo Jack, I was afraid you might leave it out entirely. What's next on your agenda, rape? Pedophilia? Or did you cover both of those with that Brazilian girl? Heartless murder's already on the list; shame to let a little free will go to waste. Since that's your modus operandi now, why deny yourself anything? It's all defensible the way you've defined the game."

"What is it that offends you: My crimes or their so-called immorality?"

"As if they could be so easily divided. I'll tell you: It's the casual contempt with which you dismiss the efforts of what you call ordinary people to live a life that adheres to a semblance of decency; that you 'discovered' the way human beings live, as if you were observing a colony of ants. What gives you the right to pass such judgments? Where's the virtue that elevates you to such a godlike plane? You think your suffering entitles you to an exclusion from justice? Let me tell you: Everyone suffers and it relieves no one of his responsibility to obey the law. Do you honestly believe you're above the reach of consequences for what you've done?"

"Far from it..."

"I'll tell you to your face, you sound like a lunatic, Jack Sparks, and a menace to any person you might meet, myself included. The truth is you've fallen onto the same road that led your brother to that disastrous ruin of a human life. Or has that been your ambition all along?"

Jack couldn't face him now. "No ..."

"I dispute you. I've built a life for myself these last ten years. I did it with determination and hard work and, yes, through obedience to standards of social order. Without that "contract binding us, every man dedicated to his own pleasure according to an unfixed code of moral conduct, all you have left is unmitigated savagery and a civilization no better off, no more advanced, than the sort lived by jackals. I thought you were a good man once; no, a great man. I wanted nothing more in my life than to be like you. I am shocked. Shocked and I am bitterly disappointed. If you're the result of a life lived to the contrary, then I say thank God for society and thank God for the laws of man. You've left them behind; you're beyond the pale."

Jack turned slowly back in his seat and looked at Doyle: his pale face stark white, the scar lining his jaw livid, radiating tension and despair. His mouth hung open; his eyes sank deep into their sockets.

"I never claimed there were no consequences," he whispered harshly. "Consequences are all I've been describing."

"Then let's be clear about it: Are you telling me all this to ask for my sympathy or approval?"

"No..."

"Because if what you want is absolution, I can tell you I haven't the authority or inclination to give it."

"No, no. I thought... all I had hoped for ... something closer to"—Jack's chest heaved with sudden uncontainable emotion; his breath quivered violently, face contorted in pain-—"to understanding. You, of all people. I thought you might... understand."

Jack inhaled sharply, then he sobbed. "I don't know... who I am. I don't know how ... I don't know how to live...."

Doyle watched in shock as the man before him came disastrously undone. His crippled hands clenched spasmodically at the fabric of the seats, tears splashed from his scarlet eyes; he sat upright for a long moment, rigid as a post, then sagged over as if his spine had collapsed.

"I'm so ... ashamed ... so deeply ashamed, the things I've done ... what I've turned into. Like him. You're right: Like him." Jack's self-hatred so much deeper than any other could have felt for him: Doyle stunned. "Should have died before I let that happen, should have found courage to kill myself but I couldn't... I couldn't. . ."

Words tumbling out in a rush, fractured by his sobs. "Put a razor to my wrist.. . gun in my mouth ... too afraid to finish. Couldn't, so afraid to die, any emptiness greater than what... I'd been living. That fear ... all that kept me alive.; Worse than a coward. Worse than an animal... God ... God help me, please, God, help me...."

Jack doubled over, sobbing until it seemed his heart would shatter with the strain. Wounded bellows crashed out of him, like the roll of immense waves, washing Doyle's anger away; pity rose up in him, and remembrance of the good in this man. He reached out to Jack, who seemed now so far beyond human reassurance.

"Jack, no. No, Jack."

As Doyle's hand sought out his and took hold, Jack stiffened, unable to accept any comfort, his shame even stronger than the pain. His sobs fell away like a retreating tide. He slid his hand from Doyle's grasp, stood up, turned to the wall, and covered his face with both hands. Shudders rippled his back as he struggled to control himself.

"Forgive me," he whispered. "Please forgive me."

"It's all right."

Jack shook his head once, sharply, and fled from the room, never showing his face, never looking back. Doyle went immediately after him into the hall, but Sparks had already disappeared from sight.