“Daniel is so smart,” said Magdalena. “If I were younger I’d steal his heart away.”
“Well, you’re not younger,” Obadiah said.
“Shut up, I know I’m not young. I’m sick and I’m dying and nobody cares.”
“Who said you were dying?” I asked.
“It’s my heart. It’s always fluttering and giving me sharp pains. But we all have to die sometime.”
“Don’t be morbid, Auntie,” said Maud.
“Especially don’t be morbid on your birthday,” said Gordon. “How old are you?”
“Older than Methuselah.”
“You look wonderful,” said Gordon.
“That’s what I tell her,” said Obadiah.
“Shut up. I look like a chicken with its neck wrung.”
“Why are you having a party and calling attention to your age if you feel that way?” I asked.
“When one is ill,” said Magdalena, “one feels it incumbent upon oneself to say proper farewells to one’s friends.”
“But what if you don’t die after this farewell?” I asked.
“She can do another party next year,” said Maud. “It’s all very silly. You’re in excellent health.”
“She’s strong as an ox,” said Obadiah.
“You shut up about how strong I am. I’m weak as a kitten.”
“Did that letter in the paper this morning disturb you?” Gordon asked.
“I don’t bother with such tripe,” said Magdalena.
“Good for you,” said Gordon.
“What did it say?”
“It was just tripe, as you say,” said Gordon.
“I thought so. Did they mention me by name?”
“No names were used. Even the signature was a pseudonym. Purity Knickerbocker.”
“They’re all cowards,” said Magdalena.
“Precisely,” said Gordon.
“They said I should watch out for something.”
“They implied that,” said Gordon.
“Extremely silly. What do you suppose they meant?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Maud.
“It’s totally ridiculous,” said Obadiah.
“It’s ridiculous when you open your mouth,” said Magdalena.
At this point I decided to maintain my sanity by separating myself from Magdalena’s quixotry. I stood up and suggested to Gordon, who was beginning to take on the appearance of a loathsome animal of indeterminate species, that we should go to bid on the race.
“I want to go, too,” said Maud.
“No,” I said. “You stay and keep your aunt company.”
“I want to bid. I want to buy a pool on the Warrior.”
“I’ll buy one for you,” said I.
“I’ll buy one for you, never mind him,” said Gordon.
“I’ll buy it myself,” said Maud.
“Then go by yourself,” I said and I sat back down.
“You’re a mule, Daniel,” Maud said.
“If I were a mule I’d be in battle at Atlanta,” I said.
Maud chose to stay, at end, and Gordon and I walked off like school chums.
“Is it true you’re going to run for Congress?” I asked him. I had no need to be sociable with him, but Will Canaday had told me he truly was a man of decent principle, a Unionist, staunchly (though belatedly) for Lincoln — unlike his father, Lyman, who thought Lincoln a tyrant and usurper — and good with the workers at the Fitzgibbon foundries. I thought him a bit too full of himself, but he did have the good taste to pursue Maud.
“I probably will,” he said. “The party offered it to me.”
“The Republicans?”
“Of course.”
“You may find yourself running against John. The Democrats are talking of him as a candidate, too.”
“I’ve heard that. I’m afraid I can’t worry about the Irish.”
The idea of a man entering into a new career at midlife was strange to me, and appealing. I had thought only of continuity since I began educating myself, and so the idea of a mind change — industry into politics, in Gordon’s case — seemed like a mutation of the species; and I date to this moment my change of mind on the word.
All that I had written for Will and for the Tribune seemed true enough, but a shallow sort of truth, insufficiently reflective of what lay below. Joshua’s life, or John’s, or my own could only be hinted at by the use of the word as I had been practicing it. The magnificent, which is to say the tragic or comic crosscurrents and complexities of such lives, lay somewhere beyond the limits of my calling. My thinking process itself was inhibited by form, by the arguments and rules of tradition. How was I ever to convey to another soul, even in speech, what I felt for and about Maud, what grand churnings she set off in my inner regions? How could I know those workings, even for myself alone, without a proper language to convey them? I was in need of freedom from inhibition, from dead language, from the repetitions of convention.
If I had not left my disk at the hotel, I would have taken it out of its sack and studied its mystery. And with that thought I knew that what was wrong with my life and work was that I was so busy accumulating and organizing facts and experience that I had failed to perceive that only in the contemplation of mystery was revelation possible; only in confronting the incomprehensible and arcane could there be any synthesis. My wretched inadequacy in achieving integrity of either mind or spirit after having witnessed so much death, deviltry, and treachery was attributable to this. I had become a creature of rote and method at a time when only intuitions culled from an anarchic faith in unlikely gods could offer me an answer. How could I ever come to know anything if I didn’t know what I didn’t know?
“Well,” I said to Gordon as we neared the betting enclosure, “I hope you’re getting used to my plan to kidnap Maud.”
“You haven’t gone soft in the brain, have you, Quinn? Kidnapping is a serious affair.”
“They have to catch you, and I can’t conceive of that.”
“You’re unorthodox, all right. I can say that after hearing you talk at the bazaar. But you know I intend to marry the girl.”
“Does she intend that as well?”
“We’ve talked of it often.”
“I don’t think Maud is very taken with marriage,” I said. “I think she much prefers to live in sin.”
“You’d best watch your language, fellow.”
“You’re totally correct. I was just telling myself the same thing.”
We were by then at the center of the exquisite vice of gambling on Thoroughbreds, the auctioneer standing on an elevated platform with a pair of spotters watching the crowd of about three hundred for their bids. Bidding on the pools had been frenzied since early morning at John McGee’s local gambling house on Matilda Street in the Spa, but now it was reaching an apex of zeal at the track. As post time neared, a chalkboard gave the bids on each horse in the first pool. And now each horse was being auctioned separately, yet again, the folks with the fat bankrolls raising the bid on their favorites to levels beyond the reach of everyday gamblers. John held all bets, giving the winning bidder a ticket on the horse of his choice, with which he might claim all the money bet on his particular pool if his horse won. John took three percent of all bets, and so stood to win perpetually and lose never a whit — odds that pleased him quitesome.
There would be two races today, the first and most important being the Griswold Stakes, named for Obadiah: best two out of three heats, each heat one mile, carry ninety pounds, $50 entrance, purse $1,000 added, for all ages. These were the entries:
Lord Cecil Glastonbury’s ROYAL TRAVELER, four-year-old, highest pool price thus far $1,200
Maud Fallon’s BLUE GRASS WARRIOR, five-year-old, pool price $950
Wilmot Bayard’s BARRISTER, four-year-old, pool price $600