The Masters of Atlantis

Table of Contents

 

ALSO BY CHARLES PORTIS

First published in paperback in the United States in 2000 by
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
141 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10012
www.overlookpress.com

 

For bulk and special sales, please contact [email protected]

Copyright © 1985 by Charles Portis

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Portis, Charles
Masters of Atlantis / Charles Portis.
p. cm.

1. Secret societies—Fiction. 2. Atlantis—Fiction. I. Title. PS3566.O663 M'.543—dc21 99-0086846

 

eISBN : 978-1-590-20662-1

YOUNG LAMAR JIMMERSON went to France in 1917 with the American Expeditionary Forces, serving first with the Balloon Section, stumbling about in open fields holding one end of a long rope, and then later as a telephone switchboard operator at AEF headquarters in Chaumont. It was there on the banks of the Marne River that he first came to hear of the Gnomon Society.

He was walking about Chaumont one night with his hands in his pockets when he was approached by a dark bowlegged man who offered to trade a small book for two packages of Old Gold cigarettes. The book had to do with the interpretation of dreams. Corporal Jimmerson did not smoke, nor did he have much interest in such a book, but he felt sorry for the ragged fellow and so treated him to a good supper at the Hotel Davos.

The man wept, overcome with gratitude. He said his name was Nick and that he was an Albanian refugee from Turkey. After supper he revealed that his real name was Mike and that he was actually a Greek from Alexandria, in Egypt. The dream book was worthless, he said, full of extravagant lies, and he apologized for imposing in such a way on the young soldier. He apologized too for his body odor, saying that nerve sweat or fear sweat made for a stronger stink than mere work sweat or heat sweat, or at least that had been his experience, and that he was always nervous when he spoke of delicate matters.

Perhaps he could repay the kindness in another way. He had another book. This one, the
Codex Pappus
, contained the secret wisdom of Atlantis. He could not let the book out of his hands but, as an Adept in the Gnomon Society, he was permitted to show it to outsiders, or “Perfect Strangers,” who gave some promise of becoming Gnomons. Lamar, who was himself an Entered Apprentice in the Blue Lodge of the Freemasons, expressed keen interest.

It was a little gray book, or booklet, hand lettered in Greek. There were several pages given over to curious diagrams and geometric figures, mostly cones and triangles. Mike explained that this was not, of course, the original script. The original book had been sealed in an ivory casket in Atlantis many thousands of years ago, and committed to the waves on that terrible day when the rumbling began. After floating about for nine hundred years the casket had finally fetched up on a beach in Egypt, where it was found by Hermes Trismegistus. Another nine years passed before Hermes, with his great powers, was able to read the book, and then another nine before he was able to fully understand it, and thus become the first modern Master of the Gnomon Society.

Since those days the secret brotherhood had seen many great Masters, including Pythagoras and Cornelius Agrippa and Cagliostro, but none greater than the current one, Pletho Pappus, whose translation this little book was. Pletho lived and taught in the Gnomon Temple on the island of Malta, with his two Adepts, Robert and a man named Rosenberg.

Lamar was embarrassed to say that he had not heard of this Society, nor was he aware that flotsam of any description, literary or otherwise, had ever been recovered from Atlantis. What was the book about? Mike apologized again, saying he was bone tired. Could they continue their discussion another time? He could hardly keep his eyes open and must now find himself a dark doorway where he might curl up and try to get a little rest. But Lamar would not hear of this and he arranged for Mike to be put up in the Hotel Davos.

Their friendship flourished. They had many meals together and many long talks. Lamar paid for Mike's food and shelter and cigarettes, and even bought him a cheap suit of clothes. Bit by bit the truth came out. Mike confessed that his real name was Jack and that he was an Armenian from Damascus. He was here on a mission. Pletho, with an eye to expanding the activities of the secret order to the New World, had sent him here to Chaumont, disguised as a beggar, to look over the Americans and determine if any were worthy of the great work. So far he had found only one.

Lamar was embarrassed again. But Jack insisted that yes, Lamar was indeed worthy and must now prepare himself for acceptance into the brotherhood. Lamar did so. First came the Night of Figs, then the Dark Night of Utter Silence. On the third night, a wintry night, in Room 8 of the Hotel Davos, Lamar Jimmerson folded his arms across his chest and spoke to Jack the ancient words from Atlantis—
Tell me, my friend, how is bread made?
—and with much trembling became an Initiate in the Gnomon Society.

This work done, Jack said that he was at last free to divulge his true Gnomon identity; he was Robert, a French Gypsy, and he must now hasten back to Malta to report his success to the Master, the success of the American mission. He would leave the
Codex Pappus
in Lamar's care, for further study, and as a kind of token of good faith, or surety, and he would return in a month or so with more secret books, with Lamar's ceremonial robe and with sealed instructions from Pletho himself. There was a $200 charge for the robe, payable in advance. This was merely a bookkeeping technicality, one of Rosenberg's foolish quirks, and all rather pointless, seeing that Lamar would begin drawing $1,000 a month expense money as soon as his name was formally entered on the rolls. Still, Robert said, he had always found it better to humor Rosenberg in these matters.

Lamar saw no more of Robert and heard nothing from Malta. He wrote letters to the Gnomon Temple in Valletta but got no answers. He wondered if Robert's ship might have been torpedoed or lost in a storm. There was no question of his having run off with the robe money because he, Lamar, still had the
Codex
, along with Robert's “Poma,” a goatskin cap he had left behind in his room. This Poma was a conical cap, signifying high office, or so Robert had told him.

The Armistice came and many of the doughboys set up a clamor to be sent home at once, though not Corporal Jimmerson, who remained loyally at his switchboard. He even volunteered to stay behind and help with all the administrative mopping-up tasks, so as to replenish his savings. In May 1919, he received his discharge in Paris, and went immediately to Marseilles and got deck passage on a mail boat to the island of Malta.

On arrival in Valletta he took a room at a cheap waterfront hotel called the Gregale. He then set out in search of the Gnomon Temple and his Gnomon brothers. He walked the streets looking at faces, looking for Robert, and clambered about on the rocky slopes surrounding the gray city that sometimes looked brown. He talked to taxicab drivers. They professed to know nothing. No one at the post office could help. He managed to get an appointment with the secretary to the island's most famous resident, the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, but the fellow said he had never heard of Gnomons or Gnomonry and that the Grand Master could not be bothered with casual inquiries.

Lamar found three Rosenbergs and one Pappus in Valletta, none of whom would admit to being Master of Gnomons or Perfect Adept of Hermetical Science. He tried each of them a second time, appearing before them silently on this occasion, wearing his Poma and flashing the
Codex
. He greeted them with various Gnomon salutes—with his arms crossed, with his right hand grasping his left wrist, with his hands at his sides and the heel of his right foot forming a T against the instep of his left foot. At last in desperation he removed his Poma and clasped both hands atop his head, his arms making a kind of triangle. This was the sign for “Need assistance” and was not to be used lightly, Robert had told him. But Pappus and the Rosenbergs only turned away in fright or disgust.

Was he being too direct? A man who wishes to become a Freemason must himself take the initiative; his membership cannot be solicited. With Gnomonry, as Robert had explained, it was just the reverse. A man must be
invited
into the order; he must be
bidden
to approach the Master. Perhaps he was being too pushy. He must be patient. He must wait.

Just at that time, at the sidewalk café outside the Gregale, with the cries of sea birds all about him, Lamar met a young Englishman named Sydney Hen. Sydney was Keeper of the Botanical Gardens in Valletta, and as such had been exempted from war service. He too was curious about things. Not only was he a student of plant life but he also collected African artifacts—spears and leather shields and such—and he read strange books as well, and speculated on what he had read, hoping to piece together the hidden knowledge of the ancients.

The two young men hit it off fairly well, particularly after Lamar had let slip the fact that he had in his possession a book of secret lore from Atlantis. They walked along the quay together, sometimes arm in arm, though Lamar found this European custom distasteful. They talked far into the night about the enigmas of the universe.

Sydney kept after Lamar to show him the
Codex Pappus
, and Lamar kept putting him off in a polite way, saying he was not sure under what conditions he could properly show the book to a Perfect Stranger. Lacking immediate guidance from his superiors, Robert and Pletho, he was not sure just what he could and could not do. He would have to think it over.

“And quite right too,” said Sydney, who did most of the talking on these dockside rambles. He had strong opinions. The Freemasons had gone wrong, he said, through their policy of admitting every Tom, Dick and Harry into the Lodge, and the modern, so-called Rosicrucians were
not
the true Brethren of the Rosy Cross, far from it. And this stuff from India, this Eastern so-called wisdom, was a complete washout. He had looked into it and found it to be a quagmire of negation. It looked sound enough and then you thumped it and it gave off a hollow ring.

On Sunday afternoons Sydney presided over a kind of literary salon at his hillside villa, which was ablaze with flowers the year round. Lamar, told that he would not feel comfortable with such people, was never invited. Then one Sunday he was invited. Sydney said, “Come on up and meet the gang, Lamar!” Lamar was not favorably impressed by all the slim, chattering young men at the gathering, nor they with him, but the food was good and Sydney's sister, Fanny Hen, a crippled girl, was kind to him, very attentive.

When he returned to the Hotel Gregale that night he found that his room had been ransacked. Nothing, as far as he could tell, had been stolen. His Poma and
Codex
were still safe behind the loose board in the linen closet. Probably children looking for war souvenirs, he thought, and he was careful to stuff his puttees and some other things behind another loose board. The next morning, just as he stepped out into the street, something came whipping past his ear like a boomerang. Careless kids, throwing a marlinspike around. Later that same day, at dusk, he was assaulted on the street. He was walking around a corner when a man struck him full in the mouth with a long wooden oar and knocked him flat. As he lay there in a daze two or three men were suddenly all over him, handling him roughly and ripping his clothes in search of something. Waterfront thugs, he later decided, who had taken him for a rich American. The laugh was on them.