A2. LIGHT AND SHADOW

They had been at sea, now, for six months. The Jefferson, a small frigate used to long distance sailing, led both master and librarian from New-York to San Francisco. 1872 was the year. Clad in wind, white waves, and stars, the great man on the main deck had become a sort of ghost, wandering by night on the creaking wood, and scaring the sailors.

Charles, above all, had saved appearances. He had wrapped Edwin with a black cloak, both warmer and less noticeable than the red and brass armor of Macbeth, that his master had insisted on wearing. In ten words, he had assembled the manor's staff, had the necessary luggage brought to the docks, and dismissed everyone for six months.

With one of the golden ingots from the sage, Charles had paid for all the cabins, and for the total silence of an expert crex. The Jefferson's captain, John Morris, a proud blue-eyed blond-bearded man, suddenly saw his childhood hero coming to greet him on the rain-drenched docks. The heavy knocks of a nervous cabin boy at his door had taken him out of bed, and now Edwin appeared, jumping out of books and press drawings, in this strange new role of a bent, sorry old man. Captain Morris laughed nervously. He accepted the offer, promised secrecy. He kept the ingot under his pillow. As morning ended, the Jefferson was ready to go and Edwin, locked in his cabin, was asleep already, under Charles watchful eyes.

The Jefferson entered San Francisco Bay on the summer solstice.

- Stop moving around, will you ?

Iverson stopped rubbing. Macbeth's armor hung on the side of the bed. Sat on a stool, Charles was massaging Edwin's right side. Edwin lived at night. When he woke up in the evening, Charles would try and stimulate the atrophied muscles of his master. It was his idea, not a doctor's recommendation. And he would not skip a day. Then he would help him tie each strap of the armor. Its breastplate and hard back helped Edwin stand straight without too much pain.

- Charles ...

- Sir ?

- ... Charles ... tie it to a rock ... make it stop, whispered Edwin.

- What, sir ?

- This damn ship ...

And the Jefferson swayed towards San Francisco on a short swell, as Charles massaged harder. The sails had been hauled in, to slide slowly with the current, and so the ship started to roll some more. In this Captain Morris only followed Charles orders, given upon boarding :

"We will land in secret and unseen. We will go alone on a raft, and you will not say a thing to the port's authorities. Buy a few crates of whatever is available, and declare yourself a merchant ship. Do not linger. We will pay for your swift return."

- Captain ! Some help here !

Morris was in his cabin, a wine bottle cork in mouth, having fun, while considering his golden ingot in the reflections of the candlelight. He found infinite pleasures in this daily activity.

The muffled cries of Charles tore his dream away. He spat the cork.

To get to the actor's cabin, one had to descend below sea-level - Edwin had requested it, as he wanted to hear the current against the hull, and the ghostly things that always surrounded a ship on the high seas.

- Drop anchor her, ordered Charles as Morris entered. Mister Forrest cannot take the rolling anymore. Come, now, help me, will you ?

Every evening, Morris and Iverson supported Edwin as if he was a drunk customer, and brought him up on deck, so that he may get some fresh air. The stars throbbed on the waters and, bent like a humpback on the railing, confounded with the shadow of the mast, and absolutely still, he would look at the Sea, white under the Moon. He dreamt, wave after wave.

More than once, hidden behind the mast, Captain Morris too had imagined the life of Edwin Forrest. The stage ! Money, women surely, and then, what everyone knows, the glory, and the downfall.

At night's end, when dawn startled the meridian, and when the first rays hit the bottom of the opposite side of the sky, Edwin stumbled alone towards his cabin, like a dislocated puppet, and the sailors whispered behind his back.

One above all did not trust Edwin, and it was Monk, the look-out, so called because he was covered with christian trinkets of all kinds, and had had a large cross tattooed on his back, when he sailed for England, to avoid being whipped. The actor, he called Jonas. On long evenings Monk would stare at the horizon, playing with his rosary in one hand. He awaited Leviathan.

No reaction had been less dramatic. Upon boarding a rumor had spread in the small sailors crowd, like the shivers from a fever. On the good earth, most men would have bought him a drink - honor to a legend ! But those pursued by fate have no room on a ship - the evil eye is on them.

One of the sailors, usually a quiet man, had jumped on Edwin one night on deck. In the middle of his confused shouts, he had yelled the names of Astor, and Johnson. He was put under chains in a cabin until reaching San Francisco. He never explained his act. As for Edwin, he was barely upset, and did not react, but kept a vague, distant stare.

Contrary to that, a young helmsman had approached Edwin, after one of their stops, with a bouquet of fresh-cut white flowers, and a timid smile. He had removed his hat, that he held crushed against the roses. His incredulous fellows circled him.

- Eh, Albert. Are you alright ?

- Well offering flowers to actors is the done thing, no ?

- Actresses. To actresses, stupid.

- And ballet dancers.

- And opera divas.

- All women, mind you.

“Everyone likes flowers”, murmured the helmsman while storming to his quarters. He dared not say that he had seen Edwin at the height of his glory, when he was still a child, and that he could not bear her whispers of "Jonas" and the shouts of the man chained in the hold. He gifted flowers to heal. "Because it's not fair," he mumbled.

In between those happenings, the journey had been a quiet one. Now the men were all gathered on deck in the lantern's light, awaiting the fateful moment. The staircase door was suddenly kicked open by the Captain's boot. Between Charles and him, Edwin squinted in the pale light of a Full Moon. The waves seemed to double and the Jefferson rolled dizzy.

- Anchor ! ordered Morris.

Charles approached his master's ear :

- How would you like to proceed, Sir ?

- The raft. Overboard.

Charles grimaced.

- But Sir, how do you want to reach so far down ?

Edwin grinned with irony, and whispered, as if it was to himself :

- A rope.

A rope ... Charles suddenly saw, as if born from night, the dark mass of the manor, its thorns, its hallways, its long rows of books ... Then, Edwin had the same irony. The armor of Macbeth, the gold ingot, San Francisco, "the rope", all of that was for a laugh, in a way.

The raft hit the crest of the waves. Edwin was surrounded by the Pharaoh's embalmers - shy hands of sailors knotted the rope all along his torso, and under his arms, doubling the knot in the back. The anchor broke the sea and fell down to the bottom with a thunderous crack.

Charles was already coming down the rungs of a rope ladder towards the raft. He carried the big leather bag filled with money and gold, that they would transform, on the shore, into clothes, lodging and a ticket back to New-York. From the raft, Iverson waved his arms :

- Now !

Every sailor, and Captain Morris braced against the edges of the deck. They lowered the paralyzed man softly, almost without hiccups, along the hull. He swung left and right slowly, like a pendulum or a hanged man, his shadow swaying on the foam.

There were no good-byes. Charles received Edwin, and crumbled under the weight of the former athlete in armor. He laid him down as well as can be over the length of the large raft, and started rowing.

The raft detached from the Jefferson. On the horizon, the lights of San Francisco rose to the edge of the sky.

*

Charles spoke in between each stroke of the oars. That was not his habit. Approaching the great city, at the end of this strange escape, made him nervous. It's sweat that wetted the oars.

- Sir. Don't close your eyes, will you ? ... we're there, soon ... you'll see ... it'll be alright.

That, Iverson did not know. He did not even know who decided those things. He did not know fully what wasn't right. He was rowing amidst that suffering. He wanted to help.

Edwin kept silent, eyes half-closed. The Jefferson had left them, with its lanterns, its vast presence, its noises. There was only night now, pierced with stars. He aspired to the deepest silence.

- Once on good ground we'll go ... to the hotel first. Then ... well ... we'll find you a treatment ... that's it. It'l be alright.

Edwin smiled inside, without showing it. A smile free of irony.

"Charles Iverson has the same quality of care, devotion and focus that your mother - God rests her soul - had." Gilham had said, describing this young penniless seminarian.And so Edwin had taken him in his service. He was the only one to have followed, from the castle to the manor.

- The hotel first. Tomorrow, clothing ... Then, maybe, a barber ?

It must be noted that the young man did not frequent the theater. He had grown with the Quakers. He had joined the city for books. Edwin's glory meant nothing to him.

Edwin did not answer. A blanket of stars formed a spiral above the up and down raft, from wave to wave towards the lanterns of the port. San Francisco climbed on hills along a half-moon bay and Edwin, seeing it, felt rising in him, for the first time in years, like the sap of the oak thawing in early Spring, some measure of gratitude towards Charles. The librarian, drenched in sweat from all the rowing, did not talk anymore. Edwin knew well what he had to do. He had not come for the medicinal spring. He simply needed the sea, and this long journey, to strengthen his resolve. Nights of dream over the shadow. Time to see it all again, on the deck. Above all, he needed to be removed from everything, and to avoid articles in the papers.

At the bottom of his night, and although he would not admit it, the friendship of Charles Iverson shone to Edwin Forrest as the parting light.

- Mister Forrest, sir ! We're there !

*

They landed in secret on a piece of half wild shore. Edwin struggled in the sand. The gaz lamp of the town, edging closer, overfilled the hills and the reeds. Edwin and Charles squinted a bit more at each step, as if on the threshold of an immense theater filled with music and voices.

Deep down, Charles did not know what to do. He loved, powerless. But he loved, and knew how to love. It was Gilham who had convinced him to enter the service of this sad man. Over the years his admiration grew. But how could he help ? The springs alone wouldn't do it. He was waiting for some miracle, as happens only in books.

The master held the librarian's arm. Secretly, under the black cloak, his right hand was clasped on a piece of cold steel. And his heart was burning with a secret resolve.

They entered at once the streets and the crowd. People were pushed around. No two faces were alike. Edwin could only see the outline of people.

The Rush had made this piece of desert into a small Paris. Under the gas lamps, flowerbeds framed the cabarets. The city routinely ran out of water, but there was music, and the music brought the crowd. They all landed by frigate-full, the starving, adventurous, escaped, despaired, courageous, dreamers, whores, chinese, players, and all those had brought along the intendance : cooks, laundrymen, bankers, doctors, bookmakers and judges. A town was born, doubling in numbers and madness every year.

That night the crowd came and went in all directions as on a celebration. There was the opening. He had to act quick.

- Charles ...

- Sir ?

- The crowd. I cannot. Find ... A car ... curtained windows ... go, go.

Edwin faked his weakness. At the end of his journey, his old strength was coming back. He played, and what could poor Charles do against a Master Player ?

He hesitated a moment before leaving Edwin. But he too was starved of the good earth's tranquility. A room and a bath. Hearing a woman's laughter somewhere, anywhere, after six months at sea. Leave winter behind with its storms. Edwin leaned his frail body on a barrel. Anybody would have believed it. Edwin himself believed it. That's a master's play.

Charles gave in. He crossed the crowded dirt path. But as he turned one last time towards the barrel to catch a glimpse of Edwin amidst the passing shoulders and heads, he saw his master gone.

*

Somewhere in the crowd, the valet shouted, terrified. Edwin doubled his pace, through the network of narrow Spanish streets.

He emerged in a neighborhood filled with lanterns, red as Amsterdam, dark as Venice. This red was the first color after six months of black and white nights. Here the streets were paved. All around, drunk passerbys played in front of the cabarets. Noises rang in a mess and Charles struggled, somewhere, against the blinding current of light and laughter.

One street after another, poorer and poorer. It was Macau and Singapore now, on a maze of dirt paths again. Edwin in his nightmares had walked through such eerie streets. He was disappearing in an ever thicker crowd. The librarian lost him.

Edwin was coughing, folded in two against a lamppost. His sudden strength struggled against years of paralysis. With a weak arm, he pushed back against a passerby trying to help him up.

Panting, bent like a humpback, he went deep in a narrow dead-end street where at last he found himself alone, backed up against a thin wooden panel. He dug his valid hand deep in the folds of his cloak, there to meet his paralyzed hand, clasped near the heart. He tore from it a black revolver.

"Here ? No, not here". He started again towards the unknown, the revolver kept against his thigh, so that he would not be seen, and so that it would be seen. The red lanterns threw reflections on the weapon every two or three steps.

The old actor now came to the great street of miracles, where the cabarets turned into opium dens disguised as puppet shows. Heady smokes flew out of a few windows, that quick hands rushed to shut. Through paper-thin walls, shadows played plays. Numb and all smiling, their "audience" clapped at random.

From across the street, a young Chinese girl, painted like an icon, appeared in a gold frame. A long line of miners, blacksmiths, rail and dock workers pressed against her window. Each man, to see her, paid a grain of gold, or its equivalent in paper money. A black giant inspected the grain carefully, then pulled on a tassel rope : the curtain opened. The petrified client stared at the ornate Chinese girl, without touching her. If he but raised his hand, the giant made him fly through the air. Then the curtain closed again. Too much gold, too many men, too few women, as on the Frontier in times past. Edwin, inhaling the smokes against his will, swayed among these men ready to lose all their gain for the image of a dream. And he thought of Gibson, saw the Frontier again, the black steel the fire in the night and death. The revolver was burning in his hand. He could not be seen armed near that girl.

"Not here, Edwin thought, not like this", he thought. And he began to limp again.

The streets filled up more as they converged towards the heart of the working-class neighborhoods. Edwin thought he was picking his path, but he was following the general movement towards an unknown destination.

Drenched in sweat, Edwin suddenly arrived at a central avenue, filled with a thick crowd. It was the main artery of the chinese neighborhood. Further up, it divided in a Y shape, and brought you back to the sea. At the center of the Y, a high building with curved balconies was home to a restaurant filled with flags and red lanterns. That's the point where everyone converged, like faithful pilgrims at the foot of a sacred mountain. Every face now turned towards the first balcony, where a great double door opened on a velvet curtain. The children especially pointed towards the curtain, excitedly waiting and chatting. The whites and the Chinese mixed freely, and one could even spot a few high society ladies, a few felt hats, a few pricey suits.

The curtain opened. A man with golden epaulettes, and an ocean blue suit, went up to the guardrail. He raised the sculpted snake of his cane. And the crowd, with children on the front row, burst into applause.

“PEOPLE OF SAN FRANCISCO

AMERICA

AREN'T YOU BEAUTIFUL ?

AREN'T YOU PROUD ?

TONIGHT, WE CELEBRATE OUR CITY

OUR OCEAN

OUR GOLD

OUR COUNTRY !”

In between each line the crowd applauded and hooted as in the theater. The children especially had fun with this great mannered gentleman, who struck poses like a Pope or a King. For the occasion, he wore a top hat pierced with a peacock's feather.

Edwin was not listening. The entertainer shouted things about fireworks and music. Edwin could not listen. Right in front of him, facing the balcony, absorbed by the show, was a living ghost.

It was Jack.

He was here. His back in the crowd, but that was his back, his alive presence, his shoulders ... - he was back from the war, with both his arms again, and his adolescent height again, and his red shirt ...

Jack ! shouted Edwin, and fell to his knees, emptying his lungs.

The small man turned back. He had a beard and no teeth.

Stunned, Edwin opened wide eyes. He raised a hand towards the toothless bum, who stepped back in surprise.

- Son, whimpered Edwin, shaking.

With slow hissing inspirations, he was trying to fill up his lung with good air, but a weight weighed on his diaphragm, and the same weight crushed his vision, his heart and his voice.

His hand tightened around the wet handle of the revolver. Right against his ear, a bomb exploded in the sky. It was the fireworks fired from the balconies. The crowd cheered loud. It was ... yes ... of course ... the solstice. A celebration at the highest point of summer. Edwin raised his head, suddenly revealed just under the light. In the flames he could see, drawn from the shards of a star, a blue and green wagon, and a troop of children in red shirts following it. Another rocket hissed, and burst apart. Gold, gold, all gold, like a thousand candles - like the stage, the painted backgrounds, the dazzling costumes, the bright faces. A second sky detonated in the sky. Freckles opened in the dark, and the wagon again, blue, green, and the shirts, red, again. Gold exploded one last time, and the public erupted in all-out applause for the peacock feathered entertainer, and the snake on his cane opened his gaping jaw like a black hole. In the revolver's barrel, Edwin saw the blinding face of a blond angel burn.

Silence suddenly fell on the crowd, on San Francisco, and on the night of this world.

Edwin had pulled the trigger.

*

Slow voices, American, Chinese, murmured on the edges of a great emptiness.

Then came silence.

Was that death ?

Like listening at the door of the living ?

He had pulled the trigger.

He had felt the heat of the explosion on his cheek and skull.

The angle should have pierced the brain.

Now the paralysis would be perfect.

Yet on the sides of his cloak he felt something like the contact of two hands, to hands turning him, palping him, examining him. Did Death have hands to carry him into her mystery ?

- Who are you ?!

Don't touch him !

Help, please !!!

Edwin felt the world in waves. It was Charles's voice.

"Then it's not Death yet, " he thought. "Is it Hell, maybe ? Hell is filled with librarians worrying about me."

- Stand him up, for God's sake !

- Shut up. All will be alright, said a soft voice. Those people are my friends.

The voice said a few chinese words in a funny american accent.

Then, with English words, the same low voice cut through Charles's panic.

Come on now. Follow me.

Something seized Edwin. He flew up into emptiness and shadow.

Then,

Nothing at all.