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Page 39
The saffron rays of the declining sunlight filtered through the cornstalks
in Micajah Widdup's garden-patch, and cast an amber glory upon my
paste-pot. I sat at the editorial desk in my non-rotary revolving chair,
and prepared my editorial against the oligarchies. The room, with its one
window, was already a prey to the twilight. One by one, with my trenchant
sentences, I lopped off the heads of the political hydra, while I
listened, full of kindly peace, to the home-coming cow-bells and wondered
what Mrs. Flanagan was going to have for supper.
Then in from the dusky, quiet street there drifted and perched himself
upon a corner of my desk old Father Time's younger brother. His face was
beardless and as gnarled as an English walnut. I never saw clothes such
as he wore. They would have reduced Joseph's coat to a monochrome. But
the colours were not the dyer's. Stains and patches and the work of sun
and rust were responsible for the diversity. On his coarse shoes was the
dust, conceivably, of a thousand leagues. I can describe him no further,
except to say that he was little and weird and old -- old I began to
estimate in centuries when I saw him. Yes, and I remember that there was
an odour, a faint odour like aloes, or possibly like myrrh or leather; and
I thought of museums.
And then I reached for a pad and pencil, for business is business, and
visits of the oldest inhabitants are sacred and honourable, requiring to
be chronicled.
"I am glad to see you, sir," I said. "I would offer you a chair, but --
you see, sir," I went on, "I have lived in Montopolis only three weeks,
and I have not met many of our citizens." I turned a doubtful eye upon his
dust-stained shoes, and concluded with a newspaper phrase, "I suppose that
you reside in our midst?"
My visitor fumbled in his raiment, drew forth a soiled card, and handed it
to me. Upon it was written, in plain but unsteadily formed characters,
the name "Michob Ader."
"I am glad you called, Mr. Ader," I said. "As one of our older citizens,
you must view with pride the recent growth and enterprise of Montopolis.
Among other improvements, I think I can promise that the town will now be
provided with a live, enterprising newspa--"
"Do ye know the name on that card?" asked my caller, interrupting me.
"It is not a familiar one to me," I said.
Again he visited the depths of his ancient vestments. This time he
brought out a torn leaf of some book or journal, brown and flimsy with
age. The heading of the page was the _Turkish Spy_ in old-style type; the
printing upon it was this:
"There is a man come to Paris in this year 1643 who pretends to have lived
these sixteen hundred years. He says of himself that he was a shoemaker
in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion; that his name is Michob Ader;
and that when Jesus, the Christian Messias, was condemned by Pontius
Pilate, the Roman president, he paused to rest while bearing his cross to
the place of crucifixion before the door of Michob Ader. The shoemaker
struck Jesus with his fist, saying: 'Go; why tarriest thou?' The Messias a
nswered him: 'I indeed am going; but thou shalt tarry until I come';
thereby condemning him to live until the day of judgment. He lives
forever, but at the end of every hundred years he falls into a fit or
trance, on recovering from which he finds himself in the same state of
youth in which he was when Jesus suffered, being then about thirty years
of age.
"Such is the story of the Wandering Jew, as told by Michob Ader, who
relates --" Here the printing ended.
I must have muttered aloud something to myself about the Wandering Jew,
for the old man spake up, bitterly and loudly.
"'Tis a lie," said he, "like nine tenths of what ye call history. 'Tis a
Gentile I am, and no Jew. I am after footing it out of Jerusalem, my son;
but if that makes me a Jew, then everything that comes out of a bottle is
babies' milk. Ye have my name on the card ye hold; and ye have read the
bit of paper they call the _Turkish Spy_ that printed the news when I
stepped into their office on the 12th day of June, in the year 1643, just
as I have called upon ye to-day."
I laid down my pencil and pad. Clearly it would not do. Here was an item
for the local column of the _Bugle_ that -- but it would not do. Still,
fragments of the impossible "personal" began to flit through my
conventionalized brain. "Uncle Michob is as spry on his legs as a young
chap of only a thousand or so." "Our venerable caller relates with' pride
that George Wash -- no, Ptolemy the Great -- once dandled him on his knee
at his father's house." "Uncle Michob says that our wet spring was nothing
in comparison with the dampness that ruined the crops around Mount Ararat
when he was a boy --" But no, no -- it would not do.
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