But once he had gone across the street from the piers into a shop for merchant seamen, a great bare wooden-floored room with open card tables on which were thrown together glass jewelry, shiny plaster-of-Paris souvenirs, bottles of cheap wine, the liquid bright purple or red as artificial cherry candy in the clear bottles. On one table were scattered bundles of back-issue magazines tied with thin white strings, the faded pictures of burlesque dancers, insane, overdeveloped girls from the country, in obscene poses on the torn covers, their flesh bright pink, like a baby’s, glittering silver stars on their nipples. Men from the docked ships crowded sullenly at the counter, turning the pages of a few loose issues torn from the bundles, one hand in the pockets of their raincoats holding down their erections, their faces set carefully without expression. He had stood in the doorway and known at once their longing and their sense of loss, intuited their overwhelming homelessness, like a great hole torn in their bodies. He had gone quickly back to his work, saddened, troubled for all who sailed at sea.
At night, under the heavy senseless strain of weights too great to be borne, he forgot the vision he’d had in the shop and thought bitterly of Khardov’s box, grinding out wealth for him, but now perpetually stilled, more fragile than anything in the cargo he helped to unload.
He no longer wore his precious clothes, realizing that if something happened to change his fortune it would not do to have them look too threadbare. At work he thought of ways to preserve them, steps he could take to restore them to their former handsomeness. Surely, he would think, moving a large crate into place on a platform, things which cost so much money must still have much of their usefulness left in them. He remembered the location of weavers’ shops he had seen on his walks through the city, and tried to estimate the cost of resurrection to his clothing.
He had come to a country where the tradition of a ruling family stretched backward to the beginning of its history. In the low hills tribes and clans had made their camps, and in each had emerged, by dint of intelligence or force of arms or God’s fiat, one who had been leader, king. It excited him to think about it. Barbarian, horn-helmeted, clothed in skin of tiger or of bear, he had yet embodied even in the placating gesture of hands that calmed the watchers of the lightning, the hearers of the thunder, some major principle of civilization.
The nation was still a provenance of empire, albeit a waning one (each year another governor was recalled). Because its long history had been neither placid nor uninterrupted, there seemed still to drift in the atmosphere claims and counter-claims, whispered conspiracy of pretender and fool. In towns near the capital each old inn had housed its would-be king. Ambition had even become a major theme in the national literature.
Here, he felt, if anywhere, something would turn up. On his free mornings he haunted the palace grounds. A custom made things easier for him. By tradition petitioners of the royal family were allowed to mill about outside the gates to await the arrival of the king’s carriage. At the king’s discretion he might extend one royal glove and the coachman would stop. Then the petitioners would come forward individually (in an order agreed upon among themselves) and standing, eyes lowered, beneath the high gilt sides of the carriage, address the king. He did not stop every day. There was no pattern. Everything was left to royal whim.
He had no desire himself to address the king and was, of course; suspicious of appeals made in this way. The hangers-on about the palace gates were almost always old people, or young hoodlums who came to tease them.
He had stood close enough to hear one old man’s strange request: “Your Highness, I should like to propose myself for a postal stamp. I’ve a remarkable good-looking face. All think so. I’ve been to the authorities but they say it’s your decision, sire, who gets on the postal stamps.”
And the king’s amused reply: “Oh, we’ve postage stamps enough, I think. And an endless supply of faces for them, what with the queen and the children and the war heroes. Wouldn’t a statue suit you better? Think about it and let us know.”
He didn’t really know why he came to these audiences, unless it was because he felt that even this easily shared proximity to royalty somehow advanced his cause. At any rate, he continued to gather with the others outside the gates despite his own awareness of the king’s disdain and scornful patronage of the mob he was a part of, and he was disappointed on those mornings when the carriage did not stop. Gradually he became familiar with the public habits of the royal family. There was the trip at the beginning of each week to open the parliament, and when it was warm the morning ride in the public park, or the shopping tour of the princess. He could even predict with some accuracy those periods in which the king’s benevolence was running at full tide and he would be sure to stop.
One day he saw a new face in the royal carriage. He was so excited that he had to ask one of the regulars next to him who it was.
“Cousin of the queen. Duke somebody or other.”
He thought he had seen a resemblance between himself and the duke. It was only a remote possibility but he had to follow it up.
“Excuse me, but would you say I look something like the duke? It seems a foolish thing, but as he rode by I thought I saw a resemblance.”
The man looked at him carefully. “Oh, he’s much older than you are.”
“Older, of course, but is there a resemblance?”
“Well, that beard he’s got. That covers him up pretty well. I don’t know. It’s hard to say. I didn’t get a very good look at him. He’s not here often.”
“Yes, of course,” he said, feeling foolish.
“You’ve the same builds now,” the man said. “And maybe around the eyes, though I didn’t get a good look.”
The next morning he came again to the palace gates. In a short while he heard the clatter of the horses pulling the royal carriage. In a moment trumpets blew and the gates were pushed open smartly by the palace guard. The carriage lumbered through and he saw the royal hand go up. In the white glove it seemed flaccid, contemptuous of the crowd it had given the signal to stop for. He heard the wheels skid noisily as the coachman applied the brakes. The king smiled and whispered to the duke beside him, the white glove shielding the side of the king’s mouth. Of course, he thought. He’s mocking us.
He stared steadily at the duke, who was smiling, obviously enjoying himself. He was certain now he had not imagined the resemblance between them. It’s real, he thought, I do look like him.
The man he had spoken to the day before came up beside him. “It’s amazing,” he whispered. “He could almost be your father.”
“I know, I know,” he said hoarsely.
An old woman curtsied at the side of the carriage, her ancient body shaking in the awkward position. She spoke rapidly and he could not hear what she said. At last he heard the king thank her and watched as, still bent in the stiff curtsy, she backed away from the carriage. When she stood, turning to face the crowd, he saw that her face and neck were flushed. Several in the crowd had gathered around her and were demanding in excited voices that she tell them what had been said.
Just then he saw a very tall, white-haired man begin to move forward slowly, approaching the carriage. Before he realized what he was doing he found himself pushing through the crowd urgently, roughly. Walking quickly, he was soon abreast and then ahead of the tall man, who, startled by his brusqueness and misinterpreting what had happened, thinking somehow he had made a mistake and had disgraced himself before his king, stepped back to lose himself in the crowd.