words they use to describe the opposite of their bonus-plebeian, ‘common,’ ‘base.’ Even in English- debased means ‘made common.’” He warmed to the subject, English words spilling out past his thick German tongue. “And in Greece the rulers of Megara used esthlos to describe themselves-‘the true,’ the real, as opposed to the ordinary, which for them did not have a real existence.” He laughed. “To believe that you are the only real thing. That is an ego speaking! That is a ruler — very much like the Brahmins, who believe their egos are immortal but that all other reality is illusion…”
He paused, words frozen in his mouth, as he saw the identical, quizzical expression in the faces of both Ringo and Josie. They must think I’m crazy, he thought. He took a sip of soda water to relieve his nervousness. “Well,” he said, “that is some philological thought for you.”
“Don’t stop,” said Josie. “This is the most interesting thing I’ve heard all night.”
Freddie only shook his head.
And suddenly there was gunfire, Freddie’s nerves leaping with each thunderclap as he ducked beneath the level of the bar, his hand reaching for the pistol that, of course, he had left in his little room.
Ceiling lathes came spilling down, and there was a burst of coarse laughter. Freddie saw Curly Bill Brocius standing amid a gray cloud of gunsmoke. Unlike Freddie, Brocius had disregarded the town ordinance forbidding firearms in saloons or other public places, and in an excess of bonhomie had fanned his modified revolver at the ceiling.
Freddie slowly rose to his feet. His heart lurched in his chest, and a kind of sickness rose in his throat. He had to hold on to the bar for support.
Josie sat perfectly erect on the mahogany surface, face flushed, eyes wide and glittering, lips parted in frozen surprise. Then she shook her head and slipped to the floor amid a silken waterfall of skirts. She looked up at Freddie, then gave a sudden gay laugh. “These men of strife, these boni, ” she said, “are getting a little too good for my taste. Will you take me home, sir?”
“I-” Freddie felt heat rise beneath his collar. Gunsmoke stung his nostrils. “But Mr. Behan-?”
She cast a look over her shoulder at the new sheriff. “He won’t want to leave his friends,” she said. “And besides, I’d prefer an escort who’s sober.”
Freddie looked at Ringo for help, but Ringo was too drunk to walk ten feet without falling, and Freddie knew his abstemious habits had him trapped.
“Yes, miss,” he said. “We shall walk, then.”
He led Josie from the roistering crowd and walked with her down dusty Allen Street. Her arm in his felt very strange, like a half-forgotten memory. He wondered how long it had been since he had a woman on his arm-seven or eight years, probably, and the woman his sister.
In the darkness he sensed her looking up at him. “What’s your last name, Freddie?” she asked.
“Nietzsche.”
“Gesundheit!” she cried.
Freddie smiled in silence. She was not the first American to have made that joke.
“Don’t you drink, Freddie?” Josie asked. “Is it against your principles?”
“It makes me ill,” Freddie said. “I have to watch my diet, also.”
“Johnny said you came West for your health.”
It was phrased like a statement, but Freddie knew it was a question. He did not mind the intrusion: he had no secrets. “I volunteered for the war,” he said, and at her look, clarified, “the war with France. I caught diphtheria and some kind of dysentery-typhus or cholera. I did not make a good recovery, and I could not work.” He did not mention the other problems, the nervous complaints, the sudden attacks of migraine, the cold, sick dread of dying as his father had died, mad and screaming.
“We turn here,” Josie said. They turned left on Fifth Street. On the far side of the street was the Oriental Saloon, where Wyatt Earp earned his living dealing faro. Freddie glanced at the windows, saw Earp himself bathed in yellow light, standing, smoking a cigar and engaged in conversation with Holliday. To judge by his look, the topic was a grim one.
“Look!” Freddie said in sudden scorn. “In that black coat of his, Earp looks like the Angel of Death come to claim his consumptive friend.”
The light of the saloon gleamed on Josie’s smile. “Wyatt Earp’s a handsome man, don’t you think?”
“I think he is too gloomy.”
She turned to him. “ You’re the gloomy one.”
He nodded as they paced along. “Yes,” he admitted. “That is just.”
“You are a sneeze,” she said. “He is a belch.”
Freddie smiled to himself as they crossed Fremont Street. “I will tell him this, when I see him next.”
“Tell me about the Superman.”
Freddie shook his head. “Not now.”
“But you will tell me some other time?”
“If you wish.” Politely, doubting he would speak a word to her after this night.
“Here’s our house.” It was a small place that she shared with Behan, its frame unpainted, and like the rest of the town, thrown up overnight.
“I will bid you good night then,” he said formally.
She turned to face him, lifted her face toward his. “You can come in, if you like,” she said. “Johnny won’t be back for hours.”
He looked into her eyes and saw Troy there, on fire in the night.
“Good night, miss,” he said, and touching his hat he turned away.
She is a Jewess! Freddie wrote in his journal. Run away from her family of good German bourgeois Jews-no doubt of the most insufferable type-to become, here in Tombstone, a goddess among the barbarians.
Or so Brocius tells us. He says her name is Josephine Marcus, sometimes called Sadie.
I believe I understand this Helen now. She has sprung from the strangest people in all history, they who have endured a thousand persecutions, and so become wise-cunning. The world has tried with great energy to make the Jews base, by confining them to occupations that the world despises, and by depriving them of any hope of honor. Yet they themselves have never ceased to believe in their own high calling; and they are honored by the dignity with which they face their tormentors.
And how should we think them base? From the Jews sprang the most powerful book in history, the most effective moral law, Spinoza the most sublime philosopher, and Christ the last Christian. When Europe was sunk in barbarism, it was the Jewish philosophers who preserved for us the genius of the ancients.
Yet all people must have their self-respect, and self-respect demands that one repay both good and bad. Without the ability to occasionally revenge themselves upon their despisers, they could scarcely have held up their heads. The usury of which the Jews are accused is the least of it; it was the subtle, twisted, deceitful Jewish revolution in morals that truly destroyed the ancients-that took the natural, healthy joy of freedom, life, and power, that twisted and inverted that joy, that planted this fatal sickness among their enemies. Thus was the Jewish vengeance upon Rome.
And this is the tradition that our Helen has inherited. Her very existence here is a vengeance upon all that have tormented her people from the beginning of time. She is beautiful, she is gay…and what does she care if Troy burns? Or Rome? Or Tombstone?
When next Freddie encountered Josie, he was vomiting in the dust of Toughnut Street.
He had felt the migraine coming on earlier, but he was playing against a table of drunken stockmen who were celebrating the sale of their beeves and who were losing their money almost as fast as they could shove it across the table. Freddie was determined to fight on as long as the cards fell his way.
By the time he left the Occidental he was nearly blind with pain. The clink of the winnings in his pocket sounded in his ears like bronze bells. The Arizona sun flamed on his skull. He staggered two blocks-people turned their eyes from him, as if he were drunk-and then collapsed as the cramp seized his stomach. People hurried away from him as he emptied the contents of his stomach into the dust. The spasms racked him long after he had nothing left to vomit.
Freddie heard footsteps, then felt the firm touch of a hand on his arm. “Freddie? Shall I get a doctor?”
