The Box of Delights (25 page)

Something in the voice made Kay feel sure that the singer would not harm him; he rose from his log and pushed through the scrub towards him. After a few yards, the jungle was less thick. He came
through the jungle to a clearing, where he saw the mouth of a cave, a bubbling spring falling down some rocks near the cave-mouth into a rocky pool, and an old man sitting beside a fire, toasting
two bananas stuck upon skewers, which he held, one in each hand.

Kay limped towards this old man, who looked at him and said, ‘Italiano?’ Kay shook his head.

The man said, ‘Français?’

Kay, who was on surer ground here, said, ‘Non . . . English.’

The old man looked at him in astonishment and interest. ‘Come then,’ he said kindly; ‘sit, eat, drink;’ he took the toasted bananas from the skewers, put them on a broad
leaf and offered them to Kay with a big shell full of water. Kay, who was really very, very hungry, ate the bananas with thankfulness. He looked at the man who had welcomed him. He was
extraordinarily old, ragged-haired and tatter-bearded. He was dressed like a scarecrow in a most strange patchwork of palm leaves, pieces of old sail and what may once have been leather. Presently
the man spoke in strange English:

‘You excuse me,’ the man said. ‘Make pardon. What year in Anno Domini is this?’

‘Nineteen-thirty-five,’ Kay said.

‘What you say? Nineteen – nineteen hundred?’

‘Yes,’ Kay said, opening his hand three times and then showing four fingers. ‘Nineteen-thirty-five.’

‘In the Future, or in the Present?’

‘In the Present,’ Kay said.

‘Oh,’ said the old man. ‘What a thing is Time. I have got lost in Time.’

‘Tell me, please, sir,’ Kay said, with interest, ‘are you Mr Arnold of Todi?’

‘I was once, young Englishman,’ he said, ‘but that was when I belonged to the year of Our Lord, which I went out of, by my own act. I would have none of it: I went back into
the Past, and should therefore have a name from the Past, such as Alexander.’

‘Why did you go back into the Past?’ Kay asked.

‘Why?’ Arnold said. ‘Because of the dullness of the Time into which I was born.

‘But tell me; you, you say, are English. You will please excuse and pardon. The English I have never seen. It is true that we Italians conquered the land. We have a legend that the English
are like rabbits, in that their front teeth stick out, but that they are unlike rabbits, in that they have tails. You are a strange people.’

‘We haven’t tails,’ Kay said.

‘The fact is well-known,’ Arnold said.

‘But about Time: I am rather behindhand in Present Time. Perhaps I am not in Modern Time at all, but in Future Time. It isn’t Past Time. You asked me why I went back into the Past.
So many things happened in the Past. In my young days, life in my country was tedious to a man of thought. I made a way to get back into the Past . . . a certain Box . . . You may not credit it,
but a man came all the way from Spain to offer me the Elixir of Life in exchange for it. He gave me a sip of the Elixir and I let him see my Box, but I would not make the exchange; for I could get
back into the Past by my Box, that is into the Past of Europe. Young Englishman, I do not consider that the Past of Europe is worth consideration.’

‘I don’t know,’ Kay said. ‘A good many things have happened in Europe . . . The Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, Napoleon the Great, the Battle of Waterloo . . . and the
Great War.’

‘The Great War!’ Arnold said. ‘It was to see that that I gave away my first Box and spent years finding a way into the Past of Asia. Tell me, in the Time that you know do they
speak much of Alexander the Great?’

‘He is mentioned sometimes,’ Kay said.

‘Imagine it,’ Arnold said. ‘Mentioned sometimes. Is not that typical of European things and people? Rulers and ruled alike – childish, trivial, wanting in
will.’

‘You can’t call Julius Cæsar that,’ Kay said.

‘He only imitated Alexander,’ Arnold said. ‘Besides he was bald. I was delighted that he met the end he did. My race, the Italian, has ever been renowned for intelligence. They
never showed it more clearly than in ending that public pest. What is your Christian name, young man?’

‘Kay,’ Kay answered.

‘You ought to change it to Alexander,’ Arnold replied. ‘Young men should have prosperous names, names to live up to. Kay isn’t a name, it’s a letter of the
alphabet. It is the Greek Kappa. We Italians dispensed with it.’

‘Did you ever meet Alexander?’ Kay asked.

‘Young man,’ Arnold said. ‘I was weary of life in Todi, so I made my Box and wandered into the Past of Europe. Oh, it was so dull . . . dreary kings, dreary murders, silly
wars; so I got out of it as soon as I could. I went into the Past of Asia. And d’you know, a lot of that is very dull . . . silly wars, you know, rather dreary kings, not very much thought;
and then suddenly, in one of those cities in Asia Minor, I first saw Alexander. You never met Alexander?’

‘No, indeed,’ Kay said, ‘I never did.’

‘You ought to set to work,’ Arnold said, ‘to make yourself a Box like mine that would take you where you would meet with Alexander. As to the Present (not that this is the
Present, it seems like the Future), I do not know where he is, but he exists for ever in the Past. He was the finest young man that ever trod this planet: beautiful, like young Apollo. The
sculptors and the painters, when they wanted to carve or to paint a god, all turned to him. He was all beauty and strength and wisdom. He had only to ride down the street on that horse of his, that
spoke with a man’s voice, and every man would come out with his weapons to follow him to the world’s end. Everybody saw that he was the king. In the camps, the men would hurl the spear,
or shoot with the bow, or throw the quoit, or wrestle or run: he could beat the best of them at all these things. And then, too, think of his Army, the Earth Shaking, and his Fleet, the Sea Taming,
and his Horses, the Thunder Bearing, and his Trumpets, the Spirit Lifting. Think of his godlike scheme of making the world one kingdom under one worthwhile king instead of all these little dreary
kings. But, of course, you know of this as well as I do. You have seen Alexander . . .’

‘No, indeed,’ Kay said, ‘I have not.’

‘Well, it is hard to believe that anybody has not seen Alexander,’ Arnold said, ‘for who knows what Beauty is that has not? His hair is beautiful, young man, he has marvellous
eyes, and he has a way of leaping on to his horse’s back or into his chariot. I saw him last driving in a chariot with white horses. He was dressed in leopard skins and had a crown of laurels
on his brows, and people flung themselves down, crying that he was a god . . .’ He paused for a moment, thinking of Alexander.

‘I am behind in my Time, if you understand me, young man. I was in the Anno Domini, and then I went back into the Past and the Anno Domini has moved on and I have only partly moved on, or
perhaps I have moved on too far, if you understand.’

‘I think I do partly understand,’ Kay said. ‘It was Ramon Lully who came to you from Spain with the Elixir.’

‘I never paid much attention to the man’s name,’ Arnold said. ‘He was a thinker of my time. I do not believe in the thinkers of my time. Now the thinker of
Alexander’s time – Alexander’s teacher, Aristotle – he was a real thinker.’

‘Do you know, I have got your Box of Delights at present,’ Kay said. ‘It belongs really to the man who came to you with the Elixir.’

‘It is a trivial toy,’ Arnold said. ‘I ought to have let that Spaniard take it and had his Elixir in exchange, and drunken deep of it; then I could have gone on and on with
Alexander over the Chorasmian Wastes and other Wastes.

‘But permit me to offer you these raisins. I dried them myself in the sun. Alexander used raisins in his campaigns. Other soldiers wanted meat, bread, wines, sweetmeats; Alexander only a
few raisins and a little water.

‘What was the race that you said that you belonged to, young man?’

‘The English,’ Kay said.

‘Some very small unimportant race,’ Arnold answered. ‘I had a list of all the nations of the world that marched with Alexander; there were no English among them. We were in a
great plain covered with tents. One morning he hung out his golden banner, and all those countless nations blew their trumpets and hung out their standards and away we went. It took a week for the
army to pass out of the plain, and we went on over mountains and across rivers, and the cities we visited we sacked; but usually the cities opened their gates to us and came out with gold and
silver and precious stones.

‘But allow me to offer you this pomegranate.’

Kay ate the pomegranate and a second one which the old man offered. The old man stood up and said:

‘Now, there was one special thing about Alexander that I have not yet told you. When I have told you this you will understand why it was that his soldiers thought that he was a god.

‘We were marching, if you understand, across a burning waste. Whether it was the Chorasmian Waste, or the Acheronian Waste, I cannot now be sure. It may perhaps have been the Gedrosian
Waste. Know only that it was a burning pitiless desert of glare and death and dead men’s bones. There were asps in the sand. The glare of that sand made men’s blood so thin that an asp
bite killed in three minutes. Men died of asps, thirst, glare and giddiness. The sand stretched, the sky arched, glare below, glare above, and the moon at night in the terrible cold with jackals
howling. I made a poem of the sky:

‘Some men’s tongues shrivelled dry and dropped out with the parching. No water there, no drink: only pebbles and buttons to freshen our mouths with.

‘Now, some of the soldiers found in a rock at dawn a little scoop of cold water. They thought, “Now we will win promotion for ourselves by taking this to Alexander,” so they
brought it to him. It was not more than is in this shell here, but in that place, under that sun, it was Life itself, young Master. Did Alexander drink it and give those men promotion? He was as
thirsty as any soldier there. “No,” he said, “I will not touch what I cannot share with my men,” and he poured it out in the sand to his Fortune. I tell you once more, that
there has been nobody in this world like Alexander.

‘Allow me, now, to recommend to you this egg of the Island Pheasant which I have baked for you. For salt, here is salt of the sea, and for bread this meal of pounded almond. Eat, eat, for
the young can enjoy what they eat.’

Kay ate gladly; for he was indeed hungry.

‘You mentioned, young man,’ Arnold said suddenly, ‘a certain person who had made a figure in the world.’

‘Julius Cæsar?’ Kay said.

‘Do not name that person to me. No, another whose name I didn’t catch. You called him great.’

‘Napoleon?’

‘That was the name,’ the old man said. ‘Who was he?’

‘He was a soldier who conquered nearly all Europe,’ Kay said.

‘Conquered Europe! That miserable collection of barbarians conquered. Could it ever be anything but conquered?’ Arnold said. ‘And you dare to place these petty pugilists of
yours beside the godlike figure of Alexander. You talk with parochial insolence. Were you not so ignorant, it would be my duty to strike you dead . . . that you debase thus a godlike and glorious
figure, whose achievements cannot be weighed because there is no balance with which to weigh them, nor other with whom to compare him.

‘Presently, young man, I shall perfect yet another Box, much greater than any that I have made yet. I entered the Past of Europe by one Box; I entered the Past of Asia by another; but with
this third box I will go after Alexander, where he rides on some planet, in some starry place in heaven. I will harness the comets for him, and we will come down, young man, and we will sweep away
all these paltry kings and you English with tails.’

‘We haven’t got tails,’ Kay said.

‘You know nothing even of your own race,’ Arnold said angrily, ‘and you dare to presume to speak about Alexander.’

Kay was, by this time, terrified of Arnold of Todi, this extraordinary figure of fun, whose matted beard was stuck with twigs and leaves, whose coat was of sail, palm leaf and old leather, who
seemed to be seven hundred years old and to have gone with Alexander the Great into India. He was now standing with flaming eyes, glaring down at Kay.

‘Mad as a hatter,’ Kay thought. ‘Now he will probably tear me piecemeal.’

At this instant he heard himself called: ‘Kay! Kay!’ There behind him in a little bay of the sea, so bright and beautiful, were two figures whom he saw to be Herne the Hunter and the
woman of the oak tree. On their left hands were these curious rings with the longways crosses upon them.

‘Come, Kay,’ they said. ‘We can take you home. You must not be lost in the Past in this way.’

‘Could you take Arnold of Todi too?’ he said. ‘He has been most awfully kind to me.’

‘Yes,’ they said, ‘let him come.’

Kay did not quite see how they were to come, but, when they reached the beach, the two called and out of the sea there came tumbling the most beautiful dolphins, drawing a chariot made of one
big sea shell, of the colour of mother-of-pearl.

By the side of these were three bigger dolphins, one, with no saddle, for Herne the Hunter, two, with high-backed saddles of white and scarlet coral, and stirrups and reins of amber beads, for
Kay and Arnold.

‘You will mount these, Kay,’ the lady said, as she stepped into her chariot and gathered the long reins of seaweed; ‘then follow me.’

‘Stick on tight,’ Herne said. ‘They’re odd mounts at first.’

The woman had already set off in her chariot. Kay, Herne and Arnold mounted: the dolphins at once leaped from the water, plunged in, and again leaped out, on the long rush towards home. Soon,
they were speeding level with the chariot, going swifter and swifter, racing fish against fish, while the woman called to the team and sang to them: