Free Bring the Jubilee by Ward W. Moore Page A

myself, he was inclined to shyness. He had an arrangement whereby he turned back most of his purchases for credit on others. I saw that if he hadn't, his library would have soon dispossessed him; as it was, books covered all the space not taken by the paraphernalia of his office and bedroom with the exception of a bit of bare wall on which hung a large crucifix. He seemed always to have a volume in his large, dark brown hand, politely closed over his thumb or open for eager sampling.
     
    Enfandin was tall and strong-featured, notable in any company. In the United States where a black man was, more than anything else, a reminder of the disastrous war and Mr. Lincoln's proclamation, he was the permanent target of rowdy boys and adult hoodlums. Even the diplomatic immunity of his post was poor protection, for it was believed, not without justification, that Haiti, the only American republic south of the Mason-Dixon line to preserve its independence, was disrupting the official if sporadically executed policy of deporting Negroes to Africa by encouraging their emigration to its own shores or, what was even more annoying, assisting them to flee to the unconquered Indians of Idaho or Montana.
     
    Beyond a "Good morning" or "Thank you" I doubt if we exchanged a hundred words until the time I saw a copy of Randolph Bourne's Fragment among his selections. "That's not what you think it is," I exclaimed brashly; "it's a novel."
     
    He looked at me gravely. "You also admire Bourne?"
     
    "Oh yes." I felt a trifle foolish, not only for having thrust my advice upon him, but for the inadequacy of my comment on a writer who had so many pertinent things to say and had been persecuted for saying them. I was conscious, too, of Tyss's opinion: How could a cripple like Bourne speak to whole and healthy men?
     
    "But you do not approve of fiction, is that so?" Enfandin had no discernible accent, but often his English was uncolloquial and sometimes it was overly careful and stiff.
     
    I thought of the adventure tales I had once swallowed so breathlessly. "Well . . . it does seem to be a sort of a waste of time."
     
    He nodded. "Time, yes . . . We waste it or save it or use it—one would almost think we mastered it instead of the other way around. Yet are all novels really a waste of the precious dimension? Perhaps you underestimate the value of invention."
     
    "No," I said; "but what value has the invention of happenings that never happened, or characters who never existed?"
     
    "Who is to say what never happened? It is a matter of definition."
     
    "All right," I said, "suppose the characters exist in the author's mind, like the events; where does the value of the invention come in?"
     
    "Where the value of any invention comes in," he answered. "In its purpose or use. A wheel spinning aimlessly is worth nothing; the same wheel on a cart or a pulley changes destiny."
     
    "You can't learn anything from fairy tales," I persisted stubbornly.
     
    He smiled. "Maybe you haven't read the right fairy tales."
     
    I soon discovered in him a quick and penetrating sympathy which was at times almost telepathic. He listened to my callow opinions patiently, offering observations of his own without diffidence and without didacticism. The understanding and encouragement I did not expect or want from Tyss he gave me generously. To him, as I never could to Tirzah, I talked of my hopes and dreams; he listened patiently and did not seem to think them foolish or impossible of accomplishment. I do not minimize what Tyss did for me by saying that without Enfandin I would have taken much less profit from the books my employer gave me access to.
     
    I was drawn to him more and more; I'm not sure why he interested himself in me, unless there was a reason in the remark he made once: "Ay, we are alike, you and I. The books, always the books. And for themselves, not to become rich or famous like sensible people. Are we not foolish? But it is a pleasant folly and a