CHAPTER IX. THE BASEMENT

Your hero betrays a secret.

The Pickwick Club survives. You prize the original; you will savor the succession. At least you should. The Samuel Pickwick Appreciation Society was holding its annual meeting. Welcome to the club.

 “Order!” She takes unhesitant charge. Sister Dorothea—we stand on ceremony—ascended to the chair only last year, but rules like a hereditary tsar. The club elects its officers by secret ballot, and I can only attribute her failure to win unanimous decision to marital discord. No diplomat, she had unilaterally evicted her deadbeat stepson from permanent residence in front of the living room television, and cantankerous Brother Henry is more than capable of delayed retribution. He has further cause for complaint. The couple’s offspring having all decamped, she had elected to rent out a room to a lodger, to a penalty of litigation and our present disturbance. The novice landlady voices no misgiving, referring to her whimsically paying guest only as that man.

Clandestine is the club. We were convening in their basement. Standard access is provided by a carpeted staircase, leading down from the garage. Today that route meant detection, so upon arrival Dorothea smuggled us into her laundry room, to tug at the trapdoor, from which covert portal a set of rickety steps leaves the ordinary world and plummets into darkness. Our subterranean retreat was ringed with folding chairs and a miniature couch, presided over by a rusting water heater and lit by a bare bulb; shafts of brighter light betray. His wife abominating the gridiron, Henry has to obey the sporting call in domestic exile, and an old television sat on a box-like fridge, whose powerful hum belied the sorry source. Two cords arced across the wall through a blanket of cobwebs to an outlet by the staircase door. Already hampered by electric buzzing and crepuscular illumination, our concentration had to contend with an intermittent thumping that shook the plaster overhead. That man had installed a sound system and set of weights in the garage. And energized by the beat of seventies disco, the brute was now pumping his already swollen musculature in ignorance of the finer sensibility under his flip flops.

“Order”—the chair is notoriously abrupt—“please!” Standing members cut short their conversations, hurriedly took a bow, and carried their glasses over to the assigned seating. A hush settled over the still creatures of the grotto, though the Bee Gees were staying alive.

“The first ray of light”—Dorothea broke the silence—“which illumines the gloom”—our obedient echo following her cue—“and converts into a dazzling brilliancy, that obscurity”—The chair’s recitation was word perfect, as always—“in which the earlier history of the public career”—The assembly lowered their heads and raised a chant—“of the immortal Pickwick”—a ritual that united bodies present and past. The same incantation opened club meetings for our forebears, summoned a timeless company, and warmed to a Disco Inferno, burning overhead—“would appear to be involved”—We needed no prompt, new recruits having to recite extended passages of the masterwork from memory—“is derived from the perusal of the following entry”—I had shortly to give the annual address but forgot my nerves, lost in the chorus—“in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club”—Her vocal lead continued uninterrupted as the mistress of ceremonies retrieved Sister Cecilia’s fine cognac from the fridge top and dispensed the potion into upheld tumblers—“which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers”—A few years ago, we began to emulate the immortal with regular libation, and attendance halted its slide, though the returning delinquents swore to coincidence—“as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity”—I have to note that on this occasion, careful attention and indefatigable assiduity fell short of uniform display—“and nice discrimination with which his search”—an unmistakable snore coming to the attention— “among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted.”

To take advantage of a gentler descent, Dorothea had urged early arrival on the more senior cohort, Cecilia and her eighty-year-old husband. Junior was now taking a nap on the couch, a further auditory distraction that we tolerate without complaint. Their cocktail cabinet enables the toasts. My forgiveness owes nothing to the fact, of course.

 The Society meets twice a year. As you have surmised, the need for concealment militates against more auspicious venue. A portable heater would have taken the edge off the underground chill, though no shivering soul saw fit to complain. A particularly violent crash overhead dumped flakes of plaster on Sister Jocelyn’s newly styled hair, but she silently brushed off the deposit. You might then wonder, Why the commitment? A hardened Mafia family resists betrayal with a terrible test; the member must murder to belong. Reclusive religious cults are held together by an otherworldly faith; the more strenuous the stretch, the more tenacious the hold. The animating beliefs of our society are no exception to such exacting rule, our claim to a world-famous founding father easy for the outsider to ridicule. You would scour biographies in vain, but that silence is no proof, Dickens covering all tracks. Yes, the world at large knows nothing of the club, as you can vouch for yourself. That ignorance has good cause, the meetings of this chapter of the Pickwick Preservation Society closing with a renewed vow of secrecy. Our tight lid is no small achievement. Rumors circulate, inquisitive young Nick has made conjecture, my ex-wife submitted me to interrogation, and a lingering customer once pointedly winked on sharing her fondness for Pickwick. I deflect all suspicion. You have a special privilege.

No man is perfect. At confession, the sinner has no secrets. I earlier let slip the club’s existence, a storyteller losing all bearings in the isolation tank. Without due reflection, I hinted at an esoteric wisdom. And that blunder now leaves me in a bind. In sharing these proceedings, am I not reneging on the vow? Yet if I say no more you might suppose me a shallow tease, withholding the riches of that knowledge. I have decided to flutter the veil, but with misgiving. You might suspect vain puffery, as if a high school classmate, whose photo goes unremarked in the yearbook, were to corner you at the reunion and prattle of Hollywood celebrity. You might question our illustrious origin. You might doubt whether law-abiding citizens could maintain such an extraordinary double life. I offer a little circumspection. During Prohibition, an unsuspecting pedestrian passed a quiet street door, which a special knock would open onto the riot within. A passenger walking the rainy deck of a cruise ship glances over the side, where a gray monotonous sea conceals the vibrant colors and teeming life of coral reef beneath. Your own world may know its dissimulation. Like Thornfield Hall, a solid family house on your street might cage a lunatic.

—Jane, the memory must sear, please forgive my liberty. A mad woman burned the house down; a passionate admirer has just struck another match?—

The kindly old man who sells hotdogs in the park might be a concentration camp guard; your darling daughter, educated in Catholic school, enjoying an envied career, might plunge late night into a cesspool of anonymous depravity. Your own town might boast a chapter of our society and you would never know. Am I then claiming a worldwide diaspora? My lips are sealed.

 “Brothers and sisters, I have to apologize. I ran out of paper. I will have to ask you to share.” Dorothea sent the clipboard and documents on a tour of the circle, a journey made to musical accompaniment. We are family, I got all my sistas an’ me. My feet were not tapping, really, just experienced an involuntary twitch.

We signed the sheet. Though bound to discretion, I can safely suggest that viewers of a local cooking show might recognize one name on the list. Repeated and unexcused absence can result in termination, as Brother Ellsworth, our former historian, found to his cost, though his disgrace may not have been unrelated to some ill-fated liberties with Dorothea during a period of conjugal stress. Brother Henry got his revenge by taking over both the duties of his misguided rival and credit for the annals. Dim light already strained the eyes, and as a further ordeal, Dorothea insists on printing the business in miniscule font. A puddle had seeped onto the concrete floor of the basement, and so the paperwork clung to the precarious dry land of our laps. Despite the makeshift accommodation, society meetings adhere to strict order, though the governance knows neither formal regulation nor concrete constitution. Unwritten rules bind only the tighter.

The member must be sparing. The memoirist can tell you this much: Like Dark Age monks on the furthest Celtic isle, we shelter the flame passed down the generations; like the Incan priesthood, we affirm our devotion through demanding ritual; like aristocrats of the Hell Fire club, we lose ourselves behind closed doors. But needing neither virgin sacrifice nor orgiastic debauch, the members of the Samuel Pickwick Preservation Society bond by reading aloud from the liturgy, cover to cover, an ordeal of sleep deprivation that on the legendary and fractious year of Anna Karenina lasted over two days and nights.

—Anna Arkadyevna, you are the very name of tragedy; I would never make light. But like an unhappy family, every fellowship is unhappy in its own way.—

 The Society practices a rigorous regime, pledging allegiance to a select library, which titles make our better world, furnish our saints, and outside of which any reading is confessed to our fellows as readily as bible study to the Taliban. Our dedication is hard tested. We are pressured by unknowing forces and beset by temptations of which Lady Marmalade could have no idea. Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir? Pah! My vocation affords an unofficial dispensation, and so when Sister Coralynne caught me in flagrante delicto with Stephen King on an aisle seat of a Los Angeles flight, she never broadcast my guilt, in gratitude of which I moved her illustrated children’s stories to the front of The Last Refuge’s window. Chains fail at the weakest link, and we guard against corrupting influence by admitting new members only by invitation. Brother Benedict, our most recent addition, received Dorothea’s endorsement three years ago, his interrogation lasting long into the night, prompting a recourse to several bottles of single malt and a review of The Scarlet Letter’s place on our top shelf.

—Hester, rest easy, you have no more ardent champion. Like a determined cardinal importuning the Vatican, I begged for your beatitude.—

 We have built our retreat on a rock of shared faith, but unlike the more promiscuous, feel no urge to grow, call to preach, need to compromise; treasured knowledge remains the more secure, the more jealous the custody. Modernity starves for lasting nourishment, and if the word escaped, who knows what mobs of unworthy supplicants would come pounding on the door?! However, just as the poor light rendered the present company indistinct, I must keep you in the dark about their features. And as long as I withhold full names and certain identifying eccentricities, betray no special signs, pass over the fortuitous bookstore conversation that led to my recruitment, make no further mention of a member’s local celebrity, remain silent on a history that spans continents and centuries, I see no harm in cracking open a window.

 “Samuel Pickwick, we salute you.” Standing tall by the water heater, Dorothea made the sign of commencement.

“We salute you.” All members took to their feet, save one.

“Samuel Pickwick, we bless you.” Dorothea raised the chalice.

“Bless you.” The club turned to face his presence.

“To a better world.”

“A better world.” At some risk of discovery, we loosed a cheer. The uproar roused Junior from his slumber. And as the bodybuilder dislodged another plate of plaster, the faithful downed their fortification in one draft, otherwise decorous women finding permission in the bonds of ritual.

“I have to amend the agenda.” Officious Dorothea could not hide her disappointment. “Brother Cordelio may not be able to join us this evening.” A murmur met the news. “He called me on the telephone, and I can attest to a cough. Our esteemed brother suspects walking pneumonia. In any event, his voice is not up to the task.” Cortés allows the first name in the sanctity of the club. And he relaxes his rigid routine twice a year to read from his work in progress, an honor enjoyed by no ordinary reader. The lauded writer and I owe our original acquaintance to the Society, though make no mention of our secret life when communing in the store. Other members visit the refuge, but unwritten rules deter outside interaction.

“Can we move to a vote?” Dorothea removed her reading glasses. “All in favor?” The chair could show more patience. Sister Jocelyn had redacted last year’s minutes in excruciating detail, and I still had a good page to cover. Secretarial duties are assigned by lot, Brother Thomas having the misfortune to draw the short straw in the cavernous gloom.

“Madam Chair, I must register my dissent.” I traced the offending lines with a deliberate finger. The meeting betrayed no consternation, my notice posted in advance.

“Brother Anselm, be so kind—”

“Madam Chair, fellow Pickwickians, we need to set a precedent, record an unequivocal message, for the sake of posterity. I refer to the unfortunate affair of the excommunication. The minutes now before us read, ‘a dispute arose,’ but with no adjudication.”

“Brother Anselm”—Dorothea measured her tone. The softness of delivery little compromised the force, and I could draw no encouragement—“I remember the unfortunate affair only too clearly. The former member resigned before the meeting considered any motion.”

“Madam Chair, your observation is technically correct. But with respect, I also remember that the meeting shared my point of view, after the fact.”

I must confirm your suspicion. Even the most august of bodies, drawing on uncommon reverence for literature and offering the rock of shared faith in a better world, provides no shelter from the ill winds of personal animosity. The former member never accepted the legitimacy of my membership. But like other irreconcilable conflicts, the origins of the feud have long faded into oblivion. Our meetings provide a moveable feast, as Cecilia’s arthritis flares up in wintry weather, and I had volunteered the store for the occasion. The Society appreciates the necessities of my trade, but the former member was impervious to reason. Like knights of old, the Pickwickians prove our devotion through stringent self-regulation, submitting to lifelong proscription of the tawdry pleasures of science fiction and horror, the routine recipes of romance, and the detective novel.

—Sherlock, don’t swallow that pipe. I only said routine. Our society has some sympathy for the sleuth who set the stage.—

 Yes, I accept that categories lend themselves to interpretation, lines may blur. But some cases leave no doubt. And so when the former member found Danielle Steele hiding in the shelves and proceeded to mockingly read aloud during my treasurer’s report, the challenge allowed no standard response. The Samuel Pickwick Preservation Society, nearly razed to the ground in the Henry and Ellsworth conflagration, could no longer accommodate our joint membership. I am still troubled by the calm with which the former member strode out the door, by the last remark he flung, I haven’t lost this one, my friend. Who knows to what betrayal the villain might stoop, what calumny spread? Worse, suppose the traitor has formed a breakaway sect, a Pelagian Heresy, leading wavering members down the road to perdition, compromising the one true church. We could never know. Crazy talk, you say? I ignore the impudence, though wish you were right.

 “Next item”—Dorothea squinted at the agenda—“this year’s reading. Brother Lamar, will you make your case?” The meeting had overruled my request for a more favorable statement, so I could only record a protest.

“Madam Chair, I thank you”—Brother Lamar rose to his feet, the Society allowing no informality of address—“from the bottom of my heart, for the kind words.” Our brother has some hearing! His oration rose to full voice until Dorothea tamped the volume with a warning palm. “God bless you, ma’am, and all who sit before you.” Lamar likes to talk. Despite the Freak Out! of musical encouragement, members resignedly settled in for the hearing.

“Brother Lamar was unusually reticent about his proposal. The brevity of announcement on the agenda was his doing.”

“Madam Chair speaks the truth. I have it with me now.” Lamar comes equipped with a black attaché case, which now perched on the tenuous ledge of his vacated chair. “Let no brother or sister entertain suspicions of precipitation. No one is more cognizant of our exacting standards than Brother Lamar, no one. I am honored to count myself a member of the Preservation Society, I hold every man and woman before me in the highest respect, and I hear your reservations, I hear your reservations.” Knowing nothing, we had yet to vent the merest squeak, but the orator had just begun. I must conceal biographical details, though were you to hazard his occasional ministry at the United Tabernacle Church of Judah, in a neighboring city, I would not squelch the speculation. Brothers Lamar and Thomas became members in succession; the club sees only the local color of literature. “Baseball aficionados among us still lament the expansion of the major leagues, an unforgivable dilution of talent from which the American pastime has yet to recover. What’s done cannot be undone, as Lamar knows only too well. Yes, I too have sinned, good people, I too have sinned.”

“Brother Lamar, in the interests of closing before midnight, could you please just name the work?”

“Madam Chair, Lamar understands the gravity. The admirable Winston Churchill proclaimed, after the outnumbered Spitfires of his glorious Royal Air Force had beaten back the Luftwaffe swarm, that never in the course of human history had so much been owed by so many to so few. I was stationed in England, that noble isle of freedom, and followed dogfights in the blue skies over my head with eyes of consternation. I was just a pup, but knew right from wrong and had volunteered, putting my mortal soul at risk, to rid the world once and for all of the evils of Nazi Germany. And I was rarin’ to go, would have landed on the beaches on D-Day, were it not for the debilitation I sustained in a military exercise—”

“My brother, you was a cook.” Tommie and Lamar go back. Armed with nothing but pen and pad, our scribe was facing his own bombardment.

“So many to so few. By the same token, the many strengths of our society vary in inverse proportion to the works we treasure. I have studied Brother Henry’s careful research, the list is engraved on the tablet of my soul. Our sacred books are few in number, and I appreciate the necessity. The proof sits here before me, in the continuing vitality of our remarkable association. Change for its own sake is human frailty that we must fight at all costs.” Patting the leather case, he solemnly lowered his head. “Good people, I feel the weight of history—”

“Brother Lamar, please, can we move it along. Just tell us the work.”

“Over a year has passed since our last decision. Members present will recall the painstaking deliberation, the heat of debate, the agony of conflict. We knew full well the stakes; no mere addition, but revision of very first principles—”

“And I still take that decision personally. I love Candide like one of my children, the Enlightenment on holiday.” Childless Jocelyn is a retired teacher. She is fond of a revealing tank top, and the darkness could little deny an axillary abundance. “I disagreed with the decision then, and I disagree with it now.” The radical caucuses with our minority expansionist faction. “We risk irrelevance if we cut off the life blood of essential reading.”

—Candide, vous avez déjà suffert sans fin. So it pains me to add to the load. For I bring you bad tidings. At our last conference, a committee impugned the virtue of your story, questioning the development of your character.—

 “And we risk dissolution if we kowtow to popular taste.” Henry is our only self-confessed Republican. “We define ourselves in isolation from the herd.”

“I must call the meeting to order, again.” Dorothea all but had to hiss. “We made our decision, the matter is closed. Now, Brother Lamar, if you would tell us of your proposal, we might avoid another outburst.”

“If I could just offer a little disclaimer.”

“Absolutely not. For the last time!” The chair was rocking. The Society possesses a gilt-framed oil painting of our rotund captain and his gentlemanly cohort, stiffly spruced in bygone tailoring. The precious portrait now hung incongruously on the unfinished basement wall. His oversight curbs unruly inclination, and Dorothea’s pointed glance invoked that rein.

—Jovial Pickwick, your good humor is second to none. You will surely forgive a little levity.—

 “Brother Lamar! Which work?”

“Very well, ma’am. You will have it, Lord of the Rings.” The words dropped like a guillotine. The audience shifted to the squeak of a metal chair. “I say it loud, I say it clear. Lord of the Rings! Brother Anselm will shortly shed light on the truth of Samuel Pickwick and extended company, and I propose that we welcome Bilbo Baggins into that fold.” Lamar’s concentrated beam circled the table, proof in rapture of the startling pronouncement.

—Baggins, your turn has come. I will content myself with this greeting. Another admirer has plenty to say on your behalf.—

 “Capital suggestion, young man.” Junior had just woken. “Grand slam.” Junior and Lamar share a vintage and love of the game. But poor light could not conceal the more prevalent unrest. Jocelyn stared at the floor, as if finding that our foundations were fashioned of sand. Other eyes strayed to Lamar’s empty glass, in search of extenuation. My graph, too, registered the seismic shock, but I will confess also to a certain relief. On Sunday, Lamar reads from King James, to an expectant congregation. Less formally attired, he can leave the pulpit behind.

“Brother Lamar, your proposal is duly noted.” Dorothea stepped into the breach. “I pass no judgment. Protocol, unfortunately, requires that you attest to the lasting moral influence Mr. Baggins has exercised over your own character and conduct. I will permit no further digression.”

“My pleasure, Madam Chair, my pleasure. Members of the Samuel Pickwick Preservation Society, my eyes behold a vision of love, but I also see a question on those faces, I feel a trouble in your souls. Is Brother Lamar playing a trick, you ask, has he lost his mind? No, good people, I have never felt stronger of conviction. But I stand before you with a cry for help. I have come to beg, I repeat to beg, for your compassion. I have in my possession a source of grave distress, the root of tribulation.” Lamar laid a tender hand on the attaché case. “Lord of the Rings. Yes, the book is popular, but you must not harden your hearts. Bilbo’s popularity rages without check, a millstone around his neck, a curse upon his name.” Lamar held forth without restraint. The music overhead had ceased along with the nerve-racking thumps, to the indication of a deserted gym, and abandoned competition. “They have graven his image onto candy bars, Corn Flakes boxes, Happy Meals. They have spread false tidings on video screen, I have witnessed the torment with my eyes, my own grandchildren play the game. Members of the Pickwick Preservation Society, we must come to his rescue, offer him sanctuary—”

“My brother, they my gran’kids. Your chicks flown the coop.” Tommie fails to fully credit his friend’s generosity of spirit. Like Socrates, Lamar considers the whole world family.

“Madam Chair, you would have me speak to his moral influence, an obligation which I will discharge with gratitude. For that influence has no parallel, I owe him too much to express in these brief inadequate words. The good Bilbo never asked for his fame, he suffers the gravest injustice through no fault of his own. The world does not care, the world takes advantage, the world offers him no peace. And that treatment has taught your humble brother a most cherished lesson. Brother Lamar worries not what the world thinks, he cannot control his fate. Brother Lamar can only be true to himself. And for that wisdom, Bilbo Baggins, I thank you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”