A hand was waved before Basil Valentine where he paused to take off his gloves at the top of the steps. All this had been going on for some minutes, and Valentine was obviously annoyed. Indeed he did know of the anarchist Caserio's absurd blunder after assassinating the president of France, half a century ago, an image which assailed him now with all the vivid insistence of those irrelevant details which crowd a memory being probed for some calamity so alarming, or so disgraceful, that memory does not want to surrender it to consciousness until leavened by time, when the enormity of the deed may be appreciated at a distance, and, from this distance, dismissed. Basil Valentine got his gloves off, and stood looking at his hands for a moment there at the top of the steps as though recovering what the gloves had concealed, and verifying the left hand folded over the right with the glitter of the gold seal ring in the sun. Then, with the gray gloves clasped behind him, he descended.
— Did you see the moon last night?
— I can't say I noticed it, Valentine answered, looking quite old; though in profile his face maintained its look of strength, even heightened now by the severe preoccupation which his voice reflected.
— Yes, in its last quarter. The horned moon.
They had walked down near the seal pool in the center, where a child of about eighteen months stood blocking their way, ga/ing up at Basil Valentine who paused again to take out a package of Virginia cigarettes. The child was hatless, wet-nosed, and dripping steadily from the breech.
— Here, here. . Valentine burst out, looking up. — I shouldn't touch it if I were you. He offered a distracting cigarette.
— Touch her! But she's lovely! And the rose. .?
— You never know what they may have in their hair, and 1 shouldn't like to think where she got the flower. It's ruined, let her eat it, and come away. Valentine turned without looking back at the dripping figure, twisted to watch his retreat, chewing rose-petal. His effort to appear agreeable was being riddled by these thrusts, and he heard now beside him,
— Did you ever read the Grimm Brothers? the Froschkönig? No, never mind. Listen, those fragments? you have them? you still have them safe?
He stopped, to light their cigarettes. — I haven't forgiven you for running off with that cigarette case, you know. Where is it?
— I didn't ask you. . that? that? Why, it's probably in Ethiopia by now. The three Indies. And the bull? Well damn it, I brought you back a griffin's egg, a much scarcer commodity, I found it in a secluded shrine in…
— You haven't yet told me where you've been. Hunched over his cigarette, Basil Valentine looked through its smoke without taking it from his lips; and they stood there motionless as plants, Valentine in epinastic curve as the expression on his face unfolded to immediacy, and bent him down over the growth from the lower surfaces before him. — You still hope to expose these fakes then, do you? he said calmly. The stem before him was uprooted.
— That's why 1 came back! I…
— Back? Valentine straightened up. — You went home, did you? he said, and seemed to appreciate the confusion this remark brought to the downcast face beside him as they walked on: it was at moments like this, absorbed in satisfaction, gleaned surreptitiously in a steady look from the corner of narrowed eyes, that Basil Valentine added ten, or even twice that many years to the face he showed to others. Even so, his silence evoked nothing as they walked toward the lion house, no response but an uneven cadence in the footsteps beside him, and he finally questioned, — That cut on your cheek? what is it?
— I fell in the snow, killing wrens. There. But this. .
— You're done with that drunken inspiration for the priesthood, at any rate?. . Eh? Tell me, what happened.
— What happened! What happened to Huss? John Huss, enticed by a salvoconducto up to Constance, where three bishops sat on his case, and he was burned. .
— Anyone who hints that the Antichrist is to be found in Rome, my dear fellow, Valentine interrupted patiently, — and denies Peter as head of the Church. .
— Burned and his ashes thrown into the Rhine, fishing for men, O sancta simplicitas!. . yes, I've been off to see good old King Wenceslaus, there, and. . my sainted mother! the women's voices. . do you remember the Boyg? Why, I was almost pulled into the priesthood.
— And wasn't that why you went?
— And if it was! if it was! My sainted mother?. . it's as though I'd left before she named me. Do you remember that story the poet tells? "I lay this destiny upon him, that he shall never have a name until he receives one from me". . never mind. The women's voices, and even that one, I left with her kiss on my cheek, see the scar?. . there without so much as a talitha cumi I left that wise virgin.
— And now? The look from the corners of Valentine's eyes was the same concentrated appraisal of a few steps before. — The last time we talked. .
— Yes, we talked about Shabbetai Zebi, didn't we. It's a way of getting acquainted, discussing the failings of mutual friends. A mes-siah? At Smyrna a letter from God falls out of heaven to confirm him. He's flogged and imprisoned. He denies he's the messiah, while the Jews outside are breaking their neck to free him, fasting, jump- ing naked into rivers, remember? They say he's never slept with a woman, though God knows he's been married for years. Before the Sultan, he denies it again, he's given the choice of death or Islam. Damnation! Sirius the Dog Star, the bright star of Yemen, Al-Shira. . what was it? a sun itself where it rises with the color o£ ruby, then sapphire, emerald, amethyst, and then the most brilliant diamond. . damn it, listen. In that immaculate place of yours, you. . yes, immaculate, a thing like that would show up. It would show up immediately, a package like that wrapped up in old newspaper.
— You're still bent on this. . suicide? Valentine asked, drawing on his cigarette, lowering his hand to take it from his lips. It stuck to his lips, and the coal burned his fingers as they slipped over it. The cigarette dropped to the ground, his lower lip trembled for that instant at losing control of it, his right hand came up clenched and behind him his left hand dropped a glove. — But here, he snapped, — will you walk up beside me where I can talk to you, instead of…
— Suicide!
They were approaching the steps to the lion house, passing a fat woman on a bench with two books in her lap, one gaudy but closed, A Day with the Pope, the other opened, First Lessons in Italian. With a hand mounting two mean pearls on a thin line of gold almost absorbed in the flesh, she drew an enameled nail down the page, and then wiped her nose, each time folding the piece of disposable tissue in half until she clutched only a wet wad, forming the words behind it, mi place, with her lips, — mee piachay, mee piachay. .
Three little girls had just deferred to the clamorous wishes of the smallest of them, and bought a balloon.
— It's been noted, of course, that the thought of suicide has got many a man through a bad night. Nietzsche, I believe. .
— Suicide? this? Do you think there's only one self, then? that this isn't homicide? closer to homicide? that, listen. .
Approaching the door, the lines on and around Basil Valentine's eyelids became apparent as he looked at the anxious face turned up to him; and, brought out of profile into the smiling duplicity of the full face, the strength seemed to drain out through the narrow chin. — It mayn't be so simple, you know. This so-called homicide of yours, he said. — This putting off the old man?
A child posted by the door pointed to a remarkably symmetrical dog spiral on the walk. — Look at that dog-do! the child said with intense admiration.
— Get out of the way, Valentine snapped, and pushed the child aside with a firm narrow foot. — Shall we go in? he asked, still smiling, with a step back to hold the door open.