Boone continues, in an utterly different manner. There is that curious slender girl near the front seat with her companions, the Lady Avanel, and he does not want to seem to be speaking of her. But he says that these Singaporians are as afraid of white as the native soldiers of the Indian mutiny were afraid of breaking caste in their fashion, or the Egyptians were,—which enabled Cambyses to defeat them by heading his procession against them with a small and famous army of kittens. He says they are as afraid of white as the negroes of the South were afraid of it, which enabled the Ku Klux to send them scattering. It is no idle fancy of his that these people are as superstitious as the blacks of the old days. He says that in the last war of the World Government against the rebels of Asia, where Chinese, Japanese and Americans won so great a victory for world unity, there were a few Singaporians among the rebels, denounced by the Singaporian high priests, but these rebels seemed secretly authorized, and they had the typical lens gun equipment and the complete cocaine soul. And Boone tells what is evidently a familiar story, how one of the Springfield Amazons found a mysterious white pony on the battlefield, after her own had been shot under her. She rode him to the front line and drove a whole company of those cocaine fiends in flight, lens guns and all, with nothing in her hand but her Michael-forged blade. Boone says the Singaporians hate white because it is the color of truth and daytime and decency, and as for him, if he had had his way he would have painted every tower of this World’s Fair white, and the inner and outer walls of the city white, to keep out the Singaporian spies and missionaries, but Slick Slack Kopensky and Mayo Sims won a victory for the present color scheme.
Then young Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, to keep himself right with his friends, throws off his coat, and goes forward in the bricklayer’s clothes he has been wearing beneath. As a former High School student-bricklayer and one often practicing that profession still, he pledges himself to go out and work one of the bricklaying machines, or use the old fashioned trowel, as is needed, until the Fair buildings are done. And he calls for volunteers to join him, and many of the gay young bloods do so at once.
So this evening as I serve the black Siamese wine to the Man from Singapore and his daughter, and I stand respectfully at her left hand, and give my report while her wonderful smiles come and go, she clasps her hands and tries to be gay over old Boone. But her eyes are tragic pools, indeed, when I speak of her lover, and of the evident conflict in his heart. And now it is her father’s turn to laugh and try to shift her mood.
“They blame me with their own petty doings and are always suspicious at the wrong time. They never know when I am fighting the real tigers in the holy cause of our High Priests. Not as a Singaporian, but as a man, I am going to give this town a blow with my left hand. One more word from that baby, that bawling Boone, holding me in contempt, and then let him look to himself. It is done more simply than he knows. The distrust of all leaders of every faction from Mayo Sims to Boone is growing every hour. Even those leaders love a lynching, if it removes an enemy. They went to the funeral of Surto Hurdenburg for respectability’s sake, not to mourn him. Not one of all the City Council or the Board of Education put in an extra hour seeing that his lynchers were brought to trial. They are all lynchers and one needs hardly to accelerate their natural gait a bit, but only to fail to warn them of what their own may do. Certainly the Board of Education would be insulted if they knew that Sims and Kopensky are as alien and unknown to us as are Boone and Saint Friend. If they are putting on their fights to edify us, the attempt is a failure. I sincerely hope that Sims and Kopensky and Boone are hanged by their adoring citizens side by side on the same tree. But Montague Rock, I hope, will be spared to us. He is a fine paw. I will tell you that much, little Mara.”
CHAPTER XV
HOW AS A MALAY I WITNESS THE CONVERSION OF YOUNG KOPENSKY TO THE COCAINE BUDDHA, LATER WHEN I AM MY AMERICAN SELF THE THIBETAN BOY TAKES ME BEYOND THE NORTH STAR AND SHOWS ME THE TRUE BUDDHA.
July 6, 2018:—This afternoon Mara sends me to find Joseph Bartholdi Michael, the Third, and report once more. I discover that he has been at work according to his pledge, and with a bricklaying machine. There are more than enough, both of machines and Springfield workers to complete the Street of Past History on time.
And so, this evening, the Kling beauty dawdles through her black wine and cigarettes looking at her father with an indulgent and patronizing squint, completely at ease in the possession of his heart. Though with so many other strains of ancestry, the Malay manner predominates tonight, in her as in him, an outer appearance of super languor, a suggestion of nerve force accumulating through long seasons, to be discharged in one day of supreme achievement, or of “running amuck.”
Suddenly Mara asks her father, as though to plague him all she dares and startle him from his languor: “How do I differ from Avanel Boone? We are, for instance, the same age.” He answers without a quiver: “She is a worthy daughter of Black Hawk Boone, except that she will not dye her left hand or wear her hair on her shoulders, and you are a worthy daughter of your father, except that you like to quiz.”
And she opens her eyes and they seem the wide gates of his Prophet’s heaven. And they have, to him, all the dewiness of honest youth. She asks with earnestness:—
“But how do we differ?”