An Iron Fan

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Title:     An Iron Fan
Author: James Huneker [More Titles by Huneker]

Effinghame waited for Dr. Arn in the study, a small chamber crowded with the contents of the universe--so it seemed to the visitor. There was a table unusual in size, indeed, big enough to dissect a body thereon. It was littered with books and medical publications and was not very attractive. The walls were covered with original drawings of famous Japanese masters, and over the fireplace hung a huge fan, dull gray in colouring, with long sandalwood spokes. Not a noteworthy example of Japanese art, thought Effinghame, as he glanced without marked curiosity at its neutral tinting, though he could not help wondering why the cunning artificers of the East had failed to adorn the wedge-shaped surfaces of this fan with their accustomed bold and exquisite arabesques.

He impatiently paced the floor. His friend had told him to come at nine o'clock in the evening. It was nearly ten. Then he began to finger things. He fumbled the papers in the desk. He examined the two Japanese swords--light as ivory, keen as razors. He stared at each of the prints, at Hokusai, Toyokimi, Kuniyoshi, Kiyonaga, Kiosai, Hiroshighe, Utamaro, Oukoyo-Ye,--the doctor's taste was Oriental. And again he fell to scrutinizing the fan. It was large, ugly, clumsy. What possessed Arn to place such a sprawling affair over his mantel? Tempted to touch it, he discovered that it was as silky as a young bat's wing. At last, his curiosity excited, he lifted it with some straining to the floor. What puzzled him was its weight. He felt its thin ribs, its soft, paper-like material, and his fingers chilled as they closed on the two outermost spokes. They were of metal, whether steel or iron he could not determine. A queer fan this, far too heavy to stir the air, and--

Effinghame held the fan up to the light. He had perceived a shadowy figure in a corner. It resolved itself into a man's head--bearded, scowling, crowned with thorns or sunbeams. It was probably a Krishna. But how came such a face on a Japanese fan? The type was Oriental, though not Mongolian, rather Semitic. It vaguely recalled to Effinghame a head and face he had seen in a famous painting. But where and by whom? It wore a vile expression, the eyes mean and revengeful; there was a cruel mouth and a long, hooked, crafty nose. The forehead was lofty, even intellectual, and bore its thorns--yes, he was sure they were thorns--like a conqueror. Just then Dr. Arn entered and laughed when he saw the other struggling with the fan.

"My Samurai fan!" he exclaimed, in his accustomed frank tones; "how did you discover it so soon?"

"You've kept me here an hour. I had to do something," answered the other, sulkily.

"There, there, I apologize. Sit down, old man. I had a very sick patient to-night, and I feel worn out. I'll ring for champagne." They talked about trifling personal matters, when suddenly Effinghame asked:--

"Why Samurai? I had supposed this once belonged to some prehistoric giant who could waft it as do ladies their bamboo fans, when they brush the dust from old hearts--as the Spanish poet sang."

"That fan is interesting enough," was the doctor's reply. "When a Samurai, one of the warrior caste Japanese, was invited to the house of a doubtful friend, he carried this fan as a weapon of defence. Compelled to leave his two swords behind a screen, he could close this fighting machine and parry the attack of his hospitable enemy until he reached his swords. Just try it and see what a formidable weapon it would prove." He took up the fan, shut it, and swung it over his head.

"Look out for the bottles!" cried Effinghame.

"Never fear, old chap. And did you notice the head?"

"That's what most puzzled me."

"No wonder. I too was puzzled--until I found the solution. And it took me some years--yes, all the time you were in Paris learning how to paint and live." He paused, and his face became gloomy.

"Well--well?"

"There is no well. It's a damned bad fan, that iron one, and I don't mind saying so to you."

"Superstitious--you! Where is your Haeckel, your Wundt, your Weismann? Do you still believe in the infallibility of the germ-plasm? Has the fan brought you ill-luck? The fact is, Arn, ever since your return from China you've been a strange bird!" It was Effinghame's turn to laugh.

"Don't say another word." The doctor was vivacious in a moment and poured out wine. They both lighted cigars. Slowly puffing, Arn took up the fan and spread it open.

"See here! That head, as you must have noticed, is not Japanese. It's Jewish. Do you recall the head of Judas painted by Da Vinci in his Last Supper? Now isn't this old scoundrel's the exact duplicate--well, if not exact, there is a very strong resemblance." Effinghame looked and nodded.

"And what the devil is it doing on a fan of the Samurai? It's not caprice. No Japanese artist ever painted in that style or ever expressed that type. I thought the thing out and came to the conclusion--"

"Yes--yes! What conclusion?" eagerly interrupted his listener.

"To the conclusion that I could never unravel such a knotty question alone." Effinghame was disappointed.

"So I had recourse to an ally--to the fan itself," blandly added Arn, as he poured out more wine.

"The fan?"

"Precisely--the fan. I studied it from tip to tip, as our bird-shooting friends say, and I, at last, discovered more than a picture. You know I am an Orientalist. When I was at Johns Hopkins University I attended the classes of the erudite Blumenfeld, and what you can't learn from him--need I say any more? One evening I held the fan in front of a vivid electric light and at once noticed serried lines. These I deciphered after a long time. Another surprise. They were Chinese characters of a remotely early date--Heaven knows how many dynasties back! Now what, you will ask, is Chinese doing on a Samurai fighting fan! I don't know. I never shall know. But I do know that this fan contains on one side of it the most extraordinary revelation ever vouchsafed mankind, particularly Christian mankind." Excited by his own words, Arn arose.

"Effinghame, my dear fellow, I know you have read Renan. If Renan had seen the communication on this iron fan, he would have never written his life of the Messiah." His eyes blazed.

"Why, what do you mean?"

"I mean that it might have been a life of Judas Iscariot."

"Good God, man, are you joking?" ejaculated Effinghame.

"I mean," sternly pursued Arn, "that if De Quincey had studied this identical fan, the opium-eater would have composed another gorgeous rhetorical plea for the man preelected to betray his Saviour, the apostle who spilt the salt." He sat down and breathed heavily.

"Go on! Go on!"

"Shall I relate the history upon the fan?" And without waiting for an answer he began at the left of the fan and slowly read to the right:--

I who write this am called Moa the Bonze. What I write of I witnessed in a walled city of Judea. I travelled there attracted by the report of miraculous happenings brought about by the magic art of a youthful barbarian called Ieshua. The day I arrived in the city they had sentenced the wise man to death by crucifixion. I was disappointed. I had come many moons and many leagues from the Yellow Kingdom to see something rare. I was too late. The magician, whom his disciples called a god, had been executed. I tarried a few days in the city. After many questions put to beggars and outcasts, I heard that a certain woman of rank had a portrait of Ieshua. I called and without hesitation asked her to show me this picture. She was an exalted soul. She wept bitter tears as she drew from a secret cabinet a scarf upon which was imprinted a bloody image. She continued to weep as I made a copy of the head. I confess I was not impressed. The face was bearded and ugly. The new god was said to have been as fair as the sun. And I told the woman this. She only wept the more.

"If he were a god," I asked, "where are outward evidences?" She became frantic.

"The real man!" she cried; "this one died for the man he betrayed," and again fell to lamenting. Seeing I could gain nothing more from her, I left, wondering at the strange heretics I had encountered. I went back to my country and after weaving this tale and painting the head, there awaited the fifth Buddha, the successor to Siddartha, whose coming has been predicted.

Arn's voice ceased. There was silence in the chamber. Then Effinghame started up and fiercely growled:--

"What do you make of it, Arn?"

"Isn't it clear enough? There's been a frightful error somewhere, one of incalculable consequences. A tremendous act of heroism has been committed by a man whose name has been universally execrated through the ages. Perhaps he repented at the eleventh hour and by some means impersonated his betrayed friend; perhaps--"

"But that other body found in the blasted field of Aceldama!" demanded the agitated Effinghame. Dr. Arn did not answer.

After a lugubrious pause, he whispered:--

"There's more to follow. You haven't heard the worst."

"What--more! I thought your damnable old Bonze died in the odour of sanctity over there in his Yellow Kingdom."

"True. He died. But before he died he recorded a vision he had. It is inscribed on the other side of the fan."

Effinghame's features lengthened.

"Still the same fan."

"The same. Here is what it prophesies." Reversing the clumsy fan, Arn again read:--

Before I pass over into Nirvana I must relate what I saw in the country of the Christians. It was not a dream. It was too real. And yet it is to be, for it has not yet happened. The Campagna was now become a shallow lake from the sea almost to the Sabine Mountains. What had been Rome was a black waste spot, full of stones and weeds. And no two stones stood together. Ah! our war with the white races had been successful. We had not used their fighting machines, as did that nation of little brown men, the Japanese. The Chinese were too sage. They allowed the Christians to exterminate the Japanese; but when they attacked us and attempted to rob us of our land, we merely resorted to our old-time weapon--the Odour-Death. With it we smothered their armies, sunk their navies, swept through their countries like the simoon. The awful secret of the Odour-Death is one that has been ours from the beginning of time. Known only to the College of Bonzes, it was never used except in extreme peril. Its smell is more revolting in its consequences than the Black Plague. It ravaged the earth.

I sat in a flat-bottomed boat, enjoying the soft melancholy Italian evening. Not a human did I see; nor had I encountered one on my slow voyage from the Middle Seas. In meditation I pondered the ultimate wisdom of Confucius and smiled at the folly of the white barbarians who had tried to show us a new god, a new religion. At last they, too, had succumbed like the nations before their era. The temple of Jupiter on the Capitol had fallen, so had the holy temple of Jerusalem. And now St. Peter's. Their central religion had been destroyed, and yet prophecies of the second coming of their divinity had not been accomplished. When the last Pope of Rome dies, so it was said, then time would be accomplished. The last Pope had died. Their basilica with its mighty dome was a desert where scorpions and snakes abounded. The fifth Buddha would appear, not the second Christos. Suddenly I saw before me in a puny boat a beautiful beardless youth. He was attired in some symbolical garments and upon his head a triple tiara. I could not believe my aged eyes. He sat upright. His attitude was hieratic. His eyes were lifted heavenwards. He clasped his hands and prayed:--

"O Lord, remove thy servant. The time is at hand foretold by thy slaughtered saints. I am the last Pope and the humblest of thy servants. Though the heathen hath triumphed upon the earth, I go to thy bosom, for all things are now accomplished." And he tumbled forward, dead. The last Pope! I had seen him. Nothing could happen after that.

And as I turned my boat in the direction of the sea a moaning came upon the waters. The sky became as brass. A roar, like the rending asunder of the firmament, caused my soul to expand with horror and joy. Yes, time was accomplished. The last Pope had uttered the truth. Eternity was nigh. But the Buddha would now prove to the multitudes awakened from their long sleep that He, not other gods, was the true, the only God. In a flare of light sounded the trumpets of destiny; eternity unrolled before me, and on the vast plain I saw the bones of the buried dead uniting, as men and women from time's beginnings arose in an army, the number whereof is unthinkable. And oh! abomination of desolation, the White Horse, not Kalki the tenth incarnation of Vishnu, but the animal foretold in their Apocalypse, came through the lightnings, and in the whirlwinds of flame and thunder I saw the shining face of Him, the Son of Man! Where our Buddha? Alas! the last Pope spake truth. I, Moa the Bonze, tell you this ere it be too late to repent your sins and forswear your false gods. The Galilean is our master....

"Farceur! Do you know what I would do with that accursed fan? I'd destroy it, sell it, get rid of it somehow. Or else--" Effinghame scrutinized the doctor, whose eyes were closed--"or else I would return to the pious practices of my old religion." No smile crossed the face of his friend as he firmly held the fighting fan, the iron and mystical fan of the Samurai.

[The end]
James Huneker's short story: Iron Fan

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