Masters of Atlantis Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  ALSO BY CHARLES PORTIS

  Norwood

  True Grit

  The Dog of the South

  Gringos

  First published in paperback in the United States in 2000 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  For bulk and special sales, please contact [email protected]

  Copyright © 1985 by Charles Portis

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Portis, Charles

  Masters of Atlantis / Charles Portis.

  p. cm.

  1. Secret societies—Fiction. 2. Atlantis—Fiction. I. Title. PS3566.O663 M’.543—dc21 99-0086846

  eISBN : 978-1-590-20662-1

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  YOUNG LAMAR JIMMERSON went to France in 1917 with the American Expeditionary Forces, serving first with the Balloon Section, stumbling about in open fields holding one end of a long rope, and then later as a telephone switchboard operator at AEF headquarters in Chaumont. It was there on the banks of the Marne River that he first came to hear of the Gnomon Society.

  He was walking about Chaumont one night with his hands in his pockets when he was approached by a dark bowlegged man who offered to trade a small book for two packages of Old Gold cigarettes. The book had to do with the interpretation of dreams. Corporal Jimmerson did not smoke, nor did he have much interest in such a book, but he felt sorry for the ragged fellow and so treated him to a good supper at the Hotel Davos.

  The man wept, overcome with gratitude. He said his name was Nick and that he was an Albanian refugee from Turkey. After supper he revealed that his real name was Mike and that he was actually a Greek from Alexandria, in Egypt. The dream book was worthless, he said, full of extravagant lies, and he apologized for imposing in such a way on the young soldier. He apologized too for his body odor, saying that nerve sweat or fear sweat made for a stronger stink than mere work sweat or heat sweat, or at least that had been his experience, and that he was always nervous when he spoke of delicate matters.

  Perhaps he could repay the kindness in another way. He had another book. This one, the Codex Pappus, contained the secret wisdom of Atlantis. He could not let the book out of his hands but, as an Adept in the Gnomon Society, he was permitted to show it to outsiders, or “Perfect Strangers,” who gave some promise of becoming Gnomons. Lamar, who was himself an Entered Apprentice in the Blue Lodge of the Freemasons, expressed keen interest.

  It was a little gray book, or booklet, hand lettered in Greek. There were several pages given over to curious diagrams and geometric figures, mostly cones and triangles. Mike explained that this was not, of course, the original script. The original book had been sealed in an ivory casket in Atlantis many thousands of years ago, and committed to the waves on that terrible day when the rumbling began. After floating about for nine hundred years the casket had finally fetched up on a beach in Egypt, where it was found by Hermes Trismegistus. Another nine years passed before Hermes, with his great powers, was able to read the book, and then another nine before he was able to fully understand it, and thus become the first modern Master of the Gnomon Society.

  Since those days the secret brotherhood had seen many great Masters, including Pythagoras and Cornelius Agrippa and Cagliostro, but none greater than the current one, Pletho Pappus, whose translation this little book was. Pletho lived and taught in the Gnomon Temple on the island of Malta, with his two Adepts, Robert and a man named Rosenberg.

  Lamar was embarrassed to say that he had not heard of this Society, nor was he aware that flotsam of any description, literary or otherwise, had ever been recovered from Atlantis. What was the book about? Mike apologized again, saying he was bone tired. Could they continue their discussion another time? He could hardly keep his eyes open and must now find himself a dark doorway where he might curl up and try to get a little rest. But Lamar would not hear of this and he arranged for Mike to be put up in the Hotel Davos.

  Their friendship flourished. They had many meals together and many long talks. Lamar paid for Mike’s food and shelter and cigarettes, and even bought him a cheap suit of clothes. Bit by bit the truth came out. Mike confessed that his real name was Jack and that he was an Armenian from Damascus. He was here on a mission. Pletho, with an eye to expanding the activities of the secret order to the New World, had sent him here to Chaumont, disguised as a beggar, to look over the Americans and determine if any were worthy of the great work. So far he had found only one.

  Lamar was embarrassed again. But Jack insisted that yes, Lamar was indeed worthy and must now prepare himself for acceptance into the brotherhood. Lamar did so. First came the Night of Figs, then the Dark Night of Utter Silence. On the third night, a wintry night, in Room 8 of the Hotel Davos, Lamar Jimmerson folded his arms across his chest and spoke to Jack the ancient words from Atlantis—Tell me, my friend, how is bread made?—and with much trembling became an Initiate in the Gnomon Society.

  This work done, Jack said that he was at last free to divulge his true Gnomon identity; he was Robert, a French Gypsy, and he must now hasten back to Malta to report his success to the Master, the success of the American mission. He would leave the Codex Pappus in Lamar’s care, for further study, and as a kind of token of good faith, or surety, and he would return in a month or so with more secret books, with Lamar’s ceremonial robe and with sealed instructions from Pletho himself. There was a $200 charge for the robe, payable in advance. This was merely a bookkeeping technicality, one of Rosenberg’s foolish quirks, and all rather pointless, seeing that Lamar would begin drawing $1,000 a month expense money as soon as his name was formally entered on the rolls. Still, Robert said, he had always found it better to humor Rosenberg in these matters.

  Lamar saw no more of Robert and heard nothing from Malta. He wrote letters to the Gnomon Temple in Valletta but got no answers. He wondered if Robert’s ship might have been torpedoed or lost in a storm. There was no question of his having run off with the robe money because he, Lamar, still had the Codex, along with Robert’s “Poma,” a goatskin cap he had left behind in his room. This Poma was a conical cap, signifying high office, or so Robert had told him.

  The Armistice came and many of the doughboys set up a clamor to be sent home at once, though not Corporal Jimmerson, who remained loyally at his switchboard. He even volunteered to stay behind and help with all the administrative mopping-up tasks, so as to replenish his savings. In May 1919, he received his discharge in Paris, and went immediately to Marseilles and got deck passage on a mail boat to the island of Malta.

  On arrival in Valletta he took a room at a cheap waterfront hotel called the Gregale. He then set out in search of the Gnomon Temple and his Gnomon brothers. He walked the streets looking at faces, looking for Robert, and clambered about on the rocky slopes surrounding the gray city that sometimes looked brown. He talked to taxicab drivers. They professed to know nothing. No one at the post office could help. He managed to get an appointment with the secretary to the island’s most famous resident, the Grand Master of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, but the fellow said he had never heard of Gnomons or Gnomonry and that the G
rand Master could not be bothered with casual inquiries.

  Lamar found three Rosenbergs and one Pappus in Valletta, none of whom would admit to being Master of Gnomons or Perfect Adept of Hermetical Science. He tried each of them a second time, appearing before them silently on this occasion, wearing his Poma and flashing the Codex. He greeted them with various Gnomon salutes—with his arms crossed, with his right hand grasping his left wrist, with his hands at his sides and the heel of his right foot forming a T against the instep of his left foot. At last in desperation he removed his Poma and clasped both hands atop his head, his arms making a kind of triangle. This was the sign for “Need assistance” and was not to be used lightly, Robert had told him. But Pappus and the Rosenbergs only turned away in fright or disgust.

  Was he being too direct? A man who wishes to become a Freemason must himself take the initiative; his membership cannot be solicited. With Gnomonry, as Robert had explained, it was just the reverse. A man must be invited into the order; he must be bidden to approach the Master. Perhaps he was being too pushy. He must be patient. He must wait.

  Just at that time, at the sidewalk café outside the Gregale, with the cries of sea birds all about him, Lamar met a young Englishman named Sydney Hen. Sydney was Keeper of the Botanical Gardens in Valletta, and as such had been exempted from war service. He too was curious about things. Not only was he a student of plant life but he also collected African artifacts—spears and leather shields and such—and he read strange books as well, and speculated on what he had read, hoping to piece together the hidden knowledge of the ancients.

  The two young men hit it off fairly well, particularly after Lamar had let slip the fact that he had in his possession a book of secret lore from Atlantis. They walked along the quay together, sometimes arm in arm, though Lamar found this European custom distasteful. They talked far into the night about the enigmas of the universe.

  Sydney kept after Lamar to show him the Codex Pappus, and Lamar kept putting him off in a polite way, saying he was not sure under what conditions he could properly show the book to a Perfect Stranger. Lacking immediate guidance from his superiors, Robert and Pletho, he was not sure just what he could and could not do. He would have to think it over.

  “And quite right too,” said Sydney, who did most of the talking on these dockside rambles. He had strong opinions. The Freemasons had gone wrong, he said, through their policy of admitting every Tom, Dick and Harry into the Lodge, and the modern, so-called Rosicrucians were not the true Brethren of the Rosy Cross, far from it. And this stuff from India, this Eastern so-called wisdom, was a complete washout. He had looked into it and found it to be a quagmire of negation. It looked sound enough and then you thumped it and it gave off a hollow ring.

  On Sunday afternoons Sydney presided over a kind of literary salon at his hillside villa, which was ablaze with flowers the year round. Lamar, told that he would not feel comfortable with such people, was never invited. Then one Sunday he was invited. Sydney said, “Come on up and meet the gang, Lamar!” Lamar was not favorably impressed by all the slim, chattering young men at the gathering, nor they with him, but the food was good and Sydney’s sister, Fanny Hen, a crippled girl, was kind to him, very attentive.

  When he returned to the Hotel Gregale that night he found that his room had been ransacked. Nothing, as far as he could tell, had been stolen. His Poma and Codex were still safe behind the loose board in the linen closet. Probably children looking for war souvenirs, he thought, and he was careful to stuff his puttees and some other things behind another loose board. The next morning, just as he stepped out into the street, something came whipping past his ear like a boomerang. Careless kids, throwing a marlinspike around. Later that same day, at dusk, he was assaulted on the street. He was walking around a corner when a man struck him full in the mouth with a long wooden oar and knocked him flat. As he lay there in a daze two or three men were suddenly all over him, handling him roughly and ripping his clothes in search of something. Waterfront thugs, he later decided, who had taken him for a rich American. The laugh was on them.

  The sunny days passed, and the warm nights, and Lamar ran out of money. No word came from Robert or Pletho. Time to take stock. He was a Gnomon Initiate with a hidden Master, a book he couldn’t read, some thirty-odd stitches in his lips and no robe. He did have his Poma. But when to wear it? He looked about town for work. Sydney said he might be in a position to make a personal loan against the Codex Pappus. Lamar said it would hardly be fitting to mortgage the Codex.

  The only job he could find was one cleaning boots and emptying chamber pots at the Gregale. There was no pay but he did get his meals and the use of a cot in the basement. The Gregale guests, mostly English poets and Greek honeymooners, were poor tippers. Now and then a poet would fling him a threepenny bit. The Greeks, when they left anything at all, left tiny brass coins in their broad shoes that could not be exchanged. But these Greeks—brides, grooms, chubby merchants—were quite generous in another way. They translated the Codex Pappus for Lamar, a page or two at a time. He allowed no single Greek to see much more of the book than that, being fearful lest the entire text be exposed to a Perfect Stranger.

  The pages of handwritten English accumulated. At length the work was finished. Lamar bound the leaves together with a shoelace and began his study. He sat on the cot at night, wearing his Poma, and labored over the hard passages, reading a sentence over and over again in an effort to wrest some meaning from it, as he brushed away on the high-top yellow boots of the poets. In later years, in his introductory remarks to Gnomon aspirants, he was fond of saying, “Euclid told the first Ptolemy that there was no royal road to geometry, and I must tell you now, gentlemen, that the road to Gnomonism is plenty tough too.”

  He committed the entire work to memory, all eightyeight pages of Atlantean puzzles, Egyptian riddles and extended alchemical metaphors. He knew every cone and every triangle by heart, just as he knew the 13 Hermetical Precepts, and how to recognize the Three Secret Teachers, Nandor, Principato and the Lame One, should they make one of their rare appearances before him in disguise. Soon he began to wonder if he might not be an Adept. He became sure of it one afternoon when he overheard a remark in the street—”Don’t worry about Rosenberg.” That is, he did not become sure of it at that moment, but only a little later, as the words continued to ring in his head and swell in volume. This, surely, was what he was waiting for. The sense of the message was obscure but there could be no doubt that the signal was genuine. This was Pletho’s oblique way of communication.

  As an Adept he now felt free to put the whole business before Sydney, with a view to bringing him into the brotherhood. Sydney had come to doubt the existence of the book from Atlantis and he could no longer receive Lamar, a boot-black, socially at Villa Hen, but the two young men still managed to see one another on occasion, behind the giant ferns at the Botanical Gardens or at one of the low waterfront cafés. So it was, at a sidewalk table of the Café Gregale, that Lamar told Sydney the full story of Robert, the Codex, Hermes, the Poma, the translation, the voice in the street.

  Sydney heard him out, his skepticism giving way to excitement. He looked through the two booklets, one Greek, one English. He read Greek, though with difficulty, forming each word slowly with his mouth and on the bilabials blowing little transparent bubbles that quivered and popped. Then he turned in impatience to the English version and read hungrily. “This is marvelous stuff!” he said, in a fairly loud voice. “I can’t make head or tail of it!” He had to speak up over the shouting and scuffling that was taking place in the street. It was some political disturbance that did not concern them. Sydney wanted to take the books home and study them at leisure, but Lamar said he could not, at this time, let them out of his hands. Trying to soften the refusal, he pointed out that the Codex was largely incomprehensible without the keys that Robert had revealed to him. These keys were never to be written. They could only be spoken, from one Gnomon to another.

  Sydney beca
me agitated and demanded to be given the keys and taken into the Society at once. Then he sighed and asked Lamar’s pardon. He took Lamar’s hand between his two hands and begged that allowance be made for his short termper. He had been a very naughty boy. The only thing now was for Lamar to move into Villa Hen, where he could live in that comfort and peace so necessary to the scholar, and give instructions in this great work in the proper way.

  Lamar accepted the invitation and the next day he carried his bag up the hill to the villa. Fanny Hen, the crippled girl, was not around. He asked about her and Sydney said he had moved her into a boardinghouse down the way so that Lamar might have her room. But Lamar would not hear of this and the girl was soon restored to her room. Lamar slept in the library.

  Fanny had made no very distinct impression on him before, apart from her kindness and her game leg. Now he began to notice other things about her. She was small and dark like her brother, but there the resemblance ended. Where Sydney was moody Fanny was sprightly, and where Fanny was open Sydney was sly. She had been an army nurse and her right knee was stiff from shrapnel wounds received in the final Flanders offensive of September 1918. She wore billowy shirts with striped neckties.

  Sydney was an apt pupil, much quicker than himself, Lamar had to admit. He cut short his work at the Botanical Gardens and came home early each evening, flinging his black cape carelessly from his shoulders and quickly slipping into his red silk dressing gown, eager for another long session with Lamar in the locked library. He smoked black Turkish cigarettes and sipped Madeira. From time to time he rubbed his hands together. When he had grasped a Gnomonic point he would say, “Quite!” or “Quite so!” or “Just so!” or “Even so!” and urge Lamar to get on with it. The progress slowed somewhat when they came to the symbolic figures. Sydney found himself in a tangle with these cones and triangles. He often confused one with another and got the words slightly wrong.