Marco Polo's Lives and Mine

FROM the silver aureole about his slack gray paws, from the wide-eyed kitten face contrasting with his corpulent maturity like some superfine soft owl, and from his perfect knowledge of where to place himself in every landscape most to beautify it, I judge that Marco Polo has attained unto the seventh of his incarnations. He wakes, to cast a green, severe look upon me before sleep converts him utterly into a breathing mat, the fur at the centre heaving up and down with his tranced purrs.

I think he guesses, with the clairvoyance won from Egyptian vigil and those high fence ways he walks where I should fall, that I envy him his gift of nine lives, and that now, while the more-than-twice-born sleeps, I am going to pretend his nine lives are my own.

Marco, I know I have no right! You are not even my cat. Be a little generous! I will give them all back when you stir — but I am too weary of galloping always, leaving behind beauty, leisure, and irrelevancies as I tear to keep pace with the one existence fate has doled out. Now, luxury! I shall have space to be expansively noble, to be absurd. Space, but not too much time, for Marco may wake. Each life must be rounded, deep, and brief, timed to the rhythm of his tranced purrs.

1.The scholar. Creaking spiral stairs of libraries, up which I pass to my own table in dust-hung galleries; untoward hours when I flit to and fro, a ragged scarecrow, on campuses, glancing at some clock half overgrown with ivy. Not Europe only. Walls of the Orient that too much sun has crumbled shall receive me. We meet disreputably, fellow students, at our chosen tavern. Ambrosial discussion; wine; ribaldry; brawls. What a thing to strike one’s head against, — the wrought Indian shield of shining brass, — what a thing to behold through blue smoke for one’s last, lingering gaze! I have taken towers of notes, imparted not one tittle, and the lively curse of acquaintances resounds as they peer through the intricate manuscript written in undecipherable code. My spirit hovers with interest before passing to

2. The farmer. The service of the earth; the pacing herds; the streaming pail; the cart wheel slicing the black loam; the tyrant seasons. When I marry it is but to move from my father’s farm to my own across the road. Every circumstance of my school days, my wedding, the rearing of my family, the neighbors know even better than I. I sleep in the fullness of years, and when the anniversary of my birthday rolls around they put hydrangeas upon my grave, in milk bottles shiningly clean and filled with water, to keep the heavy-headed flowers fresh the longer.

3. The traveler. Every month is my migratory season. Wherever stream can leap I shall leap. I shall spend my life following rivers. Orinoco, Penobscot, Beaver Kill, Dnieper, Congo, Kennebec — they are the streets of my wild, mysterious state. No valley the mists leave reluctantly, no fiord slope where sun walks late, no far horizon line that sprouts glittering towns like cherub wings, shall be unknown to me. When finally I miss my footing on some inaccessible peak and traverse the distance it has taken the stream four million years to hollow out, I shall pass in the twinkling of an eye to

4. Wife and mother. A perilous adventure, to find the snubbed irrelevancies of husband and self now manifested more firmly than in marble in the being of our young. Our power is too frightful — we stand like witch and warlock over our material. Is it possible that the creatures of our flesh revolt against us? What if they conquer us? What if, in so conquering, they satisfy some wild anarchic desire of my own against which all my established life fiercely contends? I shall need something comparatively restful after this.

5. Poet. Not a jagged young poet full of teeth, but a mellow middle-aged bard who lives in the sort of august seclusion that provokes publicity. I have a yellow house beside the sea. Swallows encircle my head when I walk. Do I desire friends to share my perfect meal and watch in the wide sunset the green crabs fighting on the shore? I send up a skyrocket as messenger. Even my friend the emperor will come at a certain celestial signal. The confidential interviewer of wind and wave and mandarins of old, the poet laureate to distinguished gatherings, I behold beautiful women and unpreoccupied men hang upon my autumnal sighings. Posterity is in its proper place, in gocarts. I pat it on the head and pick up its rubber rings for it. Still without a rival, still in demand, I expire with reluctance into

6. Lover. One love is too small for me, the will-o’-the-wisp, the child with sea-green eyes and hair the color of maple leaves in April when the sun shines through them, the child with many lovers. I give, with beauty and a dreamy wonder, as the young earth gives, in spring. And if there are those who think me too generous with my favor let them look upon my serene maturity following a fantastic youth, arid be satisfied. I live in the lives of those about me. Like some inarticulate earth goddess I surround children and dogs, men and women, with my ample affection. My old friend Richard obtains a clerkship — hour after hour I brood upon it with deep happiness. Pauline, the scorned, the detested, is in hospital, forbidden by physicians to see anyone — an unnecessary prohibition, for who would come? I come and stand for a long interval of time outside the room with my hand upon the doorknob, that she may know she is not alone. When I die I am bitterly missed by many obscure and unimportant people.

7, Scourge of God. The wind, which blows where it alone desires, has blown all my toys away — length of years, leisure, family, position, fame. Night and day before my eyes something appears that has no archetype on earth. How can I, miserable man that I am, create its like? By implacable truth I see humanity as herded cattle. While prison exists I am not free; while poverty exists I am accursed. With lightnings of the border from which I came I smite the evildoer. To my end, bitter, shameful, and overwhelming, I am reconciled.

8. Invalid. Here is the mountain wall against which all the soft, vague clouds of the world break and thereby fructify the populous valleys. So everlasting is it that if a god come down there is no other way that he can pass. The mountain wall is the height of my agony. Yet in a small village I am merely one passing subject of commiserating gossip, or exist only as a name to hush children when they come too near. I go, unregretted, to

9. Sage. I am old enough to let any ragtag, bobtail, or baby give me either dole or greeting. I sit in the torrid sun with my beggar’s bowl, beside the brown river — calm, passive, remembering. There is something in the outer manifestations of this my ninth life so forcibly recalling Marco Polo’s that I glance suddenly in his direction, to meet the green, severe gaze again upon me.

Take them all back, Marco! I have lived all nine of them in one firelit hour full of vivid shapes.