My Heart Laid Bare (51 page)

Moses Liebknecht smiled politely, and laid an assuring hand on the other man's shoulder. “Dr. Bies, recall the words engraved over the entrance to Hades:
Caveat emptor.
”

Full of scorpions is my mind.

And who will purge it?

After Abraham Licht's nervous collapse in Philadelphia in December 1916 he didn't plunge of his own volition but fell helpless and terrified to the bottom of the marsh; to the rich slimy-black bottom of the marsh; where Katrina grown old now, gaunt and altered, her once-firm skin finely creased as an eggshell with myriad cracks, and of that pallor, nursed him for many months; Katrina, and Esther his youngest child whom he scarcely knew; until by Katrina's judgment he was well—“And fit now to return to the world of Time.”

In Katrina's mouth these words had the effect of a statement of health that was simultaneously a kind of curse. For the “world of Time,” to Katrina, the world beyond Muirkirk, was no paradise.

But for those months, in her care, Abraham Licht thought nothing of the world of Time, nor even of Philadelphia society which, he'd had every reason to believe, he had conquered; instead he slept like an infant again in his mother's breast; slept, and woke; and slept again; and took sustenance from sleep, as from Katrina's vigilant care; no matter that Katrina's smile slipped cruelly from her gums and her eyes in their deep sockets blazed with an unearthly light; waking, Abraham might see that in the shadows only a few feet from him there crouched a wizened featherless bird, sharp-beaked, of about the size of a sparrow hawk: he wanted to cry out in terror, but could not. He wanted to whisper her name but could not. He wanted to shut his eyes to dispel the vision but could not.
Help help help me I am not fit to die. I have not fulfilled my destiny on this earth.

In such fever-states Abraham was certain he could remember his lost mother across a space of . . . could it be six decades? Six? Recalling not the exact image of the woman but the aura, the radiance of her abiding love.

Waking another time, to see Katrina quite ordinary, an aging but still capable woman, a woman to whom one might babble of nightmares;
Fortnum & Mason tins crammed with flesh, blood, body hairs, the ooze and reek and shame of it,
a body that was Abraham's own
served up to him like one of those hideous cannibal-feasts of antiquity; a son of Abraham Licht's prepared as for a holiday meal in tinsel-wrapped packages with crinkly bows. And Katrina seemed to listen, and to humor him; saying, as she pressed a cool damp cloth against his burning forehead, that it was only a dream, and dreams are to be forgotten.

And Abraham raged to Katrina of his daughter, his beautiful angel-daughter whose name he could no longer speak, his daughter who'd betrayed him at last as her mother had done, eloping with a man Abraham Licht scarcely knew, eloping and marrying without Abraham Licht's blessing, and now the girl was dead; and her name must never again be uttered.

And Katrina said, more somberly, that this too was only a dream, and dreams are to be forgotten.

All these follies you must forget for the Past is but the graveyard of the future; and no place for Abraham Licht.

So it happened that Katrina, with young Esther's help, saw to it that Abraham ate when he hadn't the appetite, and slept when he protested his thoughts raged too wildly for sleep; and had nothing to do with Muirkirk, nor the great world beyond.

Protesting only mildly, Abraham gave in to her; slept as many as twelve hours at a time; made an effort to eat all the food she prepared; and, when he was feeling stronger, contented himself with walking in the marsh, or through fields, or along deserted country roads where he wasn't likely to meet anyone who knew him. (Even those older inhabitants of Muirkirk who'd known Abraham Licht in the prime of his young manhood, as the city-dweller who'd galloped into their midst to buy, at auction, within minutes, the derelict Church of the Nazarene, seemed not to recognize this gaunt, longhaired man in seemingly good-quality but soiled and
rumpled clothes, a battered fedora on his head so slanted to partly hide his eyes, with a bristly graying-white beard sprouting on his face like lichen.) If Abraham saw another person approaching—usually a farmer driving a horse-drawn wagon, or boys on foot—he quickly retreated and hid in the woods; in this way giving rise in the course of his eighteen-month sojourn in Muirkirk to a number of rumors and tales. The most persistent was that of a supernatural marsh creature, half-man, half-demon, who couldn't bear the gaze of a human being but had to flee back into the marsh.

A cryptic tale that endures in Muirkirk to this day, though Abraham Licht has vanished long ago.

BY DEGREES, REGAINING
his health, he regained as well his old zest for reading.
Don Quixote
. . . the dialogues of Plato . . .
Home Cures & Emetics . . . A History of the Chautauqua Region . . . P. T. Barnum's Illustrated News
(for August 1880: featuring the sultry Zalumma Agra, “Star of the East,” a lovely “Circassian” girl who quite distressed Abraham Licht by so closely resembling, despite her brunette coloring, his lost daughter Millicent) . . . and volumes of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
whose mildewed pages he turned in nervous haste as if seeking a revelation that might alter his life. He reread the great tragedies of Shakespeare—
Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Othello
—which he'd first encountered years before in the wretched isolation of a county jail (though which county, and for what reason he was there incarcerated, he couldn't now recall); he studied Milton's great poem of paradise lost to man by way of God's cruelty; he discovered, to his delight, the melancholy wisdom of Schopenhauer—

        
Suicide, the wilful destruction of the single phenomenal existence, is a vain and foolish act, for the thing-in-itself—the species, and life, and will in general—remains unaffected by it, even as the rainbow endures however fast the drops which support it for the moment may chance to fall.

“As I've always surmised,” Abraham thought, slowly closing the book of yellowed and torn pages, as if he feared it might crumble to dust in his hands, “—suicide is pointless! One must be the rainbow, and exult in its prismatic ever-changing colors, that live forever, and cannot be destroyed.”

It was a happy omen, which both men laughingly acknowledged even as they shook hands like old friends or brothers—Abraham Licht and Gaston Bullock Means were each wearing a Palm Beach suit, a white shirt with gold studs, and a straw hat that gave off an air of cheery affluence; and white shoes only very slightly scuffed. Abraham Licht's bow tie was a conservative jade green, while Gaston Bullock Means's bow tie was red and green polka dots. “Ah, Abraham, I am so relieved to see
you, here
,” Means said, gripping his old friend's hand and gazing, with rather protuberant red-veined eyes, into Abraham Licht's face, “for so many men are flooding into Washington these days, and so much is happening every day—every hour!—we desperately need someone in our office whom we can trust.”

The year was 1919; the month, June—a half year already since the signing of the Armistice, and the restoration of peace to Europe; and Abraham Licht, by way of his renewed contact with Gaston Bullock Means, was being hired by the Burns Detective Agency as a “special consultant,” a position he would hold until August of 1923, the month of President Harding's death. With the passage of time Abraham Licht's official duties were to vary widely, and, like numberless gentlemen brought to Washington during these heady years, he would make a good deal of money; yet, if the truth be told, his work for Burns, Means, the Justice Department, etc. never greatly excited him, or aroused in him any feelings of pride. For whether he operated as an agent for Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer (under Democrat Woodrow Wilson), or Attorney General Harry Daugherty (under Republican Warren Harding), or worked with Means on spe
cial assignments for the Prohibition Bureau (where considerable sums of money routinely changed hands, as prominent bootleggers paid their fees for immunity from federal prosecution), Abraham Licht was rarely in a position to immerse himself in a project of his own but was accountable to other men, and their projects. (And, under Harding's administration in particular, the schemes they devised were so transparent, so lacking in subtlety, originality, and grace—a matter, really, of simple theft from public funds—he saw very little point to it, and gradually lost interest in his career. “Why, they are mere pigs at the trough, nothing more,” Abraham Licht realized, one day in 1922, “—and what pleasure is there for a gentleman, in competing thus?”)

Initially, however, he felt extreme excitement, and a renewal of his old powers. How good for the soul, to be immersed in the world of men again, steeped in Time!—and to be here, in Washington, D.C., at the very heart of the nation, where his talents might at last come to fruition. Moreover, it quite dazed him that Gaston Bullock Means, with whom he'd never been close in the past, welcomed him so openly and genially; even slung an arm around his shoulders, and gave him a manly sort of hug, repeating several times that he was most relieved to see Abraham Licht in the flesh,
here
, and
now.

“FOR NOW AT
last
we
are coming into our rightful inheritance,” Gaston Bullock Means said expansively, signaling the black waiter for two more whiskeys, “—and no one is to stop us, ever again. Wait and see, brother, if you doubt.”

The two men were seated comfortably in a leather-cushioned booth, in the dim-lit gentlemen's bar of the Shoreham Hotel, to which Means had brought Abraham Licht, direct from the railroad station. (Abraham's temporary residence was to be the elegant Shoreham, until such time as he might find adequate lodgings in the city, preferably close by the Burns De
tective Agency. He was gratified to learn that, in the meantime, the United States Justice Department would underwrite all his expenses.) For several hours, over whiskey and cigars, Means outlined Abraham Licht's general prospects as a special consultant or secret agent in the employ of the Burns Agency; and spoke, in a voice alternately lowered and exuberant, of his own remarkable adventures in the hire of the U.S. Government, and his plans for the future. “There has never been a time like
this
,” Means said, hunching his big shoulders over the table, and fixing his gaze firmly to Abraham Licht's, “—for, you know, life, and liberty, and the pursuit of one's fortune.”

Abraham Licht's initial confusion about who his employer actually was, and of what his duties would consist, was quickly laid to rest: for though his workplace would be the Burns Detective Agency on Wisconsin Avenue, his employer would be the United States Bureau of Investigation, under the aegis of the Justice Department. Like Means, he would be a confidential agent; his title, Special Employee of the Department of Justice. He was already on the payroll and in the morning, when he dropped by the office—10:30
A.M.
was early enough: the detectives kept late hours—he would be sworn into his duties and equipped with a badge, telephone, official stationery, secretarial service and the like. “I've advised that you be issued a firearm,” Means said, dropping his voice dramatically, and opening his coat so that Abraham could glimpse inside the polished handle of a pistol, snug in what appeared to be a gleaming leather holster. “For the Bolsheviks are sly sons of bitches,” Means said, laughing, “—once they know you are onto their game.”

“The Bolsheviks—?” Abraham Licht asked.

Abraham was aware, wasn't he, Means inquired, lowering his voice yet more dramatically, that thousands of enemies of the State had been arrested, and jailed, during the War? The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 had netted quite a catch, in all: German-Americans (who could be counted on to be pro-German); pacifists of various persuasions (who were either in the hire of the German war machine, or its dupes); So
cialists, Anarchists, and Black Nationalists (Eugene Debs, “Prince” Elihu of Harlem, etc.); critics of the War, or of Woodrow Wilson's policies, or, indeed, of Woodrow Wilson and his administration in general. Yes, quite a hodgepodge of felons!—and some of them put away for a long, long time. Neither President Wilson nor his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, was likely to forget a political insult, or forgive an enemy; and the sentiment in Washington among both Democrats and Republicans was that the Armistice should not encourage a relaxation of vigilance at home, against subversives, would-be traitors, Socialists, radicals, union agitators, etc. The fight, Means said, sighing in pleasure, and rubbing his immense hands briskly together, was only now beginning.

“For we are secretly launching an undercover campaign,” Means said, “to identify, and round up,
every single dissenter in the country:
very likely by the end of the year, if Mr. Palmer's scheme holds. Which is one of the reasons that
you
have been hired; though I have other plans for the two of us, as well. But first things first!
Waiter!
”

So secluded a life had Abraham Licht led during his convalescence in Muirkirk, he'd followed only vaguely the progress of the War, and knew even less of the home-front war: mass arrests of striking pickets, radical speechmakers, German-born subversives, and the like. He asked carefully about the arrests of Eugene Debs and “Prince” Elihu of Harlem, and was told by Means, indifferently, that so far as he knew, both men—“the Socialist and the nigger”—had been sentenced to ten- or fifteen-year terms in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. Since the Armistice, the administration had had to release hundreds, possibly thousands of “subversive” prisoners; but it was Woodrow Wilson's vow that so long as he remained in office, neither Debs nor Elihu would be pardoned.