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Written Circa 1947
- Unfinished
The Schoenberg Chalice
By Charles R. Tanner
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To the doctors and psychiatrists who have charge of my
friend, Geoffrey Caldwell, there is nothing mysterious about
his case at all. Geoffrey Caldwell is a schizophrenic, and
his case is a rather simple one of double identity. More
than half the time, he lives as a rather vague and saddened
counterpart of his original self, but occasionally a violent
and brutish second self takes over and rules him for several
days, leaving him drained and weakened by its excesses of
physical violence, dazed and subdued into a veritable
lethargy, from which he slowly and never entirely returns to
his former identity.
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The case seems common enough; doctors do not study him
with care and interest they would give to a rarer and more
interesting from of his malady, so Caldwell remains in the
mental hospital where he has been incarcerated and slowly
weakens, physically and mentally. I do not expect him to
live many more years.
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To me, though, Caldwell presents a mystery that
borders on the terrible. I have evidence which, if it could
be taken as more than the vagaries of a deteriorating mind,
presents a picture of things so vast and mind shaking in its
implications that it presents a whole new picture of
reality. I do not think that Geoffrey Caldwell is insane at
all. I am not sure that any schizophrenic is insane. I
think…
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No, I might as well be frank in this statement. I do
not know what I think. I fear, rather than think. I fear
that the human soul and its relation to the body is
something entirely different from what religion and the
philosophies have taught us. And, yet, the evidence of my
belief is so vague that no respectable scientist would
consider for the moment.
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Caldwell has been my friend now for almost twenty
years. We were first attracted to each other in high
school, drawn by mutual interest in the marvels of the world
around us. We studied and discussed the elementary
paleontology and astronomy that we were taught, decided that
we believed in evolution and Einstein, speculated on
telepathy and reincarnation, and in general behaved like the
average high school boy with a little more than average
intelligence. Only… with us, it kept on.
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Al through college, and even afterward our frequent
bull sessions continued. Often others were included in our
talks; for a while, we had a small group at college that met
regularly once a week. We solved all the world’s problems,
of course; we had our period when Marx was our god, and for
a while, Geoffrey professed to be an atheist. We studied
theosophy and yoga, not deeply, but with a wild sort of
enthusiasm that dissipated itself in a few months, and then,
slowly, we grew up and directed our attentions more and more
to our studies.
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I was working for a degree in Chemistry, Geoffrey, who
was the son of a rather prominent artist, was taking a
liberal arts course, with the ultimate intention of becoming
an art dealer. So it was that as we drew nearer and nearer
to our graduations, our paths gradually separated. By the
time we were ready to leave college, we saw each other, but
seldom, though after each meeting, we swore that we must
get together more often.
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After graduation, I went to Chicago to take a job in a
great laboratory, and Geoffrey returned to his home in
Burton. A few months later, I got a letter from him,
detailing the news of our home town and telling me quite a
few of the details of his progress in his chosen profession.
I answered it and this began a curious correspondence that
lasted for over ten years.
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There was nothing in Geoffrey’s letters that one would
imagine would interest a prosaic chemist; there was nothing
in mine that one would expect to interest an art dealer, but
perhaps we both had a twist of writing that enabled us to
put a spell of interest into what we wrote. At any rate, as
I say, our correspondence continued for over ten years, and
whenever Geoffrey was in Chicago, he never failed to call on
me; and whenever I returned home, I always spent an
afternoon with Geoffrey.
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After the war, Geoffrey made frequent trips to
Europe. That stricken continent was an art dealer’s
paradise in those days, for impoverished noblemen by the
hundred were disposing of rare old family heirlooms to
enable them to continue living in the style to which they
had been accustomed. Exquisite works of art that would not
have been obtainable before the war for love or money were
now going at very reasonable prices, and Geoffrey would have
been a fool not to take advantage of the opportunities which
his competitors were scrambling madly for.
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His correspondence continued as regularly as if he
were still in Burton. I got a number of letters from him in
1946 and 1947 and sent as many in reply. And then, in
October of the latter year, I got the letter which brings me
to the real beginning of my story.
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Dear Chad: (the letter ran) I got your missive last
Tuesday and found your speculations on the synthesis of the
amino acids remarkably lucid and interesting. But if you
are expecting congratulations and the usual amenities, I beg
of you to forget about them now, for, Chad, I am simply
bursting with news. I, my friend, have just purchased the
famous Schoenberg Chalice! I suppose you have heard of it,
but in case you haven’t, it’s that famous silver chalice
owned by the German Baron von Schoenberg, the one that’s
supposed to have the curse on it.
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It’s commonly supposed to have been made by Cellini,
but experts say that it’s far older than that and from my
own knowledge I don’t hesitate to believe that they are
right. Since it has come into my possession I have had a
chance to study it pretty carefully and it’s my opinion that
it was carved at least as far back as the days of the Roman
Emperors.
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I can’t help congratulating myself over and over for
being the fortunate purchaser. I just happened to be in
Bonn at the time the owner decided to sell, and his asking
price was so ridiculously small that I gave it to him
without any haggling at all. The poor fellow had a daughter
who had recently been committed to a mental hospital,
suffering with dementia praecox, and he was all broken up
about it. Apparently he needed money to give her the proper
care and I was able to profit by his misfortune.
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