Sherlock Holmes and The Curious Question of Peter Knife, Blackfoot Tracker
Illustration of canon Holmes, and Chief Mountain, Blackfoot
Summary:
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson engage in an epic after-breakfast conversation in the 221B drawing-room, that threatens to make John Watson's eyebrows rise higher than they normally do while reading Bocaccio's 'Decameron' during the tales of the second day.
Work Text:
After my friend Holmes had his adventures in Tibet during that Great Hiatus, and after his defeat of Moriarty, he often subscribed to such outlandish notions of identity that I would have to take pause in my studies and writings to digest these odd new workings of his inner mind. This, as we all know, was never at rest.
Today, he insisted that he not only believed in reincarnation, but that he could positively recall who he was in his previous life. He maintained that he was no respectable doctor or hunter upon the Downs of Her Majesty’s Britain, but a Red Indian, of all things. Not only did he openly and passionately subscribe to notions outside Christianity, but well outside the realm of Science, and I was laughing, about to gently chide him in this manner.
“I was not the man you see before you,” said Holmes, pacing the drawing-room of Baker Street like a great panther in a zoo enclosure. “I was a red Indian man of the Western Blackfoot tribe. But not just any man,” he went on proudly. “I was a tracker.” His chest puffed out and he smiled, his briar pipe chuffing merrily. “My name was Peter Knife. And aside from the very long hair which I wore in a magnificent braid down the center of my back, I looked almost exactly like the man standing before you now.”
I laughed heartily, but he gave me a look of such doleful intensity that I had to clear my throat and engage him to carry on, which he did with gusto. “I could tell if the lightest deer had passed through the bracken up to a month previously.” he said. “By the position of the leaves on the ground, the small ticks upon the branches, the smell of the American lynx that had marked the adjacent tree.” My eyebrows rose in surprise at such incredible detail. “I was so good at what I did that I was able to hunt for two teepees, and uphold two wives!”
I was so shocked at this exhortation that I very nearly lost control of my own pipe, and gazed upon him with the kind of incredulity reserved for an uncanny madman. I knew that Holmes was odd, but not mad; however his blithe acceptance of married existence was not only a shock, but to admit that he practiced bigamy in a previous life, after knowing his monklike qualities for nearly a decade here in London, I have to say that I laughed again twice as hard- and this time for at least a full minute. This was a side of Holmes I had never witnessed before, and as I settled down to a teary-eyed chortle, he looked at me from the corners of his eyes thoughtfully, with his arms casually crossed, eyebrows raised, and waited for me to finish with the ghost of a smile upon his keen features and thin lips.
I could not remain silent while listening to this incredible and seriously delivered insistence by my friend any longer. “Two wives.” I remarked breathlessly. “Two wives! So you were both a savage and bigamist! Tell me, why do I see none of this side of you now?” I chided him.
“I was not a savage, Watson.” he chuffed, somewhat incensed at the notion. “I wore my beautiful deerskins and my magnificent beaded breastplate with as much cleanliness and pride as I do my waistcoat. I simply used bear fat rendered with sage to coif my lovely braid instead of lime pomade as I do now.” He raised his chin proudly. “And two wives in a previous life is why you do not see me with one now. Have you any idea how difficult it is to uphold two households and the nightly duties of a husband to two families and two insatiably fecund women?”
I nearly choked on my pipe a second time and erupted heartily a third time, for each time I heard Holmes say such things as I had never before heard from the man, I would laugh harder. Holmes knew that my preference for fairylike petiteness and blonde beauty in women was nearly legendary, so to hear such amazing words from this man indicating his very preference in women was nearly more than I could stand with a sober demeanour. For not even I, after a decade, could suspect that he had any preference in women at all. This tale had the hopes of becoming more lurid than Boccacio’s Decameron, which in coming fully and soberly from my very sincere friend in all earnestness, would create a legendary exchange such that the joyful memories of old age would constantly refresh and brighten my eyes until my death.
Fortunately, I was most certainly not disappointed. “Fecund!” I nearly shouted with laughter. “So you are telling me that you liked women, practiced bigamy, and preferred them plump. Is that,” I laughed, “what you are telling me!”
“Quite.” said Holmes. “Certainly, isn’t a plump woman going to remain warm during the frightful winters of the Plains and mountains of western America?” he asked. “Wouldn’t a child remain warm in her belly? Yes, I was the sleek cat of the forest, but proud, thick women who moved as gracefully as the great buffalo and with chests the breadth of their flanks, would make my heart nearly skip a beat at the thought of their encompassing warmth and comfort.” His bright eyes regarded me again, staring at him in shock, and this time he smiled broadly. “You have yet to experience such joys in your preference for dollies in lace. But I assure you from the bottom of my Bohemian soul that the great and noble savage knows where real comfort is to be found, although I might have been too keen in seeking to repeat the experience twice.” This time, my chortling remained at an incredulous constant, the Times long having been folded and slapped on my knee several times in my exultations of laughter.
Holmes’ face became serious, however, and he gained a faraway look in his deep gray eyes that gave his gaze a wistful countenance. “I remember how they cried when I died of the white man’s disease.” His lecture took a sober turn. “It was a strange funeral.” He went on. “I was wrapped tightly like they do their babies, lovingly plaited by both aging lovelies and my five children, in tightly woven grass and vine from neck to feet as if my body were the beloved treasure of a grandmother’s basket. I watched my own burial and took such comfort in the loving cries of my entire tribe.” His tone was faraway and it sang in a high and sustained note such that I nearly imagined the scents of cedar smoke and sage, and imagined his great thin body stretched out upon a shallow platform aloft a great grassy hill among many relatives similarly fed to the carrion birds in such strange grandeur.
Holmes breathed deeply and looked away from gazing out the window. “Mighty England hasn’t the depth of character for such compassion. The understandings of right and wrong of the free savages may seem uncharacteristically simple for such an exultatious mind as my own, and I may represent all those pedantic virtues over which Britain’s international infamy among nations holds sway,” sighed Holmes in an acidic tone, “but my simplistic morality and notion of decency is what gives me power as a man, Watson. All else is detail in knowledge for which my mind utterly hungers, but shades of gray in morality, most certainly not.” He went back to gazing down at the mad to and fro of Baker Street outside the window.
“Yes, Holmes, but two plump wives.” I laughed, citing our well worn and respectable British codes of monogamy which insisted that women be tackled one at a time at the very most. "You yourself embody so many moral shades of gray if the definitions of our world are anything to go by."
“Certainly not. My situation was not immoral if they both agreed to the arrangement. They most definitely didn’t want me in their hair all the time during the freezing months, trying to make conversation out of such wintry boredom. I was always a nightmare while bored, when not attempting to pull her under a pile of buffalo skins to pass the time. So you see me now, not bothering with the attempt this time around.”
I could not resist the opportunity to tease him just this little bit. “But surely, Holmes, you must crave such company at the loneliest of times. Surely. Even for a fecund, Bohemian woman?” the smile played at my face.
“Indeed.” admitted Holmes. My eyebrows raised into my very hairline at such open admission. “But I have this work to uphold, to the chagrin of my empty bed. The shallow jibings of so many men such as yourself in preference for all the social norms I naturally despise, is too much for a sincere and earnest heart to endure. I uphold my savage morality in all earnestness in exchange, and allow what the world thinks is my cold and mechanical heart to dream for me, when I know the world isn’t looking.”
This baffling statement left me silent.
He looked over at me with a fire lighting his eyes. “…And my morality is as simple, and as savage, as it gets.” he went back to the mixture in his pipe, huffing it as deeply in quiet countenance and hawklike profile as I ever saw him do, and for that moment, his rod-straight figure was as peaceful and majestic in the thin, silvery winter light of England as those great mountains in western America.
Sir Doyle, left, and Spopee, Blackfoot, right
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