Free The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel by Louis Bayard Page A

louder.
    "In this whole benighted, godforsaken ... den of... rapacious philistines. The only one, may God strike me down if I'm a liar!"

    "You'll make me weep, you go on, Mr. Poe."

    "And his lovely wife," said the young man. "And Patsy. The blessed... the Hebe of the Highlands!" Pleased with this coinage, he raised his glass to the woman who had inspired it.

    "How many drinks would this be?" I asked, sounding uncomfortably like Sylvanus Thayer to my own ears.

    "I don't recall," he said.

    In fact, four empty glasses lay in formation alongside his right elbow. He caught me in the act of counting them.

    "Not mine, Mr. Landor, I assure you. It appears Patsy isn't keeping the place as neat as she might. Owing to grief."

    "You do seem a bit... liquid, Mr. Poe."
    "You're referring, probably, to my fearfully delicate constitution. It takes but one drink to rob me of my senses. Two, and I'm staggering like a pugilist. It's a medical condition, corroborated by several eminent physicians."
    "Most unfortunate, Mr. Poe."

    With the curtest of nods, he accepted my sympathy.

    "Now, maybe," I said, "before you start staggering, you can tell me something."

    "I would be honored."

    "How did you come to learn about the position of Leroy Fry's body?"
    The question affected him as an insult. "Why, from Huntoon, of course. He's been spouting the news like a town crier. Perhaps someone will hang him before long."
" "Hang him," " I repeated. "I assume you don't mean to imply that someone hanged Mr. Fry?"
    "I don't mean to imply anything."

    "Tell me, then. Why do you think the man who took Leroy Fry's heart was a poet?"

    This was a different sort of inquiry, for he was all business now. Pushing away his glass. Correcting the sleeves of his coatee.
    "Mr. Landor," he said, "the heart is symbol, or it is nothing. Take away the symbol, and what do you have? A fistful of muscle, of no more aesthetic interest than a bladder. To remove a man's heart is to traffic in symbol. Who better equipped for such labor than a poet?"
    "An awfully literal-minded poet, it seems to me."
    "Oh, you cannot tell me, Mr. Landor, you cannot pretend that this act of savagery did not startle literary resonances from the very crevices of your mind. Shall I delineate my own train of association? I thought in the first moment of Childe Harold: "The heart will break, yet brokenly live on." My next thought was for Lord Suckling's charming song: "I prithee send me back my heart / Since I cannot have thine." The surprise, given how little use I have for religious orthodoxy, is how often I am thrown back on the Bible: "Create in me a clean heart, O God."... "A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." "
    "Then we might just as easily be seeking a religious maniac, Mr. Poe."
    "Ah!" He brought his fist down on the table. "A statement of creed, is that what you're saying? Go back to the original Latin, then: the verb credere is derived from the noun cardia, meaning--meaning "heart," yes? In English, of course, heart has no predicative form. Hence we translate credo as "I believe," when literally it means "I set my heart' or "I place my heart." A matter not of denying the body, in other words, nor of transcending it, but rather of expropriating it. A trajectory of secular faith." Smiling grimly, he leaned back in his chair. "In other words, poetry."
    Maybe he saw the corners of my mouth shrink, for he seemed all at once to be questioning himself... and then just as suddenly, he laughed and rapped himself on the temple.

    "I neglected to tell you, Mr. Landor! I am a poet myself. Hence inclined to think as one. I cannot help myself, you see."

    "Another medical condition, Mr. Poe?"

    "Yes," he said, unblinking. "I shall have to donate my body to science."

    It was the first time I figured him for being good at cards. For he was able to carry a bluff as far as it could go.

    "I'm afraid I don't get round to poetry much," I said.

    "Why should you?" he replied. "You're