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Transom and Visconti were hunting for more than a
homeless tyro. They were hunting for their god, Boy King
realized. They and their cult had apparently been hunting
for the Khnum for centuries. Millennia. Across the planet.
Out of the corner of his eye, Boy King saw something
stirring. A ghost, no doubt, edging close, testing him.
Without looking up, he hissed at the lemure to back away
and kept reading. In the diary, the coureur de bois, Baron,
and their companions were being taken hostage by a tribe
called the Issati.
So when this morning by our fire in this great Issati camp,
Baron told me that a certain secret college among the Issati
was making for a waterfall in order to conduct a religious
rite, I knew we were at last about to consummate our
quest. Baron said that the savages told him that it was the
only cataract along the Meschasipi, and Baron was con-
vinced, after consulting his charts and astrolabe again, that
this was the location where le Cannoume would appear.
THE MAGICIAN AND THE FOOL 189
The Meschasipi was obviously the Mississippi, and
the Mississippi s only cataract or waterfall was right here
in Minneapolis, Boy King knew. Was le Cannoume the
Khnum? Was Baron Visconti? Did he meet the ram-headed
god here, on the banks of the Meschasipi?
Boy King looked up, holding between his fingers the
page he was about to turn. It wasn t a ghost there, in the
dark, but a little fluttering of light. Just a piece of metal
capturing a gleam. Boy King looked up at the night sky
through the high windows, the rain falling in, and dense
cloud cover over the city. No bright light to capture. He
put down Transom s binder and stared into the shadows.
What was it? Boy King crawled across the floor toward the
flickering.
On the shiny fender of an old bicycle, there was a twin-
kling and a flashing. Very small, like the reflection of light
through a ceiling fan.
He started back when he realized it was his own re-
flection.
The reflection was waving something, which had caused
the flickering. It was holding a small collage in its hand,
with a black-and-white photograph of Charles Bukowski
having a beer at the center of it. Boy King leaned toward
the fender and could see that in neat black pen below
Bukowski s beer-hand was written Knight of Cups.
The way the reflection s hand held the collage middle
finger on upper edge, thumb on lower edge seemed more
significant than the card it held, but Boy King couldn t
quite seize it. This was a game. It was a game meant to be
played with someone specific in his past a significant
other. Wait. Not a game. It was a way to converse. Whole
conversations could be had with raised tarot cards, sorting
190 Barth Anderson
through a deck and finding the figure that represented the
next turn in the story, the next chapter. How did Boy King
know this? Was this an old revelation sparking from the
bike and its previous owner? No, it was from Boy King
himself. His life. How did he know that this game was
played with only one other person? And who was that?
Knight of Cups.
There were volumes of associations that went with the
cards, associations and definitions that could never be
found in a tarot manual, that only that other person would
ever understand. But those associations were hidden as if
under the weight of an ocean. Boy King had never seen this
card before, but Bukowski was one of the old associations
with this knight. Allowing that remembering to spread
through his mind was dangerous Boy King felt betrayed
and intrigued that his reflection was doing this to himself.
He d kept his whole life boxed up in separate containers
and stashed away even from his own memory for so long
that he was only ever Boy King now. Twelve years of hid-
ing from hunters who could slip into his mind meant he
couldn t allow himself to think about precious things like
the Calvino Method that is, the way he used to use tarot
cards to tell stories about his life to this significantly other
person. What did it mean that he was thinking these things
now? He couldn t let himself think of his previous name,
his previous identity. His entire strategy for hiding teetered
on the shaky fulcrum that he was Boy King and nothing
else.
He was about to back away, shut this out, but the
reflection-hand lowered, and Boy King could see his own
face distorted along the narrow curve of the bike fender.
Then the hand held up the card again. Knight of Cups.
THE MAGICIAN AND THE FOOL 191
The guards and wards upon his own mind gave, and
forbidden thoughts came spilling out. A grand voyage into
the ill-charted territories of history undertaken by young
men obsessed with mystics who d gone before Crowley,
Eliade, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and even sham-
mystics like Napoleon s counselor, Madame Le Normand,
who d fashioned the modern conception of celebrity
fortune-teller that was the Knight of Cups. Misguided
quests conducted with irrational maps and a search for the
searchers who may have found the means of escaping the
encircling fascism of reality. That was the pledge after all:
to peer beyond the occulted doorways of this world, open
them, and walk through together. That seemed so far ago
and long away to Boy King, pathetically quaint in the
wake of pre-Egyptian gods and spells cast with hammer
blows. Is this perhaps what the genie in the mirror was
telling him? Was a new knight riding to the king s rescue?
Or was the knight coming to challenge and slay the king?
Boy King?
The reflection held up another piece of paper, but this
wasn t a makeshift tarot card. It was a single note card
with the ram-head of Khnum drawn upon it, rippling
horns stretched behind, just as it was drawn upon the piece
of paper in the suit that Boy King had found. The same
hand. The same pen. Same paper, even.
Even I m after myself? Boy King leaned over the bike
fender and raised his middle finger, saying to the reflection,
Fuck off, all y all.
Then he collapsed back against the ragged brickwork
of the chimney, his brow, nose, and eyes pulsing. He
wanted to continue reading Transom s collection, learn
ways to undo the damage that Transom had done to Boy
192 Barth Anderson
King s defenses, but alcohol dehydration was wringing out
his body and he felt nauseous, sick down to the well of his
soul. Sick of hiding and dodging and so sick of himself.
In the distance, he could hear Highway 35 rumbling to
life. Boy King let the binder slip from his hands and he
rolled his head against the rough bricks to look out one of
the high east windows. Across the sky was the sad gleam of
dawn. He closed his eyes. His mind churned over the ram
symbol message he d found in the suit and the Bukowski
Knight of Cups. (Had his willful reflection taken up alle-
giance with Visconti and the Khnum cult? Was it mocking
him? Mockery was a sacrament to Remus whose brother
richly deserved it, or maybe or maybe or maybe. . . .)
But, finally, slow silence filled his mind, as if a tidal sea
washed toward him, carrying with it a dark fog that took
the place of his tossing thoughts.
13
he only sound in the piazza was the gurgle of the
Tfountain. When Rosemont had left the table, Miles
was starting to hit a stride and a round of Campari had
just arrived. Rosemont had figured Miles would be at a
jabbering pitch by now. Rosemont paused in the chapel-
restaurant s doorway, staring at the empty table, the dishes
that the waiter was retrieving.
Where did they go? Rosemont asked, striding up on
the waiter. Did you see?
The man scrubbed at his little mustache with the blade
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