The Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (Literature) Page 4

  (A part of each day-or night) as they have been looking to me the past 7 years: as being NONEXISTENT. That is, that there is nothing. That there is no God and no universe; that there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And that I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that insane Thought.

  By this light, the absurdities that govern life and the universe lose their absurdity and become natural, and a thing to be expected. It reconciles everything, makes everything lucid and understandable: a God who has no morals, yet blandly sets Himself up as Head Sundayschool Superintendent of the Universe; Who has no idea of mercy, justice, or honesty, yet obtusely imagines Himself the inventor of those things; a human race that takes Him at His own valuation, without examining the statistics; thinks itself intelligent, yet hasn't any more evidence of it than had Jonathan Edwards in his wildest moments-a race which did not make itself nor its vicious nature, yet quaintly holds itself responsible for its acts.

  But-taken as unrealities; taken as the drunken dream of an idiot Thought, drifting solitary and forlorn through the horizonless eternities of empty Space, these monstrous sillinesses become proper and acceptable, and lose their offensiveness.

  To this point in his letter, Clemens seems almost to merge himself into the character of the "sane-looking man" with the foible, or of 44 revealing the truth to August. But, Clemens explains to his old friend, the idea has become a part of him for seven years, for in that time he has been working on an unfinished story. He continues: "And so, a part of each day Livy is a dream, and has never existed. The rest of it she is real, and is gone. Then comes the ache and continues." He concludes: "How well she loved you and Harmony, as did I, and do I, also." " Unquestionably Clemens endowed 44 with his own questionings and grievances and griefs.

  It would be a mistake, however, to consider this letter unmixed autobiography. It is a moving document, written by Samuel Clemens, who suffers; it is equally a letter by Mark Twain, the long-committed artist who creates. Only a year before his death Clemens expressed elation at his discovery of a new literary form: writing untrammeled letters to his intimate friends like Howells or H. H. Rogers or Twichell and then not sending them. Ile told Howells, "When you are on fire with theology . . . you'll write it to Twichell, because"-in imagination-"it would make him writhe & squirm & break the furniture." " So, it appears, a literary impulse as well as private sorrow underlies the crucial letter to Twichell. It would also be a mistake to think that Twain had newly discovered the sense of cosmic loneliness which the "Conclusion" brilliantly imparts. More than thirty years earlier he had written, "I felt like the Last Man, neglected of the judgment, and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished world";" this was his sensation as he stood above a sea of clouds on the crater edge at Haleakala, on Maui.

  While Mark Twain wrestled with his final chapter-the only final chapter in the three manuscripts-he was attempting to cope with dream experiences and a haunting sense of isolation that had for long lain deep in his inner life. As Coleman Parsons first suggested, in completing the chapter Mark Twain evidently found powerful catalytic aid in The Tempest." Schwarz's plea to the "magician" for freedom from the bonds of "this odious flesh" recalls Ariel's eloquent pleas to Prospero for his release. Moreover, Traum and 44 share with Ariel the ability to enchant with music, the globe-girdling swiftness, the antic and mercurial moods (untroubled by any Moral Sense), and the power of melting "into air, into thin air," as none of their progenitors do-not Satan nor the child Jesus nor Pan nor the Admirable Crichton nor Twain's own Superintendent of Dreams. Prospero says:

  Prospero's tone of great authority and reassurance as he speaks to the troubled young Ferdinand has its counterpart in the "gush of thankfulness" which 44 releases in August and the "blessed and hopeful feeling" that his words will prove true. Satan's voice, like Prospero's, has "that fatal music" in it. Above all, what 44 reveals to August about the character of human life in the cosmos echoes and reechoes from Prospero's conclusion: life is as insubstantial as a dream.

  If the similarities are strong, differences and difficulties (apart from The Tempest's superiority) remain in Mark Twain's "Conclusion of the book." The almost unrelievedly dark tenor of his letter to Twichell is only half lightened in the "Conclusion" by blessed and hopeful feelings. Although 44's parting speech is credible insofar as one accepts his authority as a character and his premises in the argument, what is one to make of his urging August to "Dream other dreams, and better!"? Does the command to dream signify a command to create that "so potent art" of which Prospero and Shakespeare were masters? It is desirable here to repeat that Clemens valued the creative life above all other lives; it is a vulgar error to suppose he did not. The difficulty is that 44's injunction, whether in this or another meaning, cannot easily be assigned to a God hostile to men in an unmanageable or nonexistent universe. Of course, Clemens might have revised his manuscripts and this draft of a chapter, but as the chapter stands, the paradox remains: mold your life nearer to the heart's desire; life is at best a dream and at worst a nightmare from which you cannot escape.

  The "Mysterious Strangers"

  Almost universally, readers have accepted The Mysterious Stranger, A Romance as a finished, posthumously published work, and students of Twain have likewise credited Paine's story that his discovery of the last chapter enabled him to publish the complete tale. Only when John Tuckey published Mark Twain and Little Satan in 1963 were these readers and students disillusioned-although recently at least one critic, James M. Cox, has insisted that this posthumous edition of Mark Twain's last work "is not going to be superseded by any future text" and that it "is the closest thing to Mark Twain's intention that we shall ever have." 78 But what Mark Twain actually wrote inevitably supersedes the Paine-Duneka patchwork text, and Mark Twain's "intention"-if by that we mean his effort to achieve a total effect in a completed work-was never fulfilled.

  This is not to deny that the cut, cobbled-together, partially falsified text has the power to move and to satisfy esthetically despite its flaws. Perhaps it will last among some readers in preference to the unfinished fragmentary tales here published. But I think it possible that a writer or editor who is more sympathetic to Twain's divided mind and creative dilemma in his late life may, in the future, produce a better version than that pieced together by Paine and Duneka. Perhaps such a writer will imagine a new, wholly satisfying ending to "The Chronicle of Young Satan," or perhaps he will be able to condense, rework, and strengthen "No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger" and end it with Twain's last chapter in its proper place. To carry on, flesh out, and conclude "Schoolhouse Hill" would probably be even more difficult, and yet scarcely less rewarding. In any event, such a writer will begin with the texts that Mark Twain wrote in the form in which he left them, acknowledging openly when he selects or modifies or creates or concludes. Finally it must be said that these incomplete texts are Mark Twain's own fragments, large and small, with their own value and interest; and if he produced no finished narrative frieze, he did succeed in creating a multitude of various, memorable figures in the half-sculptured stones.

  Chapter 1

  T WAS 1702-May. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Faith in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.

  Yes, Austria was far from the world, and asleep, and our village was in the middle of that sleep, being in the middle of Austria. It drowsed in peace in the deep privacy of a hilly and woodsy solitude where news from the world hardly ever came to disturb its dreams,
and was infinitely content. At its front flowed the tranquil river, its surface painted with cloud-forms and the reflections of drifting arks and stone-boats; behind it rose the woody steeps to the base of the lofty precipice; from the top of the precipice frowned the vast castle, its long stretch of towers and bastions mailed in vines; beyond the river, to the left, was a tumbled expanse of forestclothed hills cloven by winding gorges where the sun never pene trated; and to the right, lay a far-reaching plain dotted with little homesteads nested among orchards and-shade-trees.

  The whole region for leagues around was the hereditary property of a prince with a difficult name, whose servants kept the castle always in perfect condition for occupancy, but neither he nor his family came there oftener than once in five years. When they came it was as if the lord of the world had arrived, and had brought all the glories of its kingdoms along; and when they went they left a calm behind which was like the deep sleep which follows an orgy.

  Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys. We were not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Catholics; to revere the Virgin, the Church and the saints above everything; to hold the Monarch in awful reverence, speak of him with bated breath, uncover before his picture, regard him as the gracious provider of our daily bread and of all our earthly blessings, and ourselves as being sent into the world with the one only mission, to labor for him, bleed for him, die for him, when necessary. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and in fact, not allowed to. The priests said that knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would not endure discontentment with His plans. This was true, for the priests got it of the Bishop.

  It was discontentment that came so near to being the ruin of Gretel Marx the dairyman's widow, who had two horses and a cart, and carried milk to the market town. A Hussite woman named Adler came to Eseldorf and went slyly about, and began to persuade some of the ignorant and foolish to come privately by night to her house and hear "God's real message," as she called it. She was a cunning woman, and sought out only those few who could readflattering them by saying it showed their intelligence, and that only the intelligent could understand her doctrine. She gradually got ten together, and these she poisoned nightly with her heresies in her house. And she gave them Bibles and hymn-books, to keep for their own, and persuaded them that it was no sin to read them.

  One day Father Adolf came along and found the widow sitting in the shade of the horse-chestnut that stood by her house, reading these books. He was a very loud and zealous and strenuous priest, and was always working to get more reputation, hoping to be a Bishop some day; and he was always spying around and keeping a sharp lookout on other people's flocks as well as his own; and he was dissolute and profane and malicious, but otherwise a good enough man, it was generally thought. And he certainly had talent; he was a most fluent and chirpy speaker, and could say the cuttingest things and the wittiest, though a little coarse, maybe-however it was only his enemies who said that, and it really wasn't any truer of him than of others; but he belonged to the village council, and lorded it there, and played smart dodges that carried his projects through, and of course that nettled the others; and in their resentment they gave him nicknames privately, and called him the "Town Bull," and "Hell's Delight," and all sorts of things; which was natural, for when you are in politics you are in the wasp's nest with a short shirt-tail, as the saving is.

  He was rolling along down the road, pretty full and feeling good, and braying "We'll sing the wine-cup and the lass" in his thundering bass, when he caught sight of the widow reading her book. I came to a stop before her and stood swaying there, leering down at her with his fishy eyes, and his purple fat face working and grimacing, and said-

  "What is it you've got there, Frau Marx? What are you reading?"

  She let him see. He bent down and took one glance, then he knocked the book out of her hand and said angrily-

  "Burn them, burn them, you fool! Don't you know it's a sin to read them? Do you want to damn your soul? Where did you get them?"

  She told him, and he said-

  "By God I expected it. I will attend to that woman; I will make this place sultry for her. You go to her meetings, do you? What does she teach you-to worship the Virgin?"

  "No-only God."

  "I thought it. You are on your road to hell. The Virgin will punish you for this-you mark my words." Frau Marx was getting frightened; and was going to try to excuse herself for her conduct, but Father Adolf shut her up and went on storming at her and telling her what the Virgin would do with her, until she was ready to swoon with fear. She went on her knees and begged him to tell her what to do to appease the Virgin. He put a heavy penance on her, scolded her some more, then took up his song where he had left off, and went rolling and zigzagging away.

  But Frau Marx fell again, within the week, and went back to Frau Adler's meeting one night. Just four days afterward both of her horses died! She flew to Father Adolf, full of repentance and despair, and cried and sobbed, and said she was ruined and must starve; for how could she market her milk now? What must she do? tell her what to do. He said-

  "I told you the Virgin would punish you-didn't I tell you that? Hell's bells! did you think I was lying? You'll pay attention next time, I reckon."

  Then he told her what to do. She must have a picture of the horses painted, and walk on pilgrimage to the Church of Our Lady of the Dumb Creatures, and hang it up there, and make her offerings; then go home and sell the skins of her horses and buy a lottery ticket bearing the number of the date of their death, and then wait in patience for the Virgin's answer. In a week it came, when Frau Marx was almost perishing with despair-her ticket drew fifteen hundred ducats!

  That is the way the Virgin rewards a real repentance. Frau Marx did not fall again. In her gratitude she went to those other women and told them her experience and showed them how sinful and foolish they were and how dangerously they were acting; and they all burned their books and returned repentant to the bosom of the Church, and Frau Adler had to carry her poisons to some other market. It was the best lesson and the wholesomest our village ever had. It never allowed another Hussite to come there; and for reward the Virgin watched over it and took care of it personally, and made it fortunate and prosperous always.

  It was in conducting funerals that Father Adolf was at his best, if he hadn't too much of a load on, but only about enough to make him properly appreciate the sacredness of his office. It was fine to see him march his procession through the village, between the kneeling ranks, keeping one eye on the candles blinking yellow in the sun to see that the acolytes walked stiff and held them straight, and the other watching out for any dull oaf that might forget himself and stand staring and covered when the Host was carried past. I would snatch that oaf's broad hat from his head, hit him a staggering whack in the face with it and growl out in a low snarl-

  "Where's your manners, you beast?-and the Lord God passing by!"

  Whenever there was a suicide he was active. He was on hand to see that the government did its duty and turned the family out into the road, and confiscated its small belongings and didn't smouch any of the Church's share; and he was on hand again at midnight when the corpse was buried at the cross-roads-not to do any religious office, for of course that was not allowable-but to see, for himself, that the stake was driven through the body in a right and permanent and workmanlike way.

  It was grand to see him make procession through the village in plague-time, with our saint's relics in their jeweled casket, and trade prayers and candles to the Virgin for her help in abolishing the pest.

  And he was always on hand at the bridge-head on the 9th of December, at the Assuaging of the Devil. Ours was a beautiful and massive stone bridge of five arches, and was seven hundred years old. It was built by the Devil in a single night. The prior of the monastery hired him to do it, and had trouble to persuade him, for the Devil said he h
ad built bridges for priests all over Europe, and had always got cheated out of his wages; and this was the last time he would trust a Christian if he got cheated now. Always before, when he built a bridge, he was to have for his pay the first passenger that crossed it-everybody knowing he meant a Christian, of course. But no matter, he didn't say it, so they always sent a jackass or a chicken or some other undamnable passenger across first, and so got the best of him. This time he said Christian, and wrote it in the bond himself, so there couldn't be any misunderstanding. And that isn't tradition, it is history, for I have seen that bond myself, many a time; it is always brought out on Assuaging Day, and goes to the bridge-head with the procession; and anybody who pays ten groschen can see it and get remission of thirty-three sins besides, times being easier for every one then than they are now, and sins much cheaper; so much cheaper that all except the very poorest could afford them. Those were good days, but they are gone and will not come any more, so every one says.

  Yes, he put it in the bond, and the prior said he didn't want the bridge built yet, but would soon appoint a day-perhaps in about a week. There was an old monk wavering along between life and death, and the prior told the watchers to keep a sharp eye out and let him know as soon as they saw that the monk was actually dying. Towards midnight the 9th of December the watchers brought him word, and he summoned the Devil and the bridge was begun. All the rest of the night the prior and the Brotherhood sat up and prayed that the dying one might be given strength to rise up and walk across the bridge at dawn-strength enough, but not too much. The prayer was heard, and it made great excitement in heaven; insomuch that all the heavenly host got up before dawn and came down to see; and there they were, clouds and clouds of angels filling all the air above the bridge; and the dying monk tottered across, and just had strength to get over; then he fell dead just as the Devil was reaching for him, and as his soul escaped the angels swooped down and caught it and flew up to heaven with it, laughing and jeering, and Satan found he hadn't anything but a useless carcase.