Cheiromancy by Caitlin A. Quinn
In 19th century high society, a famous wit has his palm read by "Cheiro" Warner.
William John "Cheiro" Warner held the American's hand in both of his own and felt the man's exhaustion. It pulsed in the air between them, a living, ragged thing, like the trees buffeted by the London rain outside.
Warner leaned over the table for a closer look at the man's palm and heard the leather chair creak under the extra weight he had acquired - seemingly overnight - since his fortieth birthday. Studied the man's fingers. Long, ending in squared tips. The knuckles twisted by age and stained with faded ink. "You are an ambitious man," Warner told him.
The American's bristling white mustache twitched. "That hardly counts as clairvoyance, Mr. Warner. More like newspaper reading."
Warner ignored the jibe. He was used to skeptics. Hadn't the Prime Minister himself said something similar before returning for three more sessions?
In the fireplace a log split. Warner's heart skipped, that tired, beating drum bruised by the letter he kept hidden inside his breast pocket. His failure settled heavy and warm upon his shoulders, a wool coat dyed a hundred different shades of regret. He pictured again the girl's face. The eyes that had haunted him these many months.
The eyes of the man seated across from Warner were studying him. Probing for weakness, their blue vigorous pools of defiance belonging to a much younger man. With his index finger, Warner traced a line that split into two at the fleshy place beneath the man's middle finger. "A difficult choice is coming," he said, feeling a pang inside his own chest.
The man barked a laugh. "The older I get, just deciding whether to get out of bed in the morning is a difficult choice."
Warner smiled. He had been warned of the American's brusqueness, a cutting and impatient wit likened to a kick in the shin.
"This is a choice that involves money. Quite a large sum, in fact."
The American straightened in his chair, the black centers of his blue eyes sharpening to neat points. Warner kept this smile on the inside. It always came down to money. Such a shame, really.
"What do you see?"
"That you will lose one fortune only to amass another."
A grumbling sound came from the man's throat. "That's hardly comforting."
It was tiresome, this telling others what to expect, only to be met with consternation and resistance. No one had told Warner what would happen to him when, barely sixteen, he boarded that steamer alone from Dublin to Bombay, running from his mother's sorrow and his father's fists. Nothing had prepared him for how, when he stepped onto the docks in Apollo Bunder, weak and thin as a willow rod, the colors and sounds of India would overwhelm. Send him scurrying on hands and knees underneath a cart to hide, where he plugged his ears and closed his eyes to the beautiful chaos. He had jumped, hitting his head on the cart's underbelly, when the man shook his shoulder. He could have run to any place, hidden anywhere, but fate had led him to Baji Narayan's cart. And from Baji, he was destined to receive the welcome of the Chitpavan Brahmins, they who knew the truths that were imprinted in the flesh, carved into the palm of each man and woman by the universe.
Warner let go of the man's hand and sat back in his chair, his spine tightening. With certain types of men, directness was best. "What is it you wish to learn?"
The American produced a silver cigar case from inside his white jacket and offered a smoke to Warner, who declined. Cigar angled between his lips, the man bent his head to the candle on the table and took a deep pull, releasing curls of woodsy smoke. When his blue eyes met Warner's this time, Warner felt the skin on his forearms tingle, just as it had when Baji, that consummate raconteur, would spin one of his many tales. The Monkey and the Tiger. The Laughing Fish. Deceptively simple yarns bearing rubies of wisdom.
"When I was a young man," the American began, "piloting steamboats on the river, I believed that looking at things too closely spoiled them. Tarnished their beauty; robbed them of their mystique."
Despite a life dedicated to plumbing mysteries, some plucked string inside Warner sounded in harmonious commiseration. Knowledge often encumbered as much as it enlightened.
"And now?"
The man turned the cigar over in his hand and squinted at it through the smoke. "Now, I make my living by looking at things - and people - too closely. Reflecting what I see back to the world - whether they want to see it or not."
"We have much in common."
The American grimaced, flicked a burning cigar ash into a brass tray on the table. "Frankly, it's worn me out. Being the so-called wit of one's generation is a thankless job."
Warner watched the man purse his lips, letting the silence between them blossom into a dark, heavy-headed flower. Finally, the American said, "What I want you to tell me, Mr. Warner, is when I shall die."
Warner took in a breath tainted by cigar smoke. As his lungs expanded, he felt his waistcoat cinch more snugly around his middle. It's not that he was unused to such a question - in fact, he was asked it frequently - it's that answering came with weighty responsibility. He heard Baji's voice counseling caution, counseling compassion.
If he saw that a person would die within a few days' time, was telling them a kindness or a cruelty? Would they use the hours they had left to take comfort from their loved ones and dote upon them in return, or would they drown their terror in drink or some other debauched behavior, as his own father had when Warner, a gangling youth of sixteen, foretold the man's death would arrive within a fortnight? But foresight was not power, and Warner watched helplessly as his father spent the money needed to get them through winter in brothels and taverns. A quarter of a century later, and he still relived in dreams those drink-fueled beatings.
To be aware of the hours that carried you toward death was an unmerciful burden. And what of the man, like himself, who had none to mourn him? What hell awaited him, to be alone while the shadows gathered to ferry him to obscurity?
Warner considered his practice of inventing some far off death date - or feigning an inability to see one at all, his most compassionate act. But would compassion be the best salve for the soul of the man sitting before him?
Warner cleared his throat then said, "Before I tell you what you want to know, there are things I must ask."
The American blew out a perfect ring of smoke that hovered like a wispy noose between them. "Such as?"
"Are you a religious man?"
"I'm the worst kind of religious man, Mr. Warner: one who doesn't believe in God, but still believes in sin."
Warner watched the American's hand as he stubbed out his cigar in the brass tray. He had a strong desire to hold it again, to peer into the eddies and swirls carved into its flesh. To gaze into this great man's guarded heart.
"If I were to tell you the date of your death, what benefit do you believe this knowledge would bring?"
"It will even the score."
Warner leaned back in his chair and looked steadily into the man's eyes, their light diminished now under hooded lids. The American curled his hands into fists, obscuring their palms from Warner's eager gaze.
"Twice, Mr. Warner, I have been cursed with foreseeing another's death. The first was when I was eleven and dreamed that my father took ill and perished. A month later, he came down with pneumonia and died in his sleep."
The American paused, and Warner felt a challenge rising from the man's skin like mist steaming from wet grass.
"The second time, I was twenty-three and living my dream of the riverboat life upon the steamer A.B. Chambers. So enamored was I of this newfound vocation, that I convinced my younger brother Henry to take a lowly position on the Pennsylvania. I dreamed his death one night, but so certain was I that no harm could befall either of us while engaged in such worthy occupation, I said nothing, passing it off as a night terror brought on by a supper of bad mutton." Here the American halted again, and this time, Warner watched the blue of his eyes brighten with moisture. "Before three weeks were out, the Pennsylvania's boiler blew, and I watched my beloved brother suffer for eight days, tortured by melted flesh and shrapnel. I can never forgive myself for such a dereliction of familial duty. I can only hope, Mr. Warner - Cheiro - to serve myself the same bitter brew: knowing the worst is set to happen, while taking no heed of the warning."
Dereliction of familial duty. The words were a sudden slap. Warner flinched. His chest ached beneath the tucked away letter, a hairshirt made of parchment, as he reached across the table.
"Your hand, sir."
The American unfurled his fists and laid his right hand on the table, palm up. Warner took it and flattenened its surface, swiping his thumb across the fleshy bit right above the man's wrist. He then squeezed with the thumb and forefinger of his free hand, studying the lines formed by the skin's folds. Blood rushed behind Warner's eyes, showing him again the glorious, bright colors of Bombay.
Showing him the man's true sin, just as he knew his own.
What good is it to know the date of one's death when you have spent your life in the hollowed grave of solitude, denying your love to those who most deserve it?
Warner spoke the sought-after words: "You were born in the wake of the great comet, and its return will herald your death."
The American laughed softly. "Well, I'll be damned."
He went to pull his hand from Warner's grasp, but Warner tightened his hold. "There's more." The man sucked in a quick breath.
"Your sin isn't that you didn't warn your father and brother of your dreams, but that you believed you had the power to prevent the inevitable. To halt the circle of life and death to which we are all tethered. It's hubris of the worst kind - something Americans are never in short supply of, and that you, dear sir, hold in excess. No wonder you are exhausted."
The American tried to rise, his face flushed with anger, but Warner held fast his hand. "You've lost loved ones," Warner continued, "but your 'dereliction of familial duty' is to the daughter who yet remains. Set aside your vanity. Reconcile yourself to her, before it's too late."
Warner's grip slackened and, in one motion, the American tore his hand free and stood. He leaned on the table for support.
"I can't remember the last time I've been so openly insulted - outside of the review pages of The New York World, and at least they had the good grace to pretend they had something of value to say. You overstep your remit, Mr. Warner."
Warner sighed while he listened to the man stomp toward the foyer. There was a cessation of steps, and Warner imagined him gathering his coat and hat from Stevens, the butler.
It didn't always work, he reminded himself. Not everyone could hear the truth and accept it. Often it was the cleverest of men who shunned the knowledge most vital.
He put his hand over chest, where his folded summoner cankered, and recited softly to himself those words he had read so many times, they were now committed to memory:
When the letter had first arrived, Warner searched his own palm for proof of its claim, but the lines he sought were obscured. Faded with age, distance, and remorse. Impossible for him to decipher. Two days later, he took a carriage to Earl's Court and asked a hat merchant after the Denbys' address. He sat on a park bench across from the home for hours until, finally, two children emerged, their hands held by a young woman of striking beauty, her skin a soft brown, her eyes as familiar to him as his own. As she passed by him, he could not speak, his throat rippling with emotion, his voice stifled by societal rigors that would punish them both - savagely - were word of their relation to escape his lips.
Eight months had passed since that day, and he had never gone back. He burned with shame to know that what he feared most was not whether she would forgive and accept him, but how the rich and powerful he counted among his clientele would turn their backs if they knew about this brown girl who had his eyes. How scandal would ruin him and destroy all he had worked to attain, a poor boy from Dublin now welcomed into the homes of nobles, merchant princes, and nabobs.
How had he not been able to see this girl written into the scripture of his own palm? The question clanged inside him, a tolling bell he shuddered to answer.
Warner rose from his chair to retire for the evening and heard his knees make their new creaking sound. He couldn't remember when that had first started, when he had crossed that invisible, inevitable line from summer into autumn. On his way to the staircase, Warner passed by the visitors' book propped on its table in the hallway. A large, angry-looking script blasted across the open page, and he stopped to read it:
Cheiro has exposed my character to me with humiliating accuracy. I ought not to confess this accuracy, still I am moved to do so. - Mark Twain
Cheiro Warner's steps felt lighter, his joints less strained, as he walked upstairs to his bedroom. He had decided something, though he would not yet speak it to himself. For there were things no comet could extinguish: the light of a man whose words would live forever, and a man's duty to his daughter.
from FICTION on the WEB short stories https://ift.tt/hGrz7Dm
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Warner leaned over the table for a closer look at the man's palm and heard the leather chair creak under the extra weight he had acquired - seemingly overnight - since his fortieth birthday. Studied the man's fingers. Long, ending in squared tips. The knuckles twisted by age and stained with faded ink. "You are an ambitious man," Warner told him.
The American's bristling white mustache twitched. "That hardly counts as clairvoyance, Mr. Warner. More like newspaper reading."
Warner ignored the jibe. He was used to skeptics. Hadn't the Prime Minister himself said something similar before returning for three more sessions?
In the fireplace a log split. Warner's heart skipped, that tired, beating drum bruised by the letter he kept hidden inside his breast pocket. His failure settled heavy and warm upon his shoulders, a wool coat dyed a hundred different shades of regret. He pictured again the girl's face. The eyes that had haunted him these many months.
The eyes of the man seated across from Warner were studying him. Probing for weakness, their blue vigorous pools of defiance belonging to a much younger man. With his index finger, Warner traced a line that split into two at the fleshy place beneath the man's middle finger. "A difficult choice is coming," he said, feeling a pang inside his own chest.
The man barked a laugh. "The older I get, just deciding whether to get out of bed in the morning is a difficult choice."
Warner smiled. He had been warned of the American's brusqueness, a cutting and impatient wit likened to a kick in the shin.
"This is a choice that involves money. Quite a large sum, in fact."
The American straightened in his chair, the black centers of his blue eyes sharpening to neat points. Warner kept this smile on the inside. It always came down to money. Such a shame, really.
"What do you see?"
"That you will lose one fortune only to amass another."
A grumbling sound came from the man's throat. "That's hardly comforting."
It was tiresome, this telling others what to expect, only to be met with consternation and resistance. No one had told Warner what would happen to him when, barely sixteen, he boarded that steamer alone from Dublin to Bombay, running from his mother's sorrow and his father's fists. Nothing had prepared him for how, when he stepped onto the docks in Apollo Bunder, weak and thin as a willow rod, the colors and sounds of India would overwhelm. Send him scurrying on hands and knees underneath a cart to hide, where he plugged his ears and closed his eyes to the beautiful chaos. He had jumped, hitting his head on the cart's underbelly, when the man shook his shoulder. He could have run to any place, hidden anywhere, but fate had led him to Baji Narayan's cart. And from Baji, he was destined to receive the welcome of the Chitpavan Brahmins, they who knew the truths that were imprinted in the flesh, carved into the palm of each man and woman by the universe.
Warner let go of the man's hand and sat back in his chair, his spine tightening. With certain types of men, directness was best. "What is it you wish to learn?"
The American produced a silver cigar case from inside his white jacket and offered a smoke to Warner, who declined. Cigar angled between his lips, the man bent his head to the candle on the table and took a deep pull, releasing curls of woodsy smoke. When his blue eyes met Warner's this time, Warner felt the skin on his forearms tingle, just as it had when Baji, that consummate raconteur, would spin one of his many tales. The Monkey and the Tiger. The Laughing Fish. Deceptively simple yarns bearing rubies of wisdom.
"When I was a young man," the American began, "piloting steamboats on the river, I believed that looking at things too closely spoiled them. Tarnished their beauty; robbed them of their mystique."
Despite a life dedicated to plumbing mysteries, some plucked string inside Warner sounded in harmonious commiseration. Knowledge often encumbered as much as it enlightened.
"And now?"
The man turned the cigar over in his hand and squinted at it through the smoke. "Now, I make my living by looking at things - and people - too closely. Reflecting what I see back to the world - whether they want to see it or not."
"We have much in common."
The American grimaced, flicked a burning cigar ash into a brass tray on the table. "Frankly, it's worn me out. Being the so-called wit of one's generation is a thankless job."
Warner watched the man purse his lips, letting the silence between them blossom into a dark, heavy-headed flower. Finally, the American said, "What I want you to tell me, Mr. Warner, is when I shall die."
Warner took in a breath tainted by cigar smoke. As his lungs expanded, he felt his waistcoat cinch more snugly around his middle. It's not that he was unused to such a question - in fact, he was asked it frequently - it's that answering came with weighty responsibility. He heard Baji's voice counseling caution, counseling compassion.
If he saw that a person would die within a few days' time, was telling them a kindness or a cruelty? Would they use the hours they had left to take comfort from their loved ones and dote upon them in return, or would they drown their terror in drink or some other debauched behavior, as his own father had when Warner, a gangling youth of sixteen, foretold the man's death would arrive within a fortnight? But foresight was not power, and Warner watched helplessly as his father spent the money needed to get them through winter in brothels and taverns. A quarter of a century later, and he still relived in dreams those drink-fueled beatings.
To be aware of the hours that carried you toward death was an unmerciful burden. And what of the man, like himself, who had none to mourn him? What hell awaited him, to be alone while the shadows gathered to ferry him to obscurity?
Warner considered his practice of inventing some far off death date - or feigning an inability to see one at all, his most compassionate act. But would compassion be the best salve for the soul of the man sitting before him?
Warner cleared his throat then said, "Before I tell you what you want to know, there are things I must ask."
The American blew out a perfect ring of smoke that hovered like a wispy noose between them. "Such as?"
"Are you a religious man?"
"I'm the worst kind of religious man, Mr. Warner: one who doesn't believe in God, but still believes in sin."
Warner watched the American's hand as he stubbed out his cigar in the brass tray. He had a strong desire to hold it again, to peer into the eddies and swirls carved into its flesh. To gaze into this great man's guarded heart.
"If I were to tell you the date of your death, what benefit do you believe this knowledge would bring?"
"It will even the score."
Warner leaned back in his chair and looked steadily into the man's eyes, their light diminished now under hooded lids. The American curled his hands into fists, obscuring their palms from Warner's eager gaze.
"Twice, Mr. Warner, I have been cursed with foreseeing another's death. The first was when I was eleven and dreamed that my father took ill and perished. A month later, he came down with pneumonia and died in his sleep."
The American paused, and Warner felt a challenge rising from the man's skin like mist steaming from wet grass.
"The second time, I was twenty-three and living my dream of the riverboat life upon the steamer A.B. Chambers. So enamored was I of this newfound vocation, that I convinced my younger brother Henry to take a lowly position on the Pennsylvania. I dreamed his death one night, but so certain was I that no harm could befall either of us while engaged in such worthy occupation, I said nothing, passing it off as a night terror brought on by a supper of bad mutton." Here the American halted again, and this time, Warner watched the blue of his eyes brighten with moisture. "Before three weeks were out, the Pennsylvania's boiler blew, and I watched my beloved brother suffer for eight days, tortured by melted flesh and shrapnel. I can never forgive myself for such a dereliction of familial duty. I can only hope, Mr. Warner - Cheiro - to serve myself the same bitter brew: knowing the worst is set to happen, while taking no heed of the warning."
Dereliction of familial duty. The words were a sudden slap. Warner flinched. His chest ached beneath the tucked away letter, a hairshirt made of parchment, as he reached across the table.
"Your hand, sir."
The American unfurled his fists and laid his right hand on the table, palm up. Warner took it and flattenened its surface, swiping his thumb across the fleshy bit right above the man's wrist. He then squeezed with the thumb and forefinger of his free hand, studying the lines formed by the skin's folds. Blood rushed behind Warner's eyes, showing him again the glorious, bright colors of Bombay.
Showing him the man's true sin, just as he knew his own.
What good is it to know the date of one's death when you have spent your life in the hollowed grave of solitude, denying your love to those who most deserve it?
Warner spoke the sought-after words: "You were born in the wake of the great comet, and its return will herald your death."
The American laughed softly. "Well, I'll be damned."
He went to pull his hand from Warner's grasp, but Warner tightened his hold. "There's more." The man sucked in a quick breath.
"Your sin isn't that you didn't warn your father and brother of your dreams, but that you believed you had the power to prevent the inevitable. To halt the circle of life and death to which we are all tethered. It's hubris of the worst kind - something Americans are never in short supply of, and that you, dear sir, hold in excess. No wonder you are exhausted."
The American tried to rise, his face flushed with anger, but Warner held fast his hand. "You've lost loved ones," Warner continued, "but your 'dereliction of familial duty' is to the daughter who yet remains. Set aside your vanity. Reconcile yourself to her, before it's too late."
Warner's grip slackened and, in one motion, the American tore his hand free and stood. He leaned on the table for support.
"I can't remember the last time I've been so openly insulted - outside of the review pages of The New York World, and at least they had the good grace to pretend they had something of value to say. You overstep your remit, Mr. Warner."
Warner sighed while he listened to the man stomp toward the foyer. There was a cessation of steps, and Warner imagined him gathering his coat and hat from Stevens, the butler.
It didn't always work, he reminded himself. Not everyone could hear the truth and accept it. Often it was the cleverest of men who shunned the knowledge most vital.
He put his hand over chest, where his folded summoner cankered, and recited softly to himself those words he had read so many times, they were now committed to memory:
Mr. Warner,
I send word from Bombay, on behalf of Baji Narayan, who has sadly passed this evening. Before he died, he bid me give you this news: You have a daughter, sir. A good girl, and a loving grandchild to Baji. She has no knowledge of you, her mother having died soon after her birth - and after, of course, your ship sailed away from Apollo Bunder those twenty years ago.
The girl is now in London, serving as ayah to a family called Denby in Earl's Court. Her name is Aditi, though she is called "Alice" by her employers.
Baji's final words to you are these: "Jonni, I pray you find her and keep her safe. Be a father to her, now that she has come across the sea to you. I forgive you."
Yours most respectfully,
K. Vihaan Singh
When the letter had first arrived, Warner searched his own palm for proof of its claim, but the lines he sought were obscured. Faded with age, distance, and remorse. Impossible for him to decipher. Two days later, he took a carriage to Earl's Court and asked a hat merchant after the Denbys' address. He sat on a park bench across from the home for hours until, finally, two children emerged, their hands held by a young woman of striking beauty, her skin a soft brown, her eyes as familiar to him as his own. As she passed by him, he could not speak, his throat rippling with emotion, his voice stifled by societal rigors that would punish them both - savagely - were word of their relation to escape his lips.
Eight months had passed since that day, and he had never gone back. He burned with shame to know that what he feared most was not whether she would forgive and accept him, but how the rich and powerful he counted among his clientele would turn their backs if they knew about this brown girl who had his eyes. How scandal would ruin him and destroy all he had worked to attain, a poor boy from Dublin now welcomed into the homes of nobles, merchant princes, and nabobs.
How had he not been able to see this girl written into the scripture of his own palm? The question clanged inside him, a tolling bell he shuddered to answer.
Warner rose from his chair to retire for the evening and heard his knees make their new creaking sound. He couldn't remember when that had first started, when he had crossed that invisible, inevitable line from summer into autumn. On his way to the staircase, Warner passed by the visitors' book propped on its table in the hallway. A large, angry-looking script blasted across the open page, and he stopped to read it:
Cheiro has exposed my character to me with humiliating accuracy. I ought not to confess this accuracy, still I am moved to do so. - Mark Twain
Cheiro Warner's steps felt lighter, his joints less strained, as he walked upstairs to his bedroom. He had decided something, though he would not yet speak it to himself. For there were things no comet could extinguish: the light of a man whose words would live forever, and a man's duty to his daughter.
from FICTION on the WEB short stories https://ift.tt/hGrz7Dm
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