Job - A Comedy Of Justice Part 41

'What year is this?' I asked.

'Nineteen-ninety-four.'

'That's our year, too. Wednesday the eighteenth of May. Or was this morning. Before the change.'

'It still is. But - Look, let's quit jumping around. Start at the beginning, whenever that was, and tell me how you wound up inside the fence, bare naked.'

So I told him.

Presently he said, 'That fire pit. Didn't burn you?'

'One small blister.'

'Just a blister. I reckon you would be safe in h.e.l.l.'

'Look, Jerry, they really do walk on live coals.'

'I know, I've seen it. In New Guinea. Never hankered to try it. That iceberg - Something bothers me. How does an iceberg crash into the side of a vessel? An iceberg is dead in the water, always. Certainly a s.h.i.+p can b.u.mp into one but damage should be to the bow. Right?'

'Margrethe?'

'I don't know, Alec. What Jerry says sounds right. But it did happen.'

'Jerry, I don't know either. We were in a forward stateroom; maybe the whole front end was crushed in. But, if Marga doesn't know, I surely do not, as I got banged on the head and went out like a light. Marga kept me afloat - I told you.'

I Farnsworth looked thoughtfully at me. He had swiveled his seat around to face both of us while I talked, and he had showed Margrethe how to unlock her chair so that it would turn, also, which brought us three into an intimate circle of conversation, knees almost touching - and left him with his back to the traffic. 'Alec, what became of this Hergensheimer?'

'Maybe I didn't make that clear - it's not too clear to me, either. It's Graham who is missing. I am Hergensheimer.

When I walked through the fire and found myself in a different world, I found myself in Graham's place, as I said. Everybody called me Graham and seemed to think that I was Graham - and Graham was missing. I guess you could say I took the easy way out... but there I was, thousands of miles from home, no money, no ticket, and n.o.body had ever heard of Alexander Hergensheimer.' I shrugged and spread my hands helplessly. 'I sinned. I wore his clothes, I ate at his table, I answered to his name.'

'I still don't get the skinny of this. Maybe you look enough like, Graham to fool almost anyone... but your wife would know the difference. Margie?'

Margrethe looked into my eyes with sadness and love, and answered steadily, 'Jerry, my husband is confused. A strange amnesia. He is Alec Graham. There is no Alexander Hergensheimer. There never was.'

I was left speechless. True, Margrethe and I had not discussed this matter for many weeks; true, she had never flatly admitted that I was not Alec Graham. I was learning again (again and again!) that one never won an argument with Margrethe. Any time I thought I had won, it always turned out that- she had simply shut up.

Farnsworth said to me, 'Maybe that knock in the head, Alec?'

'Look, that knock in the head was nothing - a few minutes' unconsciousness, nothing more. And no gaps in my memory. Anyhow it happened two weeks after the fire walk. Jerry, my wife is a wonderful woman... but I must disagree with her on this. She wants to believe that I am Alec Graham because she fell in love with Graham before she ever met me. She believes it because she needs to believe it. But of course I know who I am: Hergensheimer. I admit that amnesia can have some funny effects... but there was one clue that I could not have faked, one that said emphatically that I, Alexander Hergensheimer, was not Alec Graham.'

I slapped my stomach, where a bay window had been. 'Here is the proof: I wore Graham's clothes, I told you. But his clothes did not fit me perfectly. At the time of the fire walk I was rather plump, too heavy, carrying a lot of flab right here.' I slapped my stomach again. 'Graham's clothes were too tight around the middle for me. I had to suck in hard and hold my breath to fasten the waistband on any pair of his trousers. That could not happen in the blink of an eye, while walking through a fire pit. Nor did it. Two weeks of rich food in a cruise s.h.i.+p gave me that bay window... and it proves that I am not Alec Graham.'

Margrethe not only kept quiet, her expression said nothing. But Farnsworth insisted. 'Margie?'

'Alec, you were having exactly that trouble with your clothes before the fire walk. For the same reason. Too much rich food.' She smiled. 'I'm sorry to contradict you, my beloved... but I'm awfully glad you're you.'

Jerry said, 'Alec, many is the man who would walk through fire to get a woman to look at him that way just once. When you get to Kansas, you had better go to see the Menningers; you've got to get that amnesia untangled. n.o.body can fool a woman about her husband. When she's lived with him, slept with him, given him enemas and listened to his jokes, a subst.i.tution is impossible no matter how much the ringer may look like him. Even an identical twin could not do it. There are all those little things a wife knows and the public never sees.'

I said, 'Marga, it's up to you.'

She answered, 'Jerry, my husband is saying that I must refute that - in part - myself. At that time I did not know Alec as well as a wife knows her husband. I was not his wife then; I was his lover - and I had been such only a few days.' She smiled. 'But you're right in essence; I recognized him.'

Farnsworth frowned. 'I'm getting mixed up again. We're talking about either one man or two. This Alexander Hergensheimer - Alec, tell me about him.'

'I'm a Protestant, preacher, Jerry, ordained in the Brothers of the Apocalypse Christian Church of the One Truth - the Apocalypse Brethren as you hear us referred to. I was born on my grandfather's farm outside Wichita on May twenty-second -'

'Hey, you've got, a birthday this week!' Jerry remarked. Marga looked alert.

'So I have. I've been too busy to think about it. - in nineteen-sixty. My parents and grandparents are dead; my oldest brother is still working the family farm -'

'That's why you're going to Kansas? -To find your brother?'

'No. That farm is in another world, the one I grew up in.'

'Then why are you going to Kansas?'

I was slow in answering. 'I don't have a logical answer. Perhaps it's the homing instinct. Or it may be something like horses running back into a burning barn. I don't know, Jerry. But I have to go back and try to find my roots.'

'That's a reason I can understand. Go on.'

I told him about my schooling, not hiding the fact that I had failed to make it in engineering - my switch to the seminary and my ordination on graduation, then my a.s.sociation with C.U.D. I did not mention Abigail, I did not mention that I hadn't been too successful as a parson largely (in my private opinion) because Abigail did not like people and my paris.h.i.+oners did not like Abigail. Impossible to put all details into a short biography - but the fact is that I could not mention Abigail at all without throwing doubt on the legitimacy of Margrethe's status and this I could not do.

'That's about it. If we were in my native world, you could phone C.U.D. national headquarters in Kansas City, 'Kansas, and check on me. We had had a successful year and I was on vacation. I took a dirigible, the Count von Zeppelin of North American Airlines, from Kansas City airport to San Francisco, to Hilo, to Tahiti, and there I joined the Motor Vessel Konge Knut and that about brings us up to date, as I've told you the rest.'

'You sound kosher, you talk a good game - are you born again?'

'Certainly! I'm afraid I'm not in a state of grace now... but I'm working on it. We're in the Last Days, brother; it's urgent. Are you born again?'

"Discuss it later. What's the second law of thermodynamics?'

I made a wry face. 'Entropy always increases. That's the one that tripped me.'

'Now tell me about Alec Graham.'

'Not much I can tell. His pa.s.sport showed that he was born in Texas, and he gave a law firm in Dallas as an address. For the rest you had better ask Margrethe; she knew him, I didn't.' (I did not mention an embarra.s.sing million dollars. I could not explain it, so I left it out... and Marga had only my word for it; she had never seen it.)

'Margie? Can you fill us in on Alec Graham?'

She was slow in answering. 'I'm afraid I can't add anything to what my husband has told you.'

'Hey! You're letting me down. Your husband gave a detailed description of Dr Jekyll; can't you describe Mr Hyde? So far, he's a zero. A mail drop in Dallas, nothing more.

'Mr Farnsworth, I'm sure you've never been a s.h.i.+pboard stewardess -'

'Nope, I haven't. But I was room steward in a cargo liner - two trips when I was a kid.'

'Then you'll understand. A stewardess knows many things about her pa.s.sengers. She knows how often they bathe. She knows, how often they change their clothes. She knows how they smell - and everyone does smell, some good, some bad. She knows what sort of books they read - or don't read. Most of all she knows whether or not they are truly gentlefolk, honest, generous, considerate, warmhearted. She knows everything one could need to know to judge a person. Yet she may not know a pa.s.senger's occupation, home town, schooling, or any of those details that a friend would know.