Collected Fictions

The Man on the Threshold

Bioy Casares brought back a curious knife from London, with a triangular blade and an H-shaped hilt; our friend Christopher Dewey, of the British Council, said that sort of weapon was in common use in Hindustan. That verdict inspired him also to mention that he had once worked in Hindustan, between the two wars. ( Ultra aurorem et Gangem, I recall him saying in Latin, misquoting a verse from Juvenal.) Among the stories he told us that night, I shall be so bold as to reconstruct the one that follows. My text will be a faithful one; may Allah prevent me from adding small circumstantial details or heightening the exotic lineaments of the tale with interpolations from Kipling. Besides, it has an antique, simple flavor about it that it would be a shame to lose—something of the 1001 Nights.

The precise geography of the facts I am going to relate hardly matters. And besides—what sort of exactness can the names Amritsar and Udh be expected to convey in Buenos Aires? I shall only say, then, that back in those years there were riots in a certain Muslim city, and that the central government sent a strong fellow in to impose order. The man was a Scot, descended from an illustrious clan of warriors, and in his blood there flowed a history of violence. My eyes beheld him but one time, but I shall never forget the jet black hair, the prominent cheekbones, the avid nose and mouth, the broad shoulders, the strong Viking bones. David Alexander Glencairn shall be his name tonight in my story.

The two Christian names befit the man, for they are the names of kings who ruled with an iron scepter.

David Alexander Glencairn (I shall have to get used to calling him that) was, I suspect, a man who was greatly feared; the mere announcement of his coming was sufficient to cast peace over the city. That, however, did not keep him from putting into effect a number of forceful measures. Several years passed; the city and the district were at peace; Sikhs and Muslims had put aside their ancient discords. And then suddenly Glencairn disappeared. Naturally, there were any number of rumors of his having been kidnapped or killed.

These things I learned from my superior, because there was strict censorship and the newspapers didn't discuss Glencairn's disappearance— did not so much as mention it, so far as I can recall. There is a saying, you know—that India is larger than the world; Glencairn, who may have been all-powerful in the city to which he was fated by a signature at the end of some document, was a mere cipher in the coils and springs and workings of the Empire. The searches performed by the local police turned up nothing; my superior thought that a single individual, working on his own, might inspire less resentment and achieve better results. Three or four days later (distances in India are what one might call generous), I was working with no great hope through the streets of the opaque city that had magically swallowed up a man.

I felt, almost immediately, the infinite presence of a spell cast to hide Glencairn's whereabouts. There is not a soul in this city (I came to suspect) that doesn't know the secret, and that hasn't sworn to keep it. Most people, when I interrogated them, pleaded unbounded ignorance; they didn't know who Glencairn was, had never seen the man, never heard of him. Others, contrariwise, had seen him not a quarter of an hour ago talking to Such-and-such, and they would even show me the house the two men had gone into, where of course nobody knew a thing about them—or where I'd just missed them, they'd left just a minute earlier. More than once I balled my fist and hit one of those tellers of precisely detailed lies smack in the face. Bystanders would applaud the way I got my frustrations off my chest, and then make up more lies. I didn't believe them, but I didn't dare ignore then. One evening somebody left me an envelope containing a slip of paper on which were written some directions....

By the time I arrived, the sun had pretty well gone down. The neighborhood was one of common folk, the humble of the earth; the house was squat. From the walkway in the street I could make out a series of courtyards of packed earth and then, toward the rear, a brightness. Back in the last courtyard, some sort of Muslim celebration was going on; a blind man entered with a lute made of reddish-colored wood.

At my feet, on the threshold of this house, as motionless as an inanimate thing, a very old man lay curled up on the ground. I shall describe him, because he is an essential part of the story. His many years had reduced and polished him the way water smooths and polishes a stone or generations of men polish a proverb. He was covered in long tatters, or so it looked to me, and the turban that wound about his head looked frankly like one rag the more. In the fading evening light, he lifted his dark face and very white beard to me. I spoke to him without preamble—because I had already lost all hope, you see—about David Alexander Glencairn. He didn't understand me (or perhaps he didn't hear me) and I had to explain that Glencairn was a judge and that I was looking for him. When I uttered those words, I felt how absurd it was to question this ancient little man for whom the present was scarcely more than an indefinite rumor. News of the Mutiny or the latest word of Akbar, this man might have (I thought), but not of Glencairn. What he told me confirmed that suspicion.

"A judge!" he said with frail astonishment. "A judge who is lost and being searched for. The event took place when I was a boy. I know nothing of dates, but Nikal Seyn had not died at the wall at Delhi yet"—Nicholson he meant, you see. "The past lives on in memory; surely I shall be able to recover what in that time took place. Allah had permitted, in His wrath, that mankind grow corrupted; filled with curses were men's mouths, and with falsehoods and deception. And yet not all men were perverse, so that when it was proclaimed that the queen was going to send a man to enforce the laws of England in this land, the least evil of men were glad, because they felt that law is better than disorder. The Christian came, but no time did it take him to prevaricate and oppress, to find extenuation for abominable crimes, and to sell his verdicts. At first, we did not blame him; none of us were familiar with the English justice he administered, and for all we knew, this judge's seeming abuses were inspired by valid, though arcane, reasons. Surely all things have justification in his book, we tried to think, but his similarity to the other evil judges of the world was too clear, and at last we had to admit that he was simply an evil man. He soon became a tyrant, and my poor people (in order to avenge themselves for the mistaken hope that once they had reposed in him) came to entertain the idea of kidnapping him and putting him to trial. Talking was not sufficient; from fine words, it was necessary that we move onward to acts. No one, perhaps, with the exception of the simplest of mind or the youngest of years, believed that such a terrible purpose would ever be fulfilled, but thousands of Sikhs and Muslims kept their word, and one day, incredulous, they did what each of them had thought impossible. They kidnapped the judge, and for a prison they put him in a farmhouse in the distant outskirts of the town. Then they consulted with the subjects who had been aggrieved by him, or in some cases with the subjects' orphans and widows, for the executioner's sword had not rested during those years. At last—and this was perhaps the most difficult thing of all—they sought for and appointed a judge to judge the judge."

Here the man was interrupted by several women who made their way into the house. Then he went on, slowly:

"It is said that every generation of mankind includes four honest men who secretly hold up the universe and justify it to the Lord. One of those men would have been the most fitting judge. But where was one to find them, if they wander the earth lost and anonymous and are not recognized when they are met with and not even they themselves know the high mission they perform? Someone, therefore, reflected that if fate had forbidden us wise men, we had to seek out fools. That opinion won the day. Scholars of the Qur'an, doctors of the law, Sikhs who bear the name of lions yet worship God, Hindus who worship a multitude of gods, monks of the master Mahavira who teach that the shape of the universe is that of a man with his legs spread open wide, worshipers of fire, and black-skinned Jews composed the tribunal, but the ultimate verdict was to be decided by a madman."

Here he was interrupted by several people leaving the celebration.

"A madman," he repeated, "so that the wisdom of God might speak through his mouth and bring shame to human pride and overweening. The name of this man has been lost, or perhaps was never known, but he wandered these streets naked, or covered with rags, counting his fingers with his thumb and hurling gibes at the trees."

My good sense rebelled. I said that to leave the decision to a madman was to make a mockery of the trial.

"The accused man accepted the judge," was the reply. "Perhaps he realized that given the fate that awaited the conspirators if they should set him free, it was only from a madman that he might hope for anything but a sentence of death. I have heard that he laughed when he was told who the judge was to be. The trial lasted for many days and nights, because of the great number of witnesses."

He fell silent. Some concern was at work in him. To break the silence, I asked how many days it had been.

"At least nineteen days," he replied. More people leaving the celebration interrupted him; Muslims are forbidden wine, but the faces and voices seemed those of drunkards. One of the men shouted something at the old man as he passed by.

"Nineteen days exactly," he emended. "The infidel dog heard the sentence, and the knife was drawn across his throat."

He spoke with joyous ferocity, but it was with another voice that he ended his story.

"He died without fear. Even in the basest of men there is some virtue."

"Where did this take place that you have told me about?" I asked him. "In a farmhouse?"

For the first time he looked me in the eye. Then slowly, measuring his words, he answered.

"I said a farmhouse was his prison, not that he was tried there. He was tried in this very city, in a house like all other houses, like this one.... One house is like another—what matters is knowing whether it is built in heaven or in hell."

I asked him what had happened to the conspirators.

"That, I do not know," he said patiently. "These things happened many years ago and by now they have been long forgotten. Perhaps they were condemned by men, but not by God."

Having said this, he got up. I felt that his words dismissed me, that from that moment onward I had ceased to exist for him. A mob of men and women of all the nations of Punjab spilled out over us, praying and singing, and almost swept us away; I was astonished that such narrow courtyards, little more than long entryways, could have contained such numbers of people. Others came out of neighboring houses; no doubt they had jumped over the walls.... Pushing and shouting imprecations, I opened a way for myself. In the farthest courtyard I met a naked man crowned with yellow flowers, whom everyone was kissing and making obeisances to; there was a sword in his hand. The sword was bloody, for it had murdered Glencairn, whose mutilated body I found in the stables at the rear.