Mr. Eternity (32 page)

It didn’t have no way to explain things to him. We was rich now we could have anything. Don’t you get it I said. I get it he said I am just
thinking. We can do anything I said what will we do. Yes he said. Cheer up I said. Sorry he said yes it is treasure I see that now. What will we do I said. I don’t know he said I guess we could be pirates. Haha I said. I am not joking he said I were a pirate once I were just like Saint Francis Drake. Okay I said. I might just be a pirate again he said what’s the difference. You are unhappy I said. It is just one treasure after another he said and never the one I want. I didn’t say nothing but of course I knew he were talking about Anna Gloria.

Next we walked back to Saint Augustine. He cheered up on the way whereafter he said let us have a lavish meal to celebrate our findings. We went to a restaurant I ate some iguana meat with sauce and bread and Old Dan he sniffed flowers for his nutrients he were like a bug. After my iguana I crunched fruit drops. We had the treasure with us under the table just a old box no one would of guessed what it was. Christopher the kitten was guarding it and eating egg. Meanwhile I had a great joy in my spirit but it was not what you think. It was because now that we had the treasure and we could do whatever we wanted I knew I just wanted to do all the same things. I wanted to find more treasures. I wanted to help Old Dan find Anna Gloria and also I wanted to find my own Anna Gloria if I could. This discovery were another kind of treasure in addition to the fabulous wealth of the gold coins.

Saint Augustine were built up back from the water but it had a old part which were drowned. After we had ate we went down there to the water lapping at the broken stone crushed cement dead buildings dead cars plus lizards in the ruins. They should clean this place up I said no sense in leaving all this garbage here they should secede from the ruins of old times. We was quiet for a while now the sun setting at our backs. I saw that the mangos was radiant in the trees. But even though I had got a change of attitude I still wanted to know what had happened. How did the world get so fucked I said why didn’t they stop it people are smart why didn’t they think of something. Oh well said Old Dan haha they just did not manage to do it in time they couldn’t turn it around. But they tried to fix it I said. Oh yes he said but I remember a fellow once
who told me it were all just ecknomicks it were too expensive to save the world it were cheaper to destroy it. That doesn’t sound right I said that’s crazy. Well he said anyway later they did try to fix it with the carbon tax tide power sustainable divestment ecksekera. But it didn’t work I said. No he said. Oh well I said breathing the sea smell it doesn’t matter now. No he said that’s the one truth of everything it is that someday soon it doesn’t matter.

While we was standing there we met Hwan once more who had told me about the great wall of Florida. He were joined by his brothers they was all going out to sleep on their boat. His brothers was Hose and Gabriel. Hose I said that is your name. Hose he said. Hose I said. Hose he said. Hose said Old Dan. All around we all said Hose including Hose himself who were just repeating his own name. Finally when this comedy were done they said they was shipping out for Savannah next day and would we join them. Maybe I said. Maybe said Old Dan. It were not a sincere offer I don’t think. Then they three walked out on the rubble pier to get in their canoe which would take them out past the bar where their boat was anchored.

Old Dan and Christopher and I we all watched them some time longer. I had got a chunk of pineapple and I were chewing it up with the juice running down my chest. We could do anything. We could rent rooms at the grand motel or buy fine linens or air condition or anything. We had treasure. It did not have to change us but it could if we wanted it to.

Then I said to Old Dan we will find her we will find Anna Gloria. Oh sure he said. I mean it I said we will find her you have got to think positive. Now you’re the one telling me he said the helper has become a helper. We will find her I said it is logical to think so for we found those improbable coins after all. I hope you’re right he said for if the truth be told I am lonely. We will find her I said and in the meantime we can be pirates we can rob Hwan Hose Gabriel we can steal their boat. Haha said Old Dan. It were a joke but we could do it too for we could do whatever we wanted. It were a amazing thought. It had been true all along but I never did understand it until now.

It had a soft pretty sunset out behind us over the swamp. It had pink waves in the bay. Quietly and privately I now decreed how from this moment it were illegal not to watch the sunset in the Independent States of Jam. That were the first law I made as king. Then I decreed it were illegal not to eat pineapple if it were available. Amazing how I had never tasted pineapple until this trip. I had never known there was such a superior fruit. And it were also amazing how I had never thought before of seceding from all the things that made me angry and sad. It had so many amazing things out here. Who cares about trash ruins whatever. My life were just beginning even though it were the end of the world.

Dr. Dan grew stronger with each step, and by morning he said he felt a new man, and young once more. In Kings Harbor, thronged that day with market women selling plantain and mawbee and a farrago of other vendibles, we hired an open boat and traveled to the island of Great Heron Cay, where a pyrate or smuggler or some such agreed to carry us to Boston. Dr. Dan said those New Englanders would care nothing for our looks and dirty cloathes, so long as our money was good.

But our adventures were not yet at an end, dear Reader. No sooner had we set out upon the Bahama channel than our ship was blown westerward by an adverse gale and wreck’d upon a Florida beach. Dr. Dan and I were, so far as we knew, the sole survivors, for sailors as a rule do not know how to swim, yet we did recover one of our trunks (in which we had placed one half of the coins), or Dr. Dan did, salvaging it by the miraculous artifice of floating upon a spar, and fishing it inshore with a small anchor.

So we were cast up like Crusoe upon this cape, which formed the very extremity, indeed what a vulgar man might call the penous, of America. I learned it was not the first time Dr. Dan had been wrecked in that place, and in the lingering confusion of his false death he mistook the year, or the centurie, talking all this while about things which had long since passed away. When I had managed to call a halt to this wild disquisition he apologized, saying that imagination and memory were all confounded one with the other, and assuring me that he knew where he was, for it was the year 1870 or near enough, was it not? And not wanting to add to his embarrassment I said this was near enough indeed, for no greater accuracy was requir’d, not by one such as me, certainly, nor here upon this lonelie island. I then asked him to tell me the story of his first
Florida shipwreck, for we had no thing in such abundance as we had time, except if it be sea shells, of which we had a great number.

It was many years ago, said he,

upon some islands off the southerly part of this cape. They were covered in bones, in consideration of which I named one Cayo Hueso, and not far from there I buried the treasure of El Dorado, from which I had lately come. It was El Dorado in the Popish tong but in the Indian it was Memphis, I believe, or Achem, or Paniau, or Akkad, who can say after so many years. Have I not already spoken to you of this city? I do not remember, yet I remember very well the look and indeed the scent of that city in the deep forest, the scent of lemon and coriander, and of mint, unless I am thinking of another place, and not Achem at all, or Paniau.

I wanted to tell him what a fool I was, and receive a kind of absolution from him if he would give it, yet I said nothing. Instead I asked him was it there in that city where he had known the queen of America.

It was, said he,

Maria Yako was her name, unless I am thinking of two queens, one called Maria and the other Yako. In truth I don’t know, but whoever she was, she was very beautiful, for she looked as if she had ridden down from Heaven upon the white horse. In fact the conquest of Paniau, or El Dorado, was undertaken for the love and lewd desires that all men had for her, and not for riches at all. I thought for some time she was Anna Gloria after all, but I think I was mistaken, as I was mistaken this time also. She was only herself, just as you are, and me.

Thinking upon these times, and recalling his life among the Spaynards, those Popish villains, Dr. Dan now became frightened, suddenly recalling that we were ourselves in Spanish territorie, and that it would go ill with us were a Spanish ship to happen by. Now he began to scrabble about in
the sand, saying we must bury our remaining gold, for we could not run the risk of losing this half of the treasure as well. I did not argue with him, saying only give me my own share so I am fixed, & then helping him to bury the rest, for in his scrabbling and digging he was most ineffectual.

When a shippe did at last come, which happened only after a period of
one week
– which week was a restful time after our struggles, though we had none but sea snail to eat – it was a British vessel out of New Providence. They gave us rum and salt beef and biscuit, and a better feast I never had, but in the morning we woke to find the ship under way, carrying us farther each moment from those buried coins. Thus Dr. Dan announced he would leave the shippe and travel south again to retrieve them. I did not like to hear this, for I was frightened to go north alone. I offered to let him keep my own share, and in truth I begged him, but he would not do it. He left the ship at Charles Town, and I proceeded to Boston, where I was to make a new life for myself, and live faithfully as a mulatto, which is what I am, for I had learned at least this one Thing, namely that it was easier to be what I was, than what I was not.

I was most affected by my parting from Dr. Dan, and I ne’er knew what was come of him, nor whether he found the coins again, except that one way or the other, two years after these events, he did hire an agent to spring the false Anna Gloria from her indenture. How should I have come to know this? I will tell it now, for it is an easy thing to tell.

As I put a period to this chapter and this story, the smells of a raspberrie cake drift thro the house to my study, which gives upon the garden, all in flower now it is the summer season, and who is it you ask that waits to dine with me tonight, but Mrs. Galsworthy herself, or I should say the former Mrs. Galsworthy, now Mrs. Green (for Green I still am). She is my bride, my own Anna Gloria, and the balm and repose of my life. Quaco delivered my letter, and she wrote me one herself, with the result that when Mr. Galsworthy went to his reward some short time later, she came to Boston and sought me out. Thus after our trials and amazing surprises we have braided up our lives together, which ending, says our Son the scholar, makes my story a comedy despite its dark tones.

One morning we bade our farewells to Quaco and walked south out of Babylon toward El Dorado, Arkansas, where Daniel Defoe thought he would realize the aetherial dream of his reunion with Anna Gloria. Meanwhile I knew that Anna Gloria was there beside him on the paths and byways, but for now, in an unwanted timidity of spirit, and also in my feeling for the sensitivities of the heart, I could not conceive how to reveal this to him. One day I attempted indirect revelation by asking what he himself saw in the oracular puddles of the forest.

“There’s us,” he said, “and there’s some worms and water bears. Probably nematodes in there as well. All manner of invisible plankton. The world of the microcosmos is actually bigger than ours. It is the paradox of perspective.”

After this I held on to my tongue and we penetrated southward. Initially we stayed away from the river, in case there was anyone looking for us. Whenever we saw jungle people, which was not very often, Daniel Defoe cried out to them in a language called Pirahao, which he said was the language of El Dorado, but it turned out to be a purely historical language and there were none who understood it. Most of the time we just marched along in our own contemplations. We slept in palm thatch contrivances of Daniel Defoe’s personal design, and I chewed upon lemongrass, and Christopher Smart was happy as a clam in milk, apparently accustomed to forest travel. Edward Halloween wore a look of stricken vexation because now, as we walked, he was composing a novel about St. Louis. To me it seemed right and proper that history should be spun away like this and condensed to a poetic echo in a eunuch’s mind. I also appreciated that he did not goad me about revealing myself to Daniel Defoe, although at times he was rattled up with the expectation of it.

The vestiges of imperial grandeur lay all around us. They were covered over by the forest or else, in places where chemicals rendered the landscape poisonous, they bared themselves in crests of cement and ejected bits of plastic. Truly it was a incitement to meditation. One night I lay in our shelter while outside, by the fire, Edward Halloween was trying to make Daniel Defoe tell him how it happened that the international technological human world had fallen into collapse.

“Oh,” said Daniel Defoe, “well, you see, it waned away back into the riot of nature from which it came. I saw both the coming and the going.”

“But how did it wane away?” said Edward Halloween. “Why did it happen?”

“I can explain by the rivet hypothesis. If you melt all your rivets by flying too close to the sun, your spaceship will fall out of the sky. Do you understand?”

Edward Halloween said that he did not understand.

“Or think of it this way. There used to be a creature called the barnacle goose, which reproduced in two different ways. First, it could be produced from a scum that developed on fir timber tossing in the waves. The baby bird hung from the timber until it was coated with feathers, at which time it flew away. But it could also be produced when the droppings of a mature goose fell into the water from a high cliff. The droppings became barnacles, and the new geese hatched out of these barnacles in the spring and burst through the waves. Now, consider this effect: If you have climate warming, the water becomes corrosive, as everyone knows. This melts the barnacles before they can turn into geese, and it melts the feathers on the baby birds that grow on driftwood. You might not see the connection between warm water and the destruction of geese, but this anecdote shows how everything was connected. That is what I mean by rivets. All the rivets melt, but only when the final rivet melts does the spaceship fall out of the sky.”