148 Charles Street by Tracy Daugherty

Author:Tracy Daugherty [Daugherty, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000 Fiction / Literary, JUV016000 Juvenile Fiction / Historical / General
Publisher: Bison Books

* * *

The men talked late into the night, each fulfilling his archetypal—his clichéd?—role, Elsie thought: the Wise Elder, the Refined Cosmopolitan. The other restaurant guests paid their bills and left. Finally, after a brief lull in the conversation, Mountain Lake rose without ceremony, nodded solemnly to Elsie, and walked to the door.

Dr. Jung ordered two brandies. The weary staff wanted to shut the place, but he needed to ponder. “To be sure, he was caught up in his world just as much as a European is trapped in his, but what a world!” he said. “This experience, Elsie—it was not like glimpsing an alien shore. No. It was like discovering new approaches to age-old knowledge, almost forgotten.”

He mused, “Roman legions smashing the cities of Gaul, St. Augustine thrusting Christianity upon the Britons with the tip of a spear, Charlemagne’s forced conversions of the ‘heathen,’ Columbus, Cortes . . . what we have called civilizing crusades, Mountain Lake’s people called assaults. Merciless attacks performed by birds of prey. Who is to say this simpler explanation is not the more truthful one?

“‘Who is to say the sun is not God? Everyone can see that,’” Dr. Jung repeated. “Indeed.” He swallowed the last of his drink.

The following day—his final and only full day in New Mexico—he spent on the plaza square consolidating notes on his conversation with Mountain Lake; in years to come, these notes would form the basis of an article he would title “The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man.”

Elsie marveled at how quickly he could arrive at a grand vision and be so certain of himself. He was like Willa that way. Elsie hoped she had done the right thing, introducing the men. While the doctor wrote his notes, she was content to sit on a nearby bench composing new pieces, for The Nation and The New Republic, attacking the Bursum Bill.

She would never see Mountain Lake again.

The next morning she walked Dr. Jung to his train. He was going to California. He thanked her for bringing him to the great Southwest. “It was a most enlightening experience,” he said. “You know, I was thinking last night, after our day’s long talk. It’s through the symbols and music of art that those of us who consider ourselves ‘civilized’—but who are really just crusted over with long habit—most easily access the ‘primitive,’ the essential ties to the world our friend Bianco expressed so eloquently.” He raised Elsie’s hand to kiss it. “You, my dear, are an artist. Treasure your gift of words.”

She promised him she would. The most remarkable thing about Dr. Jung? Physically, he never looked the same way twice. In an instant, his facial contours could shift into an expression you’d not seen before. You’d wonder if you’d actually ever met the man. “‘Out of life comes death and out of death life,’ Heraclitus wrote,” said Dr. Jung. “Bianco reminded me of his words—their views have much in common. Out of the young comes the old, and out of the old the young.

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