Claims the identity of Melchisedech, King of Salem, with no father,
mother, genealogy, beginning of days, or end of life. The text also
permits a weaker formulation in which he is only in accord with that
figure.
Lives for thousands of years as the Boy King in a golden landscape.
In the opening account he turns stones into birds. The ending recap
instead gives birds made from clay and flung into the air. He offers
bread and wine, heals, survives the Slaughter of Kings, and sometimes
wears an urchin disguise.
Gives the earliest remembered talisman to an Italian confection
seller. The act later becomes one proposed origin for Mr. X and for the
continuing Duffey nation of made or awakened persons.
Appears in Iowa or the Midwest near the turn of the century. An
older alleged relative says his mother died when he was five and that he
passed among cousins. Duffey rejects the genealogy and says he was born
without parents at age five. His original given name is also reported as
Michael.
Retains three simultaneous twentieth-century childhoods, plus the
older Boy King memory. He postpones choosing one as the real childhood
and later preserves the unchosen lives as vivid personal memory rather
than deleting them.
At Lake Manawa in Council Bluffs, perceives swimmers as evil
replacements. He enters the psychic medium of the water and holds one
dangerous man under until the man dies. This is his first narrated
killing.
A relative teaches him to destroy clouds. Duffey disperses scores of
them, challenges the demiurgic resistance above the weather, and catches
lightning on sticks that will become talismanic material.
On his first day of school, organizes the class and begins
exercising the same instinct for command that marks his later clubs,
magazines, and improvised communities.
Three slant-faced boys attempt to kill him at an aunt’s house. He
escapes through attic, vine, downspout, garden, and meadow. The house
burns about two months later, but the assailants survive.
As an early-morning altar boy, cannot move the church-bell rope. He
summons an invisible giant hand, which becomes visible to other boys and
rings the bell three times.
Explains the childhood multiplicity through a younger brother and an
older sister or stepsister who exchange experience annually. One
mind-pirating member appropriates all their experiences and bears the
group name Melchisedech.
In one analysis, the sister-person is primary and Duffey was
physically, mentally, and psychically a girl for several early years. He
abandons the analyst rather than let that interpretation settle the
case.
Invades and ransacks other children’s minds, learning their homes
and histories. He commands as many invisible giants as an occasion
requires and gradually loses access to some gifts as he ages.
A kit fox totem warns him that the three slant-faced killers have
returned. The fox and Duffey charge them. Duffey is knifed and nearly
bleeds to death, but recovers in about ten days.
II. Boarding-school young
manhood
Is sent to the first of several boarding schools. The candidates are
Creighton in Omaha, Loras in Dubuque, Rockhurst in Kansas City, and a
school near St. Louis University. At least two settings may be
active.
Forms the central school friendships with Charley Murray, John
Rattigan, and Sebastian Hilton. Sebastian is the only person Duffey
clearly judges more intelligent than himself.
Learns carpentry, joining, machining, and pattern making. Faber
giants help him manufacture stage properties and other objects whose
workmanship exceeds ordinary possibility.
Becomes a student merchant with Rattigan, selling books, food,
drink, and other goods to boarding and day students. He appropriates
business judgment from Rattigan, good nature from Charley, and taste and
intelligence from Sebastian.
Lives with Rattigan, Charley, and Sebastian in enterprise,
diligence, happiness, learning, and purity. Later corruption never
causes him to redefine chastity, honor, or integrity as their
opposites.
Can outbox Sebastian by summoning giant fists, but recognizes that
this is not honest superiority. The rivalry confirms that Sebastian can
meet him at his own intellectual and magical altitude.
Refuses Rattigan a talisman. Rattigan tricks him into touching a
counterfeit. Duffey warns that an improperly made object may work in the
wrong way.
Confesses to a priest that he is a true magus and receives practical
spiritual counsel rather than simple dismissal.
Meets Lily Koch, a student merchant at the girls’ school. By
ransacking Lily, Sebastian, and adult minds, he acquires an expert
knowledge of art that remains with him for life.
Gives Lily a rib-shaped talisman intended for her already-born but
unfulfilled younger sister. Lily keeps it for Letitia, making Letitia
the later bonus creation outside the prime twelve.
At a formal dance sequence, helps the boys evade the arrangements
through the billiard room. By reading Sebastian, discovers Sebastian’s
affair with a twelve-year-old countess and extracts the prediction that
Duffey himself will later know her as a close friend.
Takes from Sebastian a valid memory of eating frog soup in Colmar.
The borrowed memory becomes his own permanent memory, illustrating how
his mind-piracy produces real biographical possession.
Gives talismans to Charley Murray and Sebastian Hilton. Sebastian
predicts that Murray’s will work and his own will half-work because its
eventual bearer will never be completely Duffey’s or anyone’s man.
The three slant-faced killers find Duffey and Sebastian. Schoolmates
organize a hunt, but the killers disappear. Sebastian argues that two
rare targets should not stay together, while Duffey refuses to yield the
greater place.
III. St. Louis
ascent and the Seven Lost Years
Finishes high school, carries about $650 and a hundred-pound
suitcase, begins growing his first beard, and enters St. Louis as an
independent young merchant.
Pretended kindred preserve evidence that Duffey remains in high
school in Omaha during 1915–16. Other doubters place him at boarding
school in Omaha or Kansas City at age sixteen and deny that his St.
Louis career fits the same interval. The narrative nevertheless insists
that the St. Louis years occurred.
Meets almost-nine-year-old Gretchen Sisler, makes a five-dollar gold
piece for her, kisses her, and tells her they will meet again.
Buys a derelict Walnut Street livery stable for $2,000 with $500
down, leaving roughly $150 for the first stage of a broad and improvised
business.
Takes in Giulio Solli, a teras or monster, feeding, bathing, and
sheltering him. Meets Bascom Bagby, who supplies equipment, labor,
provocation, and a possible foster-brother or father connection that
Duffey denies.
Gives Giulio a talisman for an unborn son. Giulio later uses it at
his wife’s pregnancy and at the child’s birth, contributing to the
making or awakening of Finnegan.
Builds the Rounders’ Club into a restaurant, bar, residence, gaming
and sporting club, livery, art house, and international bazaar. Lucille
Sisler and Olga Sanchez are among the workers.
Studies simultaneously at St. Louis University, Washington
University, Concordia, a pharmacy school, and music and art schools. He
stretches activity toward twenty-eight hours, sleeps on streetcars, and
uses limited time tricks.
Fights Dandy Dan Dillard and other boxers. He misunderstands his
first recorded bout as a beating although he wins by stoppage, then
recognizes that he is a better manager, dealer, and promoter than
fighter.
Learns banjo by taking the skill from a mediocre player. The
Rounders’ String Band becomes the third-best string band in St.
Louis.
Charley Murray performs stage magic at Rounders and becomes
half-owner. His reliable administration makes Duffey’s later travel and
long absence possible.
Mary Louise Byrne, his older sister or stepsister and possible
externalized anima, introduces Elizabeth Beth Keegan. Duffey falls in
love, models a talisman on Beth, and accepts that Mary Louise may be as
much maker as kin.
Collects $3,000 from each of twenty-three members of a supposed
World-Wide Argonauts Argo Balloon Club whose Geneva
headquarters does not exist. Buys a hydrogen balloon and calls it
Argo Twelve and a Half after learning Argo Twelve is
already active.
Flies the balloon up to two miles high and roughly two hundred miles
out, studies winds, carries friends and employees, and holds an
elaborate airborne dinner that anticipates the larger Ship
Argo.
Dreams that his clay birds are shot down as forgeries, his giants’
severed hands become children’s mittens, his magic is paralyzed over a
chasm, and the years are eaten. Beth predicts seven years away and a
later recovery of power.
Gives a talisman to one of two women named Monica and initially
chooses the wrong woman. The talisman responds to its intended
bearer.
Makes a farewell circuit through St. Louis. Papa Piccone announces a
seven-year assignment, Rounders holds an honor gathering, and Charley
agrees to keep the club.
Walks from the river shore below the Eads Bridge onto a low boat
that is the Argo in disguise. He disappears from shore-time for
seven years.
Bagby reports that ghosts inflate Argo Twelve and a Half
for unscheduled voyages after Duffey leaves St. Louis. Duffey replies
that he knows who they are.
Lives Argo adventures in separated selections rather than
consecutive years. Land adventures are outside the seven-year count and
are not deducted from his life. He can later revisit stray days of this
period.
Claims A.E.F. and ambulance experiences with Hemingway and Cummings.
Some memories may be lifted from Sebastian, but reputable sightings
place Duffey or the ARGO group in Belgium, France, and
Italy.
Distributes most of the talismans associated with the eleven of
twelve prime twentieth-century creations. The acts occur in scattered
shore episodes whose relation to calendar time remains only partly
recoverable.
Finds seven representations of Christ in strange places during the
lost years and dispatches them into the ordinary world. By the Chicago
period all seven are assembled in the Priceless Item Room; the August
Koch figure joins them there.
Returns to ordinary shore-time, moving through Dubuque, Sioux City,
Omaha, Kansas City, and St. Louis. Mary Louise has married Bagby, Beth
has married Erlenbaum, and Charley has prospered at Rounders. Duffey
declines active management.
Lives with or near Mary Louise and Bagby, visits Beth’s family, and
listens for a distant moth-like summons. He briefly encounters a Piccone
infant whom he will not knowingly meet again for twenty-three
years.
IV. The moth call
and the Chicago golden age
Wanders the Midwest for more than a year, starting and profitably
selling three businesses while continuing to listen for the missing
call.
Hears or feels a directional moth call from hundreds of miles away
and takes a night train to Chicago.
Meets Charlotte Mullens, who appears nine but says she is
thirty-eight, and her supposed mother Gloria and son Manolo. Charlotte
offers to find Duffey’s moth if he helps recover a hidden fortune.
Returns to Gabriel Szymansky, whom he had approached six months
earlier and during the hidden years. Invests $10,000, promises another
installment, adds book and art shops to the pawn and antique business,
and takes six rooms above it.
Uses Charlotte’s clues and out-of-body access to pursue Aga Gonof’s
safety-box key and hidden bales. The vision includes slant-faced
stevedores and the hooked weapon that will recur in the murder of
Charlotte’s family.
Follows the moth presence to morning Mass, then to Lily Koch’s art
shop. Learns that Letitia Koch, Lily’s younger sister and bearer of the
rib talisman, is the woman he is seeking.
Announces that he and Letitia will marry within days, rapidly
completes civil, religious, legal, banking, and domestic arrangements,
and accepts Letitia as the bonus creation outside the prime twelve.
Learns that Gloria and Manolo have been tortured and murdered and
that three slant-faced men were seen nearby. The skull-crushing weapon
matches the boat hook in Duffey’s vision.
Lives the North Chicago golden age with Letitia at the center of
seven rooms, bookshop, art shop, pawn business, press, salon, and
neighborhood. Their shared making shapes both people and place.
The golden age thins into an electrum age but continues through the
approach to 1946. Duffey remains art dealer, craftsman, publisher,
lender, host, and local patriarch.
Makes his book collection available to Casey and teaches him
Yiddish, Hebrew, and Irish. The shelves and instruction become a
substantial part of Casey’s education outside school. Casey’s circle
also attributes to Duffey a judgment that no minimally competent person
could sincerely accept Casey’s doctrine.
Notices the Pont du Sable Traffic Trestle as a symbolic support for
his world. One underpinning is knocked out within a week, another about
five years later.
Giulio Solli visits the household for a week. He confirms that he
used Duffey’s talisman in the birth of his son, later known as Finnegan,
before leaving again under pressure from his accompanying devil.
After another Pont du Sable underpinning is knocked out, wakes
knowing that his extraordinary money-making facility is gone. It never
fully returns. The source places the loss several years after the
late-1929 gold storage, not immediately after the crash.
Reinforces the floors and stores more than twenty tons of August
Koch’s gold, worth roughly twelve million dollars, in and above the
shop. The family had anticipated the crash.
Returns to St. Louis at least yearly for Rounders’ business, Charley
Murray, and old friends, while maintaining the Chicago
establishment.
Allows several girls who first entered the bookstore at about eight
or nine to engage in wrestling and comic-familiar play with him. Hugo
Stone photographs compromising scenes. The narrative calls some conduct
morally questionable, while the Stone identity itself remains
disputed.
Discovers that ten-year-old Casey has secretly used his press to
publish The Answer and summon Chicago to acclaim an unnamed
Leader. Letitia intercepts the decorated child before he mounts a white
horse; about one hundred thousand people gather, but no Leader
appears.
Recognizes the grown Casey on the day Gabriel Szymansky dies. Casey
brings the Crock into the back of Duffey’s bookstore, and the
two inherit a partnership whose property later becomes disputed.
Hosts Depression-era arguments about money, politics, labor,
banking, and the future of society. He calls himself a centrist, forms
the Party of One, and stands as the sole member of the Catholic Center
Party of America.
Visits gaudy Randolph Street fleshpots with friends. He initially
stays when Demetrio leaves, then departs in disgust, rejecting drugs and
boys while admitting his own recurring troubles with liquor and
women.
After a drunken wager at the Pont du Sable, summons giant hands to
carry a city mule roughly thirty feet through the air. Witnesses,
photographs, and the next day’s newspaper preserve incompatible
explanations.
Performs puppet shows with Letitia. He calls local mice, dresses
them, and makes them act and speak before releasing them.
At a new school lacking mice, prays or concentrates for about nine
minutes. Seven exhausted Central American mice arrive, are revived by
paper oxygen masks through belief, and complete the show.
Casey reports that Duffey’s given name is Michael, that he was not
confirmed until age forty, and that Melchisedech is his confirmation
name. The report conflicts with the ancient identity and childhood-name
accounts.
When the United States enters the war and Casey enlists, Casey asks
Duffey to run Crock. Duffey enlarges its contributors and
influence; Archipelago reports that he writes most of the
magazine because he can write better than its other contributors.
A hostile group pressures Duffey to surrender the Crock. A
portfolio man uses photographs of girls and women, including a staged
Shirley Israel scene and an image involving Lily. Duffey refuses
blackmail, relying on confession and absolution for actual wrongs.
Seeks Mike Melchiades, a poor double with Duffey’s face and
gestures. Mike proposes that Duffey may be the spinoff. Duffey gives
Mike’s estranged wife money and urges reconciliation.
Letitia temporarily leaves after divining the blackmail danger, then
returns before the seizure of the Crock.
Casey returns from war, confirms that his bond with Duffey is
severed, and says that he has traded souls and changed course. Duffey
maintains that their tie cannot be wholly broken.
Undergoes psychoanalysis with Saul Rafelson. He is never declared
cured. Rafelson suggests that Duffey’s fantasies externalize as fact,
that creator and created may invert, and that one person can coalesce
from multiple shadows.
V. 1946
convergence: St. Louis to New Orleans
Leaves Chicago on what is announced as a one-week trip and never
resumes residence there. He rides the same train as Casey and Mary
Catherine.
Confronts Casey about talismans, creation, the Crock, and
their broken relation. Casey confirms that he held a gold talisman for
six months and repeats the soul-trade claim.
Receives an invitation and assignment from Henri Salvatore and goes
to St. Louis. Archipelago gives a variant in which Henry wrote
to Duffey and supplied the ideas that Duffey later puts into effect in
New Orleans.
Stays with Charley Murray, visits the Bagbys and Erlenbaums, and
returns to Rounders’ Club, where old attachments and the new group
converge. Archipelago independently places the semi-fabulous
Duffey in St. Louis for the week.
Meets the people he calls his Duffeys or Animated Marvels. The
roster is not perfectly stable, but includes Finnegan, Hans and Marie,
Henri, Vincent and Teresa, Casey, Dotty, Mary Virginia, Absalom, Mr. X,
and others connected by primary or bonus talismans.
Declares himself the true King of Salem and demonstrates magic by
making date-stamped gold coins and a living mouse. His creations dispute
his sole priority while accepting the reality of the acts.
For the first and perhaps only time on this shore, eleven of the
core creations assemble around Vincent and Teresa’s wedding. Duffey
recognizes Finnegan as the greatest or central creation and Teresa as
the finest.
Attends Vincent Stranahan and Teresa Piccone’s wedding and the long
Rounders’ reception. The gathering also reawakens fragments of old
Argo identities among the group.
Henri states Duffey’s life assignment: go to New Orleans, work
there, and grow metaphorical cucumbers in an asphalt garden.
Drives from St. Louis to New Orleans with Finnegan, Henri, Dotty,
and Mary Virginia after Vincent and Teresa’s wedding reception.
A primary document reports that Duffey died in Neustria during the
Seven Lost Years and that his ashes were preserved in the King of
Spain’s cigar canister. This may be a displaced account of the Gur’yev
reduction, or it may record a distinct reduction.
Writes John Schultz that the scattered infectors have accidentally
formed the brazen key that releases their Father. The letter connects
Duffey’s files to the enlarged scope of the post-1946
conflagration.
Works through the night with Finnegan and Zabotski to rebuild the
old press and its surrounding rooms. Plans the Pelican Press, the
Bark, a walk-in art bijou, pawn business, bookshop, and other
world-rebuilding trades.
Installs the Big Pot, has a priest bless it, and begins the
perpetual soup kitchen. The pot gradually acquires barley, meat, fish,
vegetables, beer, and decades of flavor while serving the poor around
the clock.
Letitia drives down from Chicago in an army truck with books,
household goods, and the cream of their possessions. She joins the press
and the new household.
Builds a secondhand, art-dealing, antique, pawn, and book network
around the press, art bijou, and soup kitchen. Keeps valuable art, cash,
and the infiltrator index in a walk-in safe.
Mr. X arrives after Bagby and Letitia have anticipated him. In the
fuller account he brings nested boxes containing the infiltrator index,
Duffey’s future ashes in the King of Spain’s cigar canister, and other
records. Archipelago centers the scene on the stolen index and
does not mention the ashes.
Accepts the ashes as his own despite their anachronism, keeps them
on the desk, and performs a genuine red-box-to-roses transformation. X
explains that the ashes were difficult to bring out of their place and
time.
Receives X’s eyewitness dossier on the Devil’s release and lists of
compromised arts and persons. Duffey hesitates to publish; Dotty
refuses. He later resumes mind-ransacking to investigate the listed
people.
Receives a clipping reporting the death of an unidentified man with
X’s old wounds. Dotty identifies the clipping as a Pelican Press
fabrication. X returns every year or two afterward.
VI. The long New Orleans
noon
Lives a reconciled and joyful marriage with Letitia in a nearly
stationary late-summer atmosphere. The Pelican Press papers continue,
and Duffey remains one of the Seven Pillars of the Bark.
Receives Lily, Sebastian Hilton, and Countess Margaret. Sebastian
says this is their last meeting in unsanctified flesh, marries the
Countess a month later, and is killed a month after that by the
slant-faced men, though the official cause is plague-like fever.
Receives Charlotte at a confidence convention and learns she may be
about two centuries old, with a Dorian-Gray-like doll preserving another
age or appearance. She refuses allegiance to the Devil.
Receives Bagby and Mary Louise. Duffey oddly gives priority to a
simultaneously arriving Bagby letter. Bagby survives at least two years
beyond one prediction of his death and visits again.
Discovers in a comic strip that the three slant-faced enemies are
named Amraphel, Arioch, and Thadal, followers of Chodorlahomor. He links
them to Abraham’s battle and Melchisedech’s blessing.
Makes about ten thousand clay and bread figures and large narrative
mansions showing primordial lives, the multiple childhoods, and the
Seven Hidden Years.
Hosts Teresa and Vincent. Teresa issues a Bark show-bill
advertising a Decatur Street Opera House that does not yet exist,
drawing the group toward a future contingency.
Teresa washes her hands and head with Duffey’s ashes. They flare
into a person-shaped flame. She calls Duffey an awakener and assembler
rather than sole creator and identifies the group’s ancient
Argo roles.
Teresa calls Duffey the real and original Melchisedech but says his
Argonaut name was different. Competing counts give Teresa nine voyages
and Stein thirteen; Duffey says his reduction to ashes occurs on the
fourteenth, technically future, voyage.
The very good people gradually fall out with one another. Bagby is
the first major death among the close elders.
Returns from St. Louis and receives Bagby’s usual Monday letter. The
weekly letters continue for years, eventually exceeding one thousand,
and remain recognizably Bagby’s.
Dotty disappears toward Cuba after letters about Finnegan’s
disintegration. X reports both of them killed in a futuristic Marianao
Coast episode, but neither death remains securely final.
Letitia becomes editor of the Bark and sustains it from
private funds while Duffey continues writing, investigation, art
dealing, and the Pelican household.
Co-founds Investigator with Absalom Stein and
Gabrielovitch. Writes for Investigator and Bark while
continuing the book, art, antique, and pawn businesses.
Attends the New Catholic Press Guild with Letitia and Mary Virginia.
The Devil appears as Majesty. Duffey climbs the stage rigging and
strikes the true giant head with a boom while the public illusion reacts
elsewhere.
Enters and ransacks the Devil’s mind, hearing a program of
nullification. He verifies the heard speech with Letitia and Mary
Virginia. Margaret disrupts the event, and the slant-faced operators
lose control of their mechanism.
Joins the scattered war against the big smokiness and its assault on
law, form, morals, and art. Duffey fights through art and stubbornness,
described as Fire and Finesse.
Receives Bagby’s account of existence outside duration and place.
Bagby says there is no duration, only the Moment, and describes
intensified particularity, work, passion, and relationships among the
dead, living, alien, angelic, and damned.
Submits to biological and archaeological tests of age. More than
four thousand years is the repeated result, while his visible body
appears near fifty-five. He rejects reincarnation in favor of continuous
or renovated bodies and unusually long life.
Letitia dies suddenly in late morning. An elephant-ear bush flames,
Duffey receives a private communication, and he answers with acceptance
of the divine will.
Keeps vigil over Letitia in a Zabotski coffin with her eyes open.
Lily and Mary Louise arrive without being notified. The death ends the
marriage in shore-time but not the relation.
Countess Margaret proposes marriage and Transylvania; Duffey asks
for fifty years. Lily offers marriage and dowry, and Mary Catherine’s
older promise also returns. Duffey answers that he needs everyone rather
than selecting a single replacement.
Lily declares Duffey roughly four thousand years old. A
nine-hundred-pound cake bears 4,096 candles; Duffey extinguishes all of
them, perhaps with giant assistance, before a huge feast.
Charlotte proposes a new family configuration and calls Duffey part
of a youthful cycle. Mary Catherine visits, then leaves. Seven women
remain associated with the seven future roads: Countess Margaret, Lily,
Charlotte, Mary Catherine, Mary Virginia, Salvation Sally, and Margaret
Stone.
VII. The
Seven Roads and the Seven Contingencies
Finds a sign reading Future Begins Right Here with seven arrows.
Ursuline girls have painted it and cast him as himself in their play
Seven Roads. He learns the role instantly and recognizes a
prophecy.
Consults Absalom Stein and Zabotski. The discussions connect the
sign to Duffey’s blocked future, Zabotski’s ark, and the possibility
that historical sequence is losing its ordinary grip.
Studies Time with Zabotski, arguing that the apparent remoteness of
the past is produced by a distorting medium. Together they work on
Hazh-Khazh plans and models for the unnamed structure while years slip
past as if they were days.
Debates Fundamentalers with Zabotski about chronology, Pristine
World, Ararat, the antiquity of humanity, and the reliability of Olduvai
evidence. During the exchange the great construction is recognized as an
ark and anti-time machine.
Visits Zabotski’s Pristine World for what feels like three or five
years and returns after only two shore days.
Witnesses Zabotski, Wife Waldo, children, and animals set their ark
afloat toward Lake Borgne. New green-clay animals accompany the
departure.
Revisits the ark and realizes that the ordinary future ends at the
sign, although he himself cannot simply end. Stein diagnoses the end of
his stick: Duffey risks splitting, flaking, and disintegrating if he
tries to travel seven roads at once.
At the Ghost Coffee Shop, Cleo, Crissie, and Rebeka explain the
seven pothole-activated worlds that the Seven Roads play
encodes.
Learns that the Seven Lost Years mix past, present, and future
without counting regularly. They are revisitable and stand beyond
ordinary reality, so they can contain the technically future Fourteenth
Voyage and the already-returned ashes.
Crosses from the end of present shore-time into contingency and
experiences the fracture that Stein feared. Bagby’s letters remain one
of the few stable communications across the boundary.
The Loosed Devil recruits Duffey as a magus and offers a covenant.
Duffey refuses, addresses him as Clootie, and preserves the duel rather
than concluding it. The text says this confrontation continues outside
time.
Steps into a pothole and enters the Fifth Contingency, the world of
the Thunder Colt and the supposedly splendid successor species.
Receives royal and popular historians, agrees to house roughly a
thousand splendid visitors, and watches parks and new institutions
replace the familiar New Orleans fabric.
Sees old humans, animals, buildings, and histories classified as
unreal or trash and destroyed. Ancient lands and the Black Sea are said
never to have existed.
Drinks, becomes euphoric, and partly accepts the splendid order.
Mary Virginia, Margaret Stone, and Salvation Sally take weapons and kill
surviving non-splendid people.
Attends the Decatur Street Opera. Flaming-ash tests separate the
splendid from humans. Zabotski is rejected; Jacob Soule and Margaret
choose humanity by submitting to the flame.
Watches the opera turn into a massacre. Bulls kill Zabotski; the
Thunder Colt kills Jacob and Margaret. Duffey remains in the loge,
implicated by pride and by his failure to defend the human victims.
Uses time lordship and magic to tear himself out of the Fifth
Contingency, ripping the fabric and living people of that branch.
Returns to the milk-bar time before the play. The Fifth now appears
only as a rewritten section, but its wounds leak backward: Margaret has
died by a rabid horse, Jacob is dead, Stein retains superbity, and Ravel
dreams of abandonment.
Receives a Bagby letter condemning his pride and cowardice and
directing him toward the wilderness.
Forces through the sign and jumps one shore-year forward. At the
Pelican Press, Mary Virginia says he has been dead for months and sees
him as a ghost; Sally and Stein also perceive him. He then fades back to
the year before that death.
Dines on Zabotski’s ark, where Zabotski remains alive but has the
tongue wound associated with the opera branch. Duffey teaches banjo to
the children.
Performs as himself in the Ursuline play, using real magic, banjo,
and recorder flute. The play is a major success and becomes the formal
staging of the seven futures.
Repeatedly leaves and returns through the same days, weeks, and
months, attempting final meetings while his time-space faculties still
work.
Travels with Carmelo Mendoza, who is Mr. X in disguise, and Horace
Pie to Finnegan’s Cuban tomb. Book 12 calls the movement contrary-wise
and places him in the preceding shore day. He meets an awakened
Finnegan, prays a psalmic dialogue, is put to sleep, and wakes after
Finnegan escapes toward the Petrine assignment. Book 13 later denies
literal backward travel.
Re-enters a Chicago interval several weeks earlier with X, visits
Mary Catherine, Hilary, and Charlotte, and projects a captive
severed-head image onto televisions to force Casey to attend a final
party. Book 12 presents a pastward movement; Book 13 denies literal
backward travel.
Meets about one hundred old friends in what he understands as the
last Chicago gathering in ordinary flesh. Casey attends, but Duffey does
not resolve Casey’s eschatological role.
Meets Henri Cardinal Salvatore, Hans and Marie, Vincent and Teresa,
and Dame Bagby. Charley, Papa Piccone, Patrick, and Father McGuigan are
dead. Duffey gives his half of Rounders’ Club to Teresa.
Hears that his normal life ends in St. Louis after a roughly
sixty-year shore leave from the 1923 return. A bony Duffey on the
Argo will carry Finnegan toward a Petrine crown, Prince Casimir
toward Armageddon, and Christ toward the Parousia.
Suffers a seizure and enters the last minute of normal life. The
minute expands into the Seventh Contingency.
Walks in the Garden with the Invisible God while Pat Plunket acts as
guide. Everything is offered if Duffey refrains from one nearly
impossible failure.
Enters a thorn hedge, finds a lever, ignores warnings, and pulls it.
The bottom falls out of the Garden.
Falls onto a dung heap with broken legs, hips, and hands. Still in
the Presence, he uses dung, blood, glass, metal, and lightning to begin
making a new dozen.
Hears the command to remember the ship Argo and chooses to
sail. He postpones the endless making begun after the Garden fall. The
placement of this choice in C4 follows the earlier declaration that the
Fourth Contingency is certain.
VIII.
Argo Fourteen, reduction, and continuing death
Wakes young, forgetful, and nearly falling from a frozen cliff while
wrapped in strands of the Golden Fleece. Recovers his role as magus and
Argo pilot.
With effigy seamen, releases Ewaglouwshkoul, a Neo-Neanderthal
woman, from forty thousand years of ice and agrees to carry her to
Biloxi.
Remembers himself as Melchisedech, King of Salem, latterly called
Melchisedech Duffey. Reviews the protean Argo, its Bread and
Wine Room, relics, changing size, stores, passengers, and long
history.
Explains the Sea of the Seven Lost Years as discontinuous water
threaded through seas, rivers, lakes, and shore-times. A single
Argo day may be entered from multiple ages of his shore
life.
Reunites with Biloxi Brannagan, who has waited thirty shore-years
for the Ship. Duffey identifies the current cycle as Argo
Fourteen, a climax voyage rather than a single trip.
States that the Argo’s log covers roughly nine thousand
past years and sixty-seven future years, after which the future changes
context. He and Brannagan deny literal backward time travel but allow
forward or sideways entry and future spill-back.
Attempts to finance Eva’s proposed purchase of Kate’s Neanderthal
Bar. Duffey produces fourteen thousand dollars in gold pieces, Brannagan
produces bills with duplicate serial numbers, and Gertrude proposes an
ordinary check. The passage does not confirm that the sale closes.
Pursues the future Puff Fish abomination. Enters the main frequency
modulator, burns off all hair and clothing, and removes the attracting
frequency so completely that the fish never exists in past, present, or
future.
Prevents the Dimbeau brothers from drawing Saint Secaire’s sword,
which would end the world. Drops sword and scabbard back into Nine Mile
Depth while Brannagan erases the scientists’ memory.
Initially fails to recognize Kasmir Gorshok as Casey’s Argo
identity. After magical identification, accepts him as a Master while
sensing treason aboard the Ship.
Attempts to erase the future perverse logic called “I Wake Up
Forgetting.” The last manuscript scrap blows overboard. Duffey fears
that Casey’s devil-fish may retrieve it, but the narration does not
establish that Casey preserves it.
Cures a brilliant young stutterer, only to learn the man valued the
impediment as fuel for destructive fury. Casey lags behind and may undo
the cure.
Interferes in a right-reason and wrong-action debate by buying the
cafe and having carpenters shorten the table legs. Casey may restore the
confusion after Duffey and Brannagan leave.
Takes Mr. X aboard as a half-share servitor rather than an
Argo Master. X’s magical identity coin has only one stable
side.
Searches the false desert of the Laughing Prince, repeatedly breaks
back into ordinary town space, then drinks the Prince’s poisoned spring
after losing the meaning of warnings from millions of boys.
The three slant-faced men flay him alive and eat selected organs.
Three slack-faced men burn the flesh and viscera to perpetually hot
ashes and place them in the King of Spain’s cigar canister.
The unreal desert withdraws. X and Casey identify Duffey’s bones and
ashes where they impinge into Gur’yev street. X takes custody of the
ashes; the bones are placed in an Argo coffin and receive
Brannagan’s Mass of the Holy Precursor.
God asks whether Duffey has been relieved of Argo duty.
Duffey says no. His bones resume service because the voyage articles do
not require a fleshed pilot.
Casey makes a Golden Fleece mask, scarf, and gauntlets for the
fleshless Duffey. The bony pilot can communicate and steer, though the
golden gear sometimes impairs his sensing and touch.
When the Argo approaches a time before the killing, Duffey
becomes fleshly again while the ashes remain in the canister. The book
names this the Ambiguity of the Flesh and applies it preforth through
Chicago and New Orleans.
Can enter the Sea from shore ages such as nineteen, twenty-four,
sixty-nine, or eighty-four and become young on the Ship. He can leave at
an early shore and live the long marriage and New Orleans life after
having already died in the future.
Masters leave working effigies or place tokens on the Ship. Each
returning Master inhabits an effigy while creative changes made by other
Masters accumulate into personality.
Receives Count Finnegan, Gilberto Levine-and-O’Brien, and Herman
Hercules, shadow doubles for murdered Church princes. Monsignor X
secretly returns with a flayed cardinal’s skin.
With Brannagan, detectives, and Gunboat Smith, tries to keep the
prophesied Man of Mystery off the Argo. Security fails because
the dangerous person is already inside.
Casey is revealed as Peleus, Kasmir Gorshok, Prince Casimir, Casey
Szymansky, and Antichrist. Duffey, Brannagan, and Gunboat remain
incompletely deceived while the Argo carries Casey to Habonim
at the Plains of Megiddo.
Duffey refuses consensus with the future, becomes fleshly, and fades
from the branch. The Argo disappears, to be rediscovered later
as an old hull in New Orleans.
Swims from the Sea of the Seven Lost Years into the Mississippi
below Eads Bridge at age twenty-three. A pseudo-Duffey tells him that he
has lived the lost years seven times and died seven deaths, three ending
in damnation and four not.
Treats the seven lives as rehearsals of possible world endings.
Identifies the pseudo-self as an angel, though the angel cannot tell
whether he serves God or the Devil. Duffey runs singing into St.
Louis.
After the book turns west to an alternate present, returns below
Eads Bridge as a ghostly twenty-three-year-old. Meets ten-year-old
Philip Stranahan and learns that Vincent died as a five-day-old infant
in this track.
Meets five-year-old Teresa Piccone, who can see ghosts. She proposes
to give him one valid life by bearing him in about twenty years, so that
the reality of one life will validate the others. Duffey chooses to
become a young ghost.
Declares himself twenty-three again and announces that all
twenty-four hours shall be morning. The narrative labels this only an
apparent end.
IX. Addenda and
cross-volume continuations
Wakes before dawn into the Great Day Contingency. His watch is
stripped of its minute hand; clocks lose hands, cups and names vanish,
traffic systems abandon distinctions, and buildings and bodies
unstructure.
Resists the merger while friends at the Pelican embrace it. He finds
St. Michael’s unstructured, cannot pass through walls by faith, and
watches persons coalesce into larger spheres.
Wrestles Morpheus as world and self collapse toward one cell.
Melchisedech is swallowed into the diminishing dream, which Morpheus
calls not the end but the beginning.
Leaves a commentary on Casey’s roles in the Argo company,
the Middle Ages, secular history, and eschatology. Duffey says that
their future ways intersect, that he will dispute Casey and unwillingly
transport him, and that an inhibition prevents fuller disclosure.
A witness preserves Duffey’s maxim that a person should choose a
monomania early and keep it. Casey later attributes memories of former
lives, aspects, and roles to Duffey’s talismans, asks who gave Duffey
this power, and answers that Duffey himself does not know.
Receives Finnegan’s enormous painting The Resurrection of Count
Finnegan at the Walk-In Art Bijou. Recognizes its improving,
future-projective quality and sells it to Hilary Hilton for $20,000
while leaving it on display.
As the golden-masked dead pilot, carries Finnegan and the shadow men
toward the Mooring-Stone conclave. His flesh remains ashes, but his
bones, spirit, humor, and command remain active.
Is invited to address the conclave despite being dead and speaks
live words. X then conducts the vote that crowns Finnegan pope and
preserves the line against the destroyers.
An Archipelago witness says that Duffey runs the Celtic
Marathon annually and tests the course before dawn, making better times
in the private trial than in the public race.
An Archipelago witness says that Duffey manages a fighter
who loses both his preparatory brawls and his official bouts. After
Duffey’s management, the fighter marries the widow who shot her
husband.
Seven Contingencies
C1. Great Day
Field
Critical entry
World premise
Boundaries, names, containers, bodies, and distinctions dissolve
into an unstructured unity.
Duffey’s sequence
Duffey experiences it directly in the Great Day addendum, resists
amalgamation, and collapses with Morpheus toward a self-swallowing
single cell.
Disposition
Possible. Nonexclusive.
C2. Bad Trade / “Promontory
Goats”
Field
Critical entry
World premise
Casey makes the scapegoat trade, compassion is corrupted, and
burdens move through a world of goats, machines, and displaced
guilt.
Duffey’s sequence
Duffey does not enact the main branch onstage. His commentary
analyzes Casey’s roles and foretells their future intersection.
Disposition
Possible. Nonexclusive.
C3. Petrine Spy
Field
Critical entry
World premise
A dead or doubled Finnegan undertakes the final Church spy role,
survives incompatible deaths, and may become pope.
Duffey’s sequence
Duffey meets Finnegan at Marianao, later pilots the bony
Argo carrying him, and addresses the conclave that elects
him.
Duffey quests on Argo Fourteen and is reduced to bones and
ashes in Tartary.
Duffey’s sequence
This is the declared certain contingency. The ashes return to his
earlier New Orleans life; the bones continue as Argo
pilot.
Disposition
Certain. Not necessarily exclusive.
Evidence
[MTM B10:296]; [MTM B13:392–470]
C5. Thunder Colt
Field
Critical entry
World premise
A splendid successor species displaces humanity and stages the
Decatur Street Opera massacre.
Duffey’s sequence
Duffey enters, becomes complicit through pride, witnesses the
deaths, and tears himself out. Residual deaths and wounds leak into the
revised shore present.
Disposition
Entered, then escaped and revised.
C6. Loosed Devil
Field
Critical entry
World premise
Duffey and the Devil meet as opposed magi. A covenant would nullify
the larger affair.
Duffey’s sequence
Duffey refuses recruitment and preserves the contest. The novel says
the confrontation is still occurring outside time.
Disposition
Ongoing, unresolved.
C7. Garden
Field
Critical entry
World premise
Duffey receives glory and presence if he can avoid one nearly
impossible act of making or interference.
Duffey’s sequence
He pulls the lever, falls to the dung heap, begins another creation,
then remembers Argo and diverts into C4.
Disposition
Entered and failed. May nullify parts of other branches.
Parallel childhood dossier
Count
Track
Placement
Defining evidence
Identity 1
Ancient Boy King
Before twentieth-century dating
King of Salem; bread and wine; healing; stone-bird and clay-bird
variants; Slaughter of Kings; urchin disguise
Identity 2
Iowa or Council Bluffs
Turn of century; ages five to eleven
No-parents claim; Lake Manawa killing; church bell; farm and kit
fox; slant-faced attacks
One of the two foci of the Duffey corpus with Finnegan; later
interprets and ignites Duffey’s ashes.
Absalom Stein
Prime list
One of the Chicago talismanic children; develops the
diminishing-groups theory and later helps diagnose Duffey’s
fracture.
Mary Catherine Carruthers
Disputed prime candidate
Included in the eleven-name book 3 list, omitted from the book 5
list that calls itself twelve.
Mr. X
Disputed prime candidate
Included in book 5, omitted from book 3; linked retrospectively to
the earliest talisman given to an Italian confection seller.
Letitia Koch Duffey
Bonus, outside prime twelve
Rib-shaped once-in-a-lifetime talisman given through Lily after
Letitia was already born.
Deaths, ashes, ghosts, and
survivals
Form
What happens
Neustria document
Reports a death during the hidden years and preserved ashes.
Future ghost-death
One year beyond the Seven Roads sign, Mary Virginia says
Duffey has been dead for months.
Seven deaths
The pseudo-Duffey reports seven Lost Years lives and seven deaths,
three damned and four not.
Gur’yev reduction
The slant-faced killers flay him; the slack-faced men burn his flesh
to ashes.
Bony continuation
After three days God confirms that Argo duty does not
require flesh.
Ambiguity of the Flesh
Nearer the present, the same flesh lives on Duffey while ashes
remain in the canister.
Alternate 1923 ghost
Teresa sees Duffey as a ghost, either unborn or dead, and proposes
to give him a valid life later.
Great Day extinction
Duffey and Morpheus collapse toward one self-swallowing cell.
No final ending
The postscript denies that any cross-section of the tracks is an
ending.
Sequence of the time
architecture
Step
Layer
Operation
1
Shore spine
Ordinary calendar sequence carries Duffey through the childhood
cluster, 1915 St. Louis, 1923 return, 1925 Chicago, 1946 New Orleans,
Letitia’s death, and the Seven Roads sign.
2
Participated Argo time
The Sea of the Seven Lost Years accepts entries from many shore
ages. Duffey is young aboard, accumulates adventures personally, and can
exit on an earlier shore.
3
Blocked future
At the sign, ordinary shore extension fails. The selected Seven
Contingencies become the available roads.
4
Branch traversal
Duffey confronts C6, enters C5, tears out, probes the ghost future,
performs Seven Roads, enters C7, fails, and chooses the
Argo route aligned with certain C4.
5
Reduction and return
C4 produces the ashes and bony pilot. Those remains travel through
Argo time and appear earlier in New Orleans without cancelling
Duffey’s fleshly life.
6
Non-endings
The rehearsal lives, the ordinary and ghostly 1923 landings, C1, C3,
and bony service continue on distinct tracks. The postscript denies a
final cross-section.