His ancestor became a larger and larger presence in his dreams, until one night Aymar could discern quite clearly his speech; indeed, his distinguished forebear instructed him to get up, get dressed, grab a flashlight, and go to a certain building site some ten blocks distant, where he would find in the rubble a ring—a pewter ring, to be exact. Not really knowing whether he still slept or was awake, Aymar obeyed and in a short while found himself prowling about in one of the many construction pits that made the West Side resemble Berlin circa 1945. Giving scant thought to the prospect of being picked up for trespassing, he felt as if he were being guided by some preternatural force and within a few minutes located a filth-encrusted object that he believed at first to be a pre-1965 quarter. Closer examination, coupled with an ecstatic shiver of the kind commonly experienced by those who are “born again,” convinced him that this had to be what he was after.
Back at his apartment an assiduous application of Gorham silver polish brought forth a gleaming pewter ring, incised with primitive jungle motifs, and inscribed on the inside with what initially appeared to be an alien alphabet but when turned the other way around proved to be an ornate monogram—the initials J.M.A.! A confirmed skeptic of psychic phenomena, Aymar was overcome with confused emotions of horror and elation in the face of such an uncanny and startling discovery. He could not begin to guess at the colossal significance of the pewter ring, but dared to hope he would soon be enlightened. Sleep being out of the question, he passed the remainder of the dark hours fondling the ring, trying it on, ultimately deciding that it fit perfectly on the fourth finger of his left hand.
He wore the pewter ring to his office, an art gallery off Madison Avenue, where he had recently secured employment as an assistant. Still in a daze, he had scarcely noticed where he was on the bus ride across the park. At his desk, as he was on the verge of attending to some long overdue correspondence, Aymar saw the electric typewriter dissolve before his eyes, exposing not the woodlike surface of the desktop but genuine oak. The Bic ballpoint he customarily used had in turn, he realized upon seizing it, been transformed into a heavier, finer instrument—a fountain pen. An inkwell and sand stood on a blotter where none had stood before. Peering out the second-floor window, he beheld not a stream of fast, noisy motor vehicles but a thoroughfare alive with horse-drawn carriages of every description; men in beaver hats and swallowtail coats; vendors hawking their wares in heavy Irish accents. The weather suddenly was warm and foetid; the low hum of the air-conditioner was no longer audible.
As if propelled on some vital errand, Aymar rushed down into the street—a street paved with rough, square-cut stones—but he paid this marvel no more heed than the rest. He headed for Fifth Avenue, knowing that there he would find his destination. When he came up to the gate of the Palladian mansion he recognized it instantly as the home of his ancestor. The manservant who answered his rappings at the brass doorknocker seemed to be expecting him, and ushered him into a parlor decorated in the sumptuous Gothic Revival style of the mid-Victorian period. There against an oversize mantel leaned a gentleman in early middle-age, dressed in luxurious silks, whose bland, blond features seemed to glow with an otherworldly radiance.
“My dear young fellow, welcome,” said John Marshall Aymar. “You cannot imagine with what delight I have anticipated this meeting.” Finding himself at last face to face with the man of his dreams, Aymar was in too much awe to do any more than mutter his thanks. “Ah, you sport the pewter ring; but of course, how else are we united now? It is owing to its agency that you have been able to transcend the barrier.” For a moment his ancestor gazed at the ring with singular intensity.
“I have a great deal to impart to you, Edmund, but we cannot tarry here. Should my wife and children happen upon you, I would be sorely tried to explain how I came to be entertaining an unknown relation, a relation who has journeyed from so far away—in time.” The servant appeared in the doorway and announced that the hack awaited them. “Come, we shall repair to premises where we can confer without fear of interruption.”
On the ride downtown his ancestor kept silent, smiling with the serenity of one seemingly possessed of some vast, cosmic secret. From the enclosed coach Aymar watched the confusion of a hot, dusty, congested city, again accepting with equanimity his presence in a bygone age as somehow part of the natural order of things.
At last they arrived at a quiet side street near the river—Weekawken Street it may have been—and disembarked before a clapboard house with the sign “Saloon” above the entrance. In the dim front room a gang of dusky-skinned sailors huddled at the counter. The barkeeper showed them to a backroom, and poured them a dark liquid out of a labelless amber bottle.
John Marshall Aymar began his narrative by relating how he came to acquire the pewter ring. As part of his charitable work among the poor of the city, he had spent time visiting the Free Men who lived in the shantytown far west of Fifth Avenue. There he had encountered some Africans recently arrived in America via Haiti—“savages” who engaged in occult practices. Impressing them with his eagerness to pierce the veil, he had been granted the privilege of undergoing a physical rite of passage that few dared to brave. He had proved worthy in the process of initiation and had earned the pewter ring, though at a cost: he had contracted a fatal illness, whose subtle course would bring him to an early grave. The sacrifice was necessary, however, in order to attain “immortality.”
“I have already had a glimpse of what lies in the Beyond,” said his ancestor, who could not repress a smug, condescending smile. “Time is an illusion—all history is fixed in one omega-null continuum, toroidal in shape. Gödel and Rucker of your own century, by the by, are correct in their speculations on the ultimate nature of the space-time synthesis.”
He went on to explain that the ring had later been “reclaimed” by his African associates, with whom he had had a falling out. While his powers had been severely diminished, he still was able to exert some control over the “psychic energy” of the ring. Through the agency of dreams he could stretch across the decades and reach his first descendant to reside in the ring’s vicinity over a substantial enough period of time. Once that descendant—he, Edmund Aymar—had found the ring (which had been lost again fortuitously after his “death”), then it was a relatively simple matter to summon him back into the past.
“I have worked hard, Edmund, for success in this world. I am an ambitious man.” John Marshall Aymar grinned, relishing his triumphs. “I have enjoyed but a mere taste of the ring’s glories, and no longer take an interest in the usual diversions of earthly existence. Circumstances have forced me to lead a double-life, but I shan’t have to maintain appearances for long.
“You as well can achieve a similar transcendence—and I don’t mean the sort of ‘transcendental’ experience extolled by those New England prigs, Emerson and Thoreau. It will require the surrender of your bodily shell; but the loss is small when you consider the gains to be had in return. What’s another forty years of dilettantish dabbling, when if you choose the path of the pewter ring you can meet my late friend, the editor of the Broadway Journal, at the height of his powers? You can dwell in the New York of any era you wish. Millions of years from today, you may be piqued to know, volcanoes will dominate the horizon and once more New York will be a pastoral paradise, free of the teeming, uncouth hoi-polloi…