Masters of the Maze (6 page)

“Oh. No.”

“Your ungle iss a vreemazon.”

To this Joe had nothing to say, except that he believed that this was so. His host made one or two remarks which seemed equal
non sequiturs,
then began to discourse on the duty which man as an individual owed to man as a race — remarks rather similar to those made by the few other men already visited. Then he turned the conversation to music and the phonograph. Was Mr. Joseph Bellamy fond of both? Mr. Joseph Bellamy had not given the matter much thought? He would do well, then (mmpf), to give it much thought — and to build up a collection of phonograph records of good music … one could grow tired of books, said Gottfried Schtoltz.

The subject (not phonography) came up again. And it came up again. Finally, more than a bit bemused by this whole enforced caravan, and determined to seize hold of the one bit of tangible evidence — something which could be measured and scrutinized — he paused to purchase a number of books, most of them embossed on the cover with the design of a compass and a square. He read them as his train sped across the plains, alternately impressed … amused … and, once again, confused. The aims of fraternity, philanthropy, benevolence, seemed certainly unobjectionable. The oaths, or, as they seemed to be called,
obligations,
with their frightful penalties of physical mutilation, appeared more in keeping with a gang of boys playing cowboys and Indians than with an organization supposedly dating back to Hiram, the Master Craftsman of Tyre (according to one view); or to the cult of the dying god (according to another).

“You are not a freemason, I take it,” said Major Jack Gans, by and by, when the year was half over.

“I have begun to think about becoming one. People have asked me if I were one, but no one has actually asked me to become one.”

“The craft does not solicit. It is solicited.”

And so Joseph Bellamy solicited. And was sent, with a letter, to a man not on his uncle’s list. A man not at all like those who were — thus destroying Joe’s theory that perhaps another thing they had in common was an awareness of belonging to the same society — a warm, hearty, outdoor sort of man.

“Well, hey! Captain Jack asks me to make you a mason on sight! Yes, I can do it, that’s a Grand Master’s privilege, President Taft, you know, he was made a Mason on sight. Moving around, are you? — and will join a regular lodge when you settle down.
Not
a good enough reason, in my opinion — generally speaking. But — Major Jack asks it,
that
’s a good enough reason. Known him, oh, for years. Don’t know anyone who knows more about the Brethren and their history than he does — more than I’d care to know, impression I used to get.”

And so it was done. No great illumination followed immediately therefrom. But it was as if a door, a great, sealed door, of whose existence in a shadowed wall he had gradually become aware of, had opened … just a crack. Yet, the crack continued to widen. And Elias Ashmole proved the key.

• • •

From the very later Middle Ages when — all persiflage to the contrary — the first mention of a “mysterie” (or a ceremony conveying secrets) among stonemasons appeared, down to the early Eighteenth Century, the freemasons or workers in freestone had been just that: a sort of guild or union of workers with stone. From the Eighteenth Century onward the associations of “operative” masons had been no different from any other associations of craftsmen; and the “mysterie” had passed over into the masonic lodges known today, where the members did not actually work with stone, but employed an elaborate language of allegory drawn from that work and intended to teach a variety of moral truths.

The link, the bridge, was Elias Ashmole.

Before him, the
ancients.
After him, the
moderns.
But in him, both. Before him, too, the world so little changed from the days of Justinian; after him, the world which would never cease changing. He was born into the realm ruled by the mystical priest-king by divine right; he died in the world ruled by Newtonian law and logic. All of this his quick, keen, and supple mind had clearly grasped: and it was not likely that it had failed to grasp the implications contained in the primitive and disorganized freemasonry of his day. It was not till a generation after his death that the first grand lodge of freemasons was organized; after that, the old ways were gone forever.

It seemed though that somehow the ground had been prepared: for scarcely had the form of organized, official freemasonry with its established ritual and its three degrees, come formally into existence, when a host of other forms sprang, so it seemed, from nowhere … from the air … from the ground … Masonry in all forms proliferated like yeasts. Popes proscribed it. Kings suppressed it. In the clamor and the controversy little distinction was made between genuine and fraudulent, “regular” and “irregular,” and “fraudulent” and “clandestine” forms; by the time some of the smoke had cleared away (it hadn’t happened, even yet, that the scene was completely clear) — by that time some of the “clandestine” and “irregular” forms had become “regular” and “official.” Others never had. Some vanished forever; some went underground.

An example of masonry unrecognized, even at first attacked, by official freemasonry, which later made good and found a place for itself alongside the older form, was the so-called Scottish Rite. Its well-organized pyramid of thirty-three degrees had developed out of a much larger number of independent degrees: but the first three degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason were not “worked” in the Scottish Rite. One first had to go up through these in the so-called York Rite of the Grand Lodges. Equally independent was the Royal Arch, and the entire system of the nights Templars, as well as such groups as the Shriners: not part of the basic system of freemasonry; one had still to have gone through the basic system before being able to go through the others.

And what others! Multitudes of them, with ornate titles, and a variety of purposes. Some were almost Byzantinely Christian, others were vehemently supradenominational; some were militantly antimonarchial, others were themselves headed by monarchs … So it went.

“Prior to the formation of the first grand lodge, certain trusted friends of Elias Ashmole had been making masons and passing on not only the mason word but a certain tradition which he, Elias, had told and taught them. After the formation of the first grand lodge, between 1717 and 1719, these same decided that henceforth they would make no more masons, but would take in only such as had been made masons according to the rules of the grand lodge,” said a certain Mr. Eric Wiedemyer to Joseph Bellamy.

“And … this ‘certain tradition’?”

“That — in modern terms — they continued to work as a sort of side degree. And, during the period not long after, when a lot of French … old French … pseudo-French … crept in all over masonry, this group adopted the name of Esquires Eslu, or, Elu, or Elected, do you see? of Esquires Eslu of the Sword. It cannot be said that this degree is either irregular or clandestine, as those two words are known in masonry; but it is not worked publicly. As a matter of fact,” said Mr. Edward Wiedemyer, carefully, looking closely at Joseph Bellamy, “it is not known publicly that it still exists…. Do you understand?”

“And my uncle belonged to it? And all the others on his list, the ones I’ve been visiting, they all belong to it? And you as well?”

“To all your questions: Yes.”

The young man gave a melancholy smile. “There is something almost ritualistic in the way that I am gradually being led into membership myself. Well, well. Very well. If my uncle and his friends and you are all members and sharers in the secret tradition of Elias Ashmole, then I am content … indeed: flattered … to become a member myself. At any time and in any place named.”

And then he learned that more than mere membership was involved. That he would, if he joined, spend his whole life until replaced and released, in a Vigil comparable in some ways to the vigils of certain religious orders. On watch, forever on watch. On guard, perpetually on guard. Accepting a duty on behalf of and because of the whole human race. One which could not yet and perhaps never could, and certainly not in his lifetime, be revealed to the whole human race.

Bellamy slowly nodded. More and more, more and more, the figures of the pattern continued to fall into place.

“My post of duty … It would be, I suppose, at Darkglen? So I thought. Very well. I accept. I — I am not being presumptuous? I am to be accepted?”

“You have already been accepted, right worshipful compeer. An initiation will follow. But it will be no mere form. Come.”

And he was taken and given the Obligation and shown the Gate into the Maze, and the ward which was the key to the Maze and the object called the Sword which was the guard of the Maze.

Concerning this last, he was told, “It isn’t ornamental or vestigeal, like the tiler’s sword at a Blue Lodge meeting. It’s functional. It disseminates … ‘broadcasts’ is a useful new word which might apply … it broadcasts what is known as
anger of a Sire.”

Bellamy repeated the phrase. Then, “What does that mean?” he asked. But Mr. Wiedemyer had already begun to speak of something else. “We — the Esquires, I mean — we’ve already had our inevitable schism. It occurred shortly after the Revolutionary War, when a General Frederick Flint broke away … was expelled, too: locking the barn door and all that. He set up his own organization, working their own degree and ritual. They adopted, as so many similar groups have done, a spurious title and a spurious history to go with it. Knights Lancers Elu of Livonia. Dropped from sight, more or less, but not from
our
sight, completely. However, membership seems largely confined to the Flint family. KLEL. Yes. Its original aims were not good.

“The Maze is not ours to use, do you see, compeer? We do not use it. We merely watch it. We were taught how. We serve … We serve.”

Nate Gordon pawed through the piles of manuscript on his work-table, a door-sized slab of mahogany-veneered something which served as desk. His practice was to make three copies of everything: a white-paper one for the magazine, a yellow second-sheet one for his files, and a blue-paper one just in case either of the others should get lost. Sometimes they got lost. Jamie Swift’s innumerable young men assistant-apprentices were always loosing typescripts, filing a carnal account of a newly found lost tribe of white women in with the income-tax returns, for instance; or dispatching a practically stop-press report on the latest drag-races, not to the sports “book” in Chicago that was sweating for it, but to an imitation “Yank mag” in New Zealand which had ordered 3,000 words on Chicago gangsters. Jamie’s young men tended to have their minds on other things than efficient agenting, and sooner or later he was reluctantly obliged to let them go, which permission they generally received with a good deal of sullen screaming, leaving poor Jamie so upset that he had to take the following day off (“I’m sah-ree,” the answering service woman would explain to callers, “but Mister Swift is-int
in,
he’s down with a virus — attending a stockholder’s meeting — at the chiropodist’s — voting — on jury duty — observing Yom Kippur — Reformation Day — the Vigil of St. Bridget of Sweden — I’m sah-ree, Mr. Swift is-int
in
today — ”). Sometimes Lew Sharp, the editor of
Brute,
lost stories. Usually he lost them in The White Horse, The Cedar Bar, Stanley’s, or similar humanitarian dispensaries on the seacoasts of Bohemia, whilst engaged with one of the Ivy League girls who descend upon the New York publishing industry like lemmings on a Lappish fjord. “See what you think of this one,” he’d say, breathing like a drunken yoga and pulling any of the day’s submissions at random from his ditty-case; “guy’s got the um potentiality of being another Tom Wolfe, Christ you’ve got lovely eyes, only it seems to lack what I can’t just quite put my finger on … You see what I mean? But let us not ruin those lovely eyes trying to read in this light, editors
live
by their eyes, Peni — Meni — Dixi — Domini — ” or whatever the hell her name happened to be. As long as he got the girl up into his apartment, Lew didn’t give a shit what happened to the typescript. It was replaceable. So Nathaniel Gordon pawed and pawed and pawed.

Somewhere in the mass and morass was a chapter and a half of a novel that he was looking for. He paused to read an item done on IBM Executive typeface,
From the desk of Sydney Sherman.
“Once again, as he is obliged too often to, Mr. Sherman finds it needful to draw contributors’ attention to his very minimal standards for manuscript presentation. Mr. Sherman does not require manuscripts intended for his establishment to be engraved in copperplate on cream-laid paper with deckled edges; although such items are admittedly pleasant to receive, Mr. Sherman has not received any since he left the staff of
Delineator
late in the Coolidge Era. However, he draws the line and will continue to do so at items typed single-spaced with a red ribbon, on yellow or orange or blue construction paper, particularly when it is a
worn
red ribbon. Mr. Sherman also objects to MSS. mailed rolled up, as they require four hands to hold them flat and Mr. Sherman only has two — much as this may surprise such contributors. He did indeed at one time employ a chimpanzee to scrutinize such MSS., but it was found that the animal lacked editorial discernment, and it was persuaded to take a civil service appointment at the information window of the Main Post Office instead. Stories and articles, cobbled together with paper clips, Scotch or Irish or bicycle tape, surgical sutures, or even wholesome old-fashioned library paste, meet with a gentle but a rather unenthusiastic reception from Mr. Sherman. He wishes this were more widely known. Mr. Sherman is a devout supporter of the United Nations, and it is a source of much anguish to him that he is unable to retype and translate MSS. inflicted by threshing machines on extra-thin onionskin paper, well as he understands how high the postal rates are from Catalonia and Bhutan. He hopes that this inability will not cause political unrest in such renascent nations, for whom he will continue to entertain the highest regards, you should know. During the years 1919 and 1920 Mr. Sherman frequently took off his hat as parades dedicated to the cause of female franchise passed by, and he sincerely trusts that his positive refusal to peruse MSS. on which the baby has wee-weed or the childrens’ luncheon jam been dropped will not incite supporters of the suffrage movement to place bombs in his mailbox or — ” Nate dropped this and continued to shuffle the papers on his desk.

One of his problems seemed to be a growing disorganization of his professional life. Whereas formerly his working day had consisted of five hours of utter togetherness between himself and his typewriter, broken only by occasional trips to the bathroom; followed by a few hours of proofing and correction, note-making regarding the next day’s work, and jotting down of notions for future articles; and at the stroke of five he covered his typewriter, tidied his desk, stacked the outgoing mail, and prepared to go down and celebrate the cocktail hour — but no longer.

Habit or inertia was still strong enough to carry him through a few paragraphs beginning,
“The drums of the drug-Crazed dervishes of Marakesh were getting pretty damned loud now as they approached the stinking hut where I was hidden in the harem of Ibn al-Idd with his half-naked houri, Farina
—
“
but after that things slowed down to a semicolon. Crocodiles continued to lay submerged with only their wicked little eyes showing above the water, and mass gang-bangs in the Sunda Seas never got past the
“Tuan, tonight full moon, more better you and Men take boat and go quick”
stage. He could tell the hawk from the handsaw now, and both were turning rusty … or something.

After a few futile hours of this, he would arise now and make a cup of coffee or tea and ease his fundament and then sit down again, resolved to try good stuff. It is traditional to say that first novels are traditionally autobiographical — though tradition is silent concerning first novels in which the protagonist solves series of murders, which baffle the fuzz, or takes off in his patent spaceship for Proxima Centauri — so Nate dutifully considered novelizable elements in his own background. His paternal grandmother, he reflected, used to go away once a year for two weeks in Bermuda (whatever became of Bermuda?), and this event invariably produced in his mother, who had never been farther offshore than the Philadelphia ferryboat, symptoms of incipient hysteria; the result always being that Nate and his older brother Jerry were packed off to an aunt in Passaic, N.J., regarded by them as the boundary of the known world; and there they once saw a muskrat — or, at any rate a rat … What next? he asked himself, hunched over the mill. Sex, sexual initiation, supposedly either (a) squalid, or (b) glorious. Well. Actually, it had taken place next door on a well-made bed, and lasted about 35 seconds, Greenwich Meridian Time: “
That
wasn’t very zonky,
was
it?” the girl said. And, “I must remember not to believe everything I read … not on the
floor
, for Heaven’s sake! In the
toi
let!”

Nate sighed.

He had been in college and out of college, in the army and out of the army, now he was in love and even if he was to be out of love, still, it wouldn’t be the same. Peggy was, in this case, just the trigger, the catalyst. He fumbled in his files, came out with a little piece about the Chinese New Year’s Celebration in (of all places!) Chinatown. The paper dragons, he had realized, were actually paper lions, and were toted about by teen-aged boys who took turns and used a distinctive jerky sort of motion. He never found out what this was supposed to mean, but it seemed that a tradition carried on by kids and not old people was not likely to be dying off … There was more. It had a sort of nice, dry, observant feel to it. What was he going to do with it? He was still thinking in terms of
market.
This had no market, not as it was, not by N. Gordon, alias Pierce Taraval, Henry Dempsey, Jack Nydecker, Captain W. D. Lauterbach, etc. etc., and
sic
C. But it was sort of the thing he felt with increasing certainty that he would
like
to do — and do in Europe.

And there he came to that again, like a passenger on a train forever returning to the same station. Once in Europe, he would be, so he was sure, liberated to write what he wanted. But the money to get to Europe could only be gotten by writing what he didn’t want — grammar or not. Almost, he thought, he could hold out long enough to raise the money, grind out the minimum number of articles — but not here. So, then, where? Not, certainly, even if he was sure where it currently was, at the home of his brother, Jerry, a cheerful tosspot who worked occasionally as a wool buyer. He’d never allow Nate to stay sober long enough. It was off season at all the beach resorts, but Nate would freeze to death at any place he could afford. No.

• • •

It had to be some place entirely different, some place not too far away, some place warmed or at least warmable, furnished — merely “furnishable” wouldn’t do — some place he could fit into with a minimum of effort and cost, allowing him to use all his nervous energy to accomplish for the last time the writing he still needed and had come to loath. And Darkglen seemed to fit the description to a nicety.

Surprisingly, Jerry Gordon was still living at the same place and had still (or again) a connected telephone, and was home.

“Jerry? Nate.”

“Nate!”
— great good cheer. “I haven’t got the money to lend you for an abortion, but, tell you what, I’ll marry the girl for you instead, how’s that?”

“Thanks a lot, but wait till you’re asked. No, I called to ask you who Joseph Bellamy is? Didn’t you once — ”

He paused until there should have ceased the still recognizable and once very familiar sound of Jerry standing on his head and whistling
Dixie
, while the change and keys and pens and pencils and combs fell out of his pocket. Jerry, a trifle breathless, came back on the blower. “How’s that, weanling? As long as I still can, I’m safe. Better than yoga and
lots
more fun than A.A. Jo-seph Bel-lamy. He isn’t dead, is — ? No, hey. Well, not that I wish him — He’s not a bad old futz, but an old futz is really what he is. He’s Aunt Mabel’s brother. Remember Aunt Mabel? Six miles of hair and long mauve dresses? Before your time, I guess. Uncle Charley’s wife, before they both went down on the
Titanic
or the
Lusitania
or was it a motorboat on Lake George.

“Anyway, Joe Bellamy has or had or has had more money than God and he lives in a house, if that’s the precise word, cross between Penn Station and the Chateau Frontenac, designed by the Brothers Grimm, way the
Hell
off in the woods. And a couple of years ago he wrote me a letter like something out of one of those old English novels where they have girls and crusty old guardians, you know? Anyway, it was all a fake, no pussy whatsoever, and he gave out with a lot of mysterious hints or so it seemed to
me,
but meanwhile there was all this great brandy up from the cellar and so I got crocked. Naturally. And the next morning the manservant, or, to be precise, some local Kallikak that pushes the lawn reaper around with his six-fingered hands, he drove me down back to the station where I like to have froze my
balls
off waiting for the train; why?”

Nate explained why, mentioned something of his present problems, collected his brother’s good wishes, declined to make the trip to Darkglen via Jerry’s apartment, and hung up.

He understood what Jerry meant about the letter, if it was, as it probably was, anything like the one he’d gotten himself, it
did
seem faintly old English-novelish, with its references to “family connections, which, while not close, are perhaps not very distant,” to Mr. Bellamy’s interest in him “ — though not previously expressed,” the “healthy, country air” around Darkglen, “a house which some have found interesting … hunting … terrain said to be good for skiing … a quite large library …” and so on. City life tended to be rather dull and often unpleasant at this time of year. Since Mr. Nathaniel Gordon might, in view of his profession, be, to a certain extent, master of his time and movement, etc., etc….

At any rate, Mr. Bellamy invited him to visit Darkglen for as long as he liked, with only the necessary warning that social life there was nil and that he might find the company of the master of Darkglen “neither exciting, nor, indeed, interesting.” But he need have no more of that company than he desired, for the guesthouse, “a cottage of ample but not ungainly” size would be gotten ready for his stay.

Complicated instructions for reaching Darkglen by road and by railroad followed. If Nate came the latter route, Bellamy would arrange for transportation from the station; as for notifying him, the service for which General Telephone charged outrageous fees was outrageously bad; but a telegram “will almost invariably reach me, by one way or another, within two days …”

“I do indeed hope that you will accept,”
the letter concluded.

It seemed just the ticket. Doubtless Joe Bellamy
was
an old futz, as Jerry Gordon had said; doubtless he would complain about everything from the government to the fact that his children (if he had any) never came to visit him; but what the hell. At least he had enough savvy to appreciate that a younger guest would not want to be with him most of the time, and listening to his complaints an hour or two a day would be worth the opportunity Darkglen offered. For opportunity it was! New surroundings! Civilized comforts! Free room and board! Solitude! Yes, it was a great opportunity. Nate could write his ten (or twenty, depending on the word-lengths) set pieces at his own pace, unbugged, unbothered — when reaction set in, a brisk hike or even a dead run through the countryside — then to work again. In the evenings, the novel, if not entirely rapturous, experience of dinner at a large old country mansion, followed by a browse in the library for a book to go to sleep on.