The Best of Gerald Kersh (30 page)

I made certain unmistakable motions with my fingers. The Englishman said: ‘He wants to write something.’

They gave me pencil and paper, and I wrote:
Please
give
me
a
pistol
and
allow
me
to
kill
myself.

But they did not. Couriers were dispatched to
Wellington
with the intelligence which I had believed I had delivered to Napoleon. A doctor came to set my jaw, and later, locked in a bedroom, guarded by a grizzled old English trooper, I lay and listened to the rain on the shutters; and soon I heard the guns of Waterloo, and oh, but I wept bitterly! I had not the strength to lift my hand to wipe my eyes. The trooper came and wiped them for me: he had no handkerchief, so he offered me his cuff, saying: ‘Easy does it, mounseer – steady on, froggie. You’ll be a man before your mother yet….’ But he, also, was listening to the guns….

I need not tell you what happened. Blücher was delayed, indeed. The English cavalry was cut to pieces, and we had the balance of artillery in our favour. It remained only to break that infernal English infantry, and the battle was in our hands. Napoleon knew this, and therefore he ordered that terrible charge of cuirassiers at the plateau of Mont St Jean. The guide Lacoste – in other words the spy de Wissembourg – was at his elbow at the very moment when he gave that order. Lacoste, as he is called, omitted to mention the ‘hollow road’ of
Ohain. There is no stopping a full charge of armoured cavalry, as you know. Before they could begin to pull up, two thousand cuirassiers were in the ditch of Ohain; the remainder were flying in disorder under volley upon volley of musket-fire; demoralisation had set in; the English had re-formed and were attacking; and that was the end of us. Napoleon fled.

So, brother, France fell: I blame myself for that.

*

Tessier sighed, and lit a fresh cigar. Ratapoil said: ‘Come now, old moustache – how can you talk like that? There are more causes than one to any conclusion. You might, for example, also say that Cornelys the
blacksmith
won the battle of Waterloo because, making eyes at the inn-keeper’s wife, he lamed your mare. No one is to blame … though, had I been you——’

‘Don’t say it,’ said Tessier. ‘You asked me to tell you how I lost my teeth, and I have told you. And now, with your kind permission, I will go to bed.’

‘I
F
it could only be like this for ever!’ said the quiet girl called Linda, looking over Jimmy’s shoulder at the dim grey face of the clock. ‘Oh, Jimmy, this is heaven! How happy I am! What can I have done, to deserve such happiness?’

She felt Jimmy smiling. ‘Are you happy too?’ she asked Jimmy. He nodded, observing the reflection of the clock face in the long mirror on the wardrobe door. He had been grimacing.

Last
year,
he thought chafing and trying not to fidget,
I
made
a
hundred
and
four
thousand
five
hundred
pounds.
All
that
money
in
three
hundred
and
sixty-five
days.
It
works
out
at
…
what?
…
Twelve-pound-
ten
an
hour.
I
have
given
this
girl
twenty-five
pounds’
worth
of
my
time,
at
that
rate.
Four
shillings
and
two
pence
a
minute
–
nearly
a
penny
a
second.
I’ve
thrown
away
twenty-five
pounds,
being
gracious
to
Linda
for
two
hours.
And
she
talks
of
this
going
on
for
ever – for
ever,
at
a
penny
a
second!
There
isn’t
that
much
money
in
the
world!

Linda, with a luminous glory behind her somewhat faded face, closed her eyes and, resting her chin upon his shoulder and caressing his cheek with her forehead, said: ‘How sweet, Jimmy! How sweet! How can I ever tell you how grateful I am to you for making me so happy? Ah, my dear darling – now, just now, do you know what?
I’m so full of love and happiness that another tiny bit would be too much … I’d die. But this is Heaven: I’ll never want any Heaven but this – to be here, with you, exactly like this, loving you as I do and knowing that you love me. You do love me?’

Jimmy was inclined to say: ‘Oh, nonsense! Love? Ha! You? Bah! What,
me
? Love
you
? Who are you? A laundress. I am Jimmy – you know who I am – Jimmy the Star. I could have world-famous actresses, take my choice of the beauties of five continents. The world is mine, and all the women in it. Titled women, even.
Because
a whim takes hold of me, and I beckon to a poor pale creature in a clutching crowd of infatuated fans – because I, like a god, confer upon you the glory of my intimacy for a moment you talk of love? Love? My love? For you? At four-and-twopence a second, do you realise what a lingering look is worth?’

But he said: ‘Of course I love you,’ and he looked at the reversed reflection of the clock that told the time.

‘All my life,’ said Linda, ‘all my life I’ve dreamt of such a moment. Don’t laugh – I felt somehow that it
might
happen to me. I never dared to say to anybody that I had a dream of love. They would have laughed; I’m so plain and ordinary, Oh, dear God, but I love you, Jimmy! You’re too good for me!’

In spite of his seething distaste, Jimmy muttered: ‘Nothing of the sort. Charming girl!’

‘Ah, my own dear love! My dream-come-true! Do you know what? I believe you if you say so. I believe! I believe! I believe in you. This morning I was washing sheets, and you were only a picture, a splendid vision. And now I’m here, with you, in your arms, hearing you telling me you love me. There
is
a God! Where is yesterday?
Where is the grey when the sunlight bleaches it away?
Why
do you love me?’

‘Sweet,’ said Jimmy, with his eye on the time. The movement of the big hand was worth thirty-four shillings an inch.

He was in an ecstasy of boredom and visitation.
Oh,
to
be
rid
of
this
ridiculously
happy
woman!
he thought.
Why
did
I
do
it?
Why?
Why?

‘Tell me why you love me,’ she said. ‘No, never mind. Just say it again.’

What was Jimmy to say? If he could have said: ‘I only said so to please you. It tickled my vanity to beckon you out of the mob around the stage door. You helped me to condescend, you made me feel greater’ – then he would have been talking like an honest man. If he had had the courage to say: ‘You were such a whole-hearted worshipper that I wanted to be a god,’ then he would not have been where he was at that moment. If he could have told the truth he would have been an honest man – not a man in anguish, caressing a woman with his hand while he gritted his teeth and watched the clock.

But he said: ‘Of course I love you!’

There was a silence: it seemed to cling to his ears for a lifetime. Then it came away with a sort of thick sucking noise, and he heard the sharp tick of the round white clock. His face looked drawn in the darkening mirror. He had a desperate yearning to speak a little truth.

‘And you promise to stay with me always?’ Linda asked.

He had meant to say ‘No,’ but heard himself
muttering
: ‘Mm.’

‘Jimmy! Hold me!’

Although he had intended to get up and go away,
Jimmy found himself embracing Linda and looking into her eyes.

‘Always?’ she whispered.

He answered: ‘Always.’ Candour stuck in his throat.

‘Oh, Jimmy, if this could go on for ever!’

Unutterably weary, he muttered: ‘Uh-uh; sure!’ He was sick, sick to the heart, of pent-up truth.

‘Did you say “sure”? Do you mean it?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you say you mean it, I know you mean it,’ said Linda. ‘Dearest, there
is
a God. There
is
a Heaven!’

‘Oh yes, yes. Sure, sure,’ said Jimmy, with a half-laugh. ‘This
is
Heaven, isn’t it?’

He shifted, meaning to pull himself away from her. Something happened; he moved in the wrong direction. Linda was in his arms.

‘It is! It is!’ she whispered.

He sneered. ‘And hell? Where’s hell?’

Something comparable to a bladder, a grey strained veinous membrane, seemed to burst in a splash of pure, cold light. Out of the indefinable centre of this light a grave, clear voice said: ‘Think!’

Jimmy looked at the clock. Its hands still marked seven minutes to four of a drizzling February afternoon.

He remembered that there had been a judgement, a hundred thousand years ago. Linda, on his shoulder, had achieved paradise; and he was damned. And for all eternity the clock had stopped.

T
HE
fact that the intensely red colour of the glaze on the Oxoxoco Bottle is due to the presence in the clay of certain uranium salts is of no importance. A similar coloration may be found in Bohemian and Venetian glass, for example. No, the archæologists at the British Museum are baffled by the shape of the thing. They cannot agree about the nature or the purpose.

Dr Raisin, for example, says that it was not designed as a bottle at all, but rather as a musical instrument: a curious combination of the ocarina and the syrinx, because it has three delicately curved slender necks, and immediately below the middle neck, which is the longest, there is something like a finger-hole. But in the opinion of Sir Cecil Sampson, who is a leading authority on ancient musical instruments, the Oxoxoco Bottle was never constructed to throw back sounds. Professor Miller, however, inclines to the belief that the Oxoxoco Bottle is a kind of tobacco pipe: the two shorter necks curve upwards while the longer neck curves downwards to fit mouth and nostrils. Professor Miller indicates that smouldering herbs were dropped in at the ‘finger-hole’ and that the user of the bottle must have inhaled the smoke through all his respiratory passages.

I have reason to believe that Professor Miller has guessed closest to the truth although, if the document in my possession is genuine, it was not tobacco that they burned in the squid-shaped body of the bottle.

It was intact, except for a few chips, when I bought it from a mestizo pedlar in Cuernavaca in 1948. ‘Genuine,’
he said; and this seemed to be the only English word he knew: ‘genuine, genuine.’ He pointed towards the mountains and conveyed to me by writhings and
convulsions
, pointing to earth and sky, that he had picked the bottle up after an earthquake. At last I gave him five pesos for it, and forgot about it until I found it several years later while I was idling over a mass of dusty souvenirs: sombreros, huaraches, a stuffed baby alligator, and other trifles, such as tourists pick up in their wanderings, pay heavily for, and then give away to friends who consign them to some unfrequented part of the house.

The straw hats and other plaited objects had
deteriorated
. The stitches in the ventral part of the little alligator had given way, and the same had happened to the little Caribbean sting-ray. But the vessel later to be known as the Oxoxoco Bottle seemed to glow. I picked it up carelessly, saying to a friend who was spending that evening with me: ‘Now what this is, I don’t know——’ when it slipped from between my dusty fingers and broke against the base of a brass lamp.

My friend said: ‘Some sort of primitive cigar-holder, I imagine. See? There’s still a cigar inside it…. Or is it a stick of cinnamon?’

‘What would they be doing with cinnamon in Mexico?’ I asked, picking up this pale brown cylinder. It had a slightly oily texture and retained a certain aromatic odour. ‘What would you make of a thing like that?’

He took it from me gingerly, and rustled it at his ear between thumb and forefinger much in the manner of a would-be connoisseur ‘listening to’ the condition of a cigar. An outer leaf curled back. The interior was pale
yellow. He cried: ‘Bless my heart, man, it’s paper – thin paper – and written on, too, unless my eyes deceive me.’

So we took the pieces of the bottle and that
panatella-shaped
scroll to the British Museum. Professor Mayhew, of Ceramics, took charge of the broken bottle. Dr Wills, of Ancient Manuscripts, went to work on the scroll with all the frenzied patience characteristic of such men, who will hunch their backs and go blind working twenty years on a fragment of Dead Sea scroll.

Oddly enough, he had this paper cigar unrolled and separated into leaves within six weeks, when he
communicated
with me, saying: ‘This is not an ancient manuscript. It is scarcely fifty years old. It was written in pencil, upon faint-ruled paper torn out of some reporter’s notebook not later than 1914. This is not my pigeon. So I gave it to Brownlow, of Modern
Manuscripts
. Excuse me.’ And he disappeared through a book-lined door in the library.

Dr Brownlow had the papers on his table, covered with a heavy sheet of plate-glass. He said to me, in a dry voice: ‘If this is a hoax, Mr Kersh, I could recommend more profitable ways of expending the Museum’s time and your own. If this is not a hoax, then it is one of the literary discoveries of the century. The Americans would be especially interested in it. They could afford to buy it, being millionaires. We could not. But it is curious, most curious.’

‘What is it?’ I asked.

He took his time, in the maddening manner of such men, and said: ‘Considering the advanced age of the putative author of this narrative, there are certain
discrepancies
in the handwriting. The purported author of this must have been a very old man in about 1914, at
which I place the date of its writing. Furthermore, he suffered with asthma and rheumatism. Yet I don’t know. If you will allow me to make certain inquiries, and keep this holograph a few days more …?’

I demanded: ‘What man? What rheumatism? What do you mean?’

He said: ‘Beg pardon, I thought you knew. This –’ and he tapped the plate-glass ‘– pretends to be the last written work of the American author, Ambrose Bierce. I have taken the liberty of having it photographed for your benefit. If we may keep this until next Monday or so for further investigation …?’

‘Do that,’ I said, and took from him a packet of
photographs
, considerably enlarged from the narrow
notebook
sheets.

‘He was a great writer!’ I said. ‘One of America’s greatest.’

The Modern Manuscripts man shrugged. ‘Well, well. He was in London from 1872 to 1876. A newspaperman, a newspaperman. They used to call him “Bitter” Bierce. When he went back to America he worked – if my memory does not deceive me – mainly in San Francisco, wrote for such publications as
The
Examiner,
The
American,
Cosmopolitan,
and such-like. Famous for his bitter tongue and his ghostly stories. He had merit. Academic circles in the United States will give you anything you like for this – if it is genuine. If … Now I beg you to excuse me.’ Before we parted, he added, with a little smile: ‘I hope it is genuine, for your sake and ours – because that would certainly clear up what is getting to be a warm dispute among our fellows in the Broken Crockery Department …’

*

Mount Popocatepetl looms over little Oxoxoco which, at first glance, is a charming and picturesque village, in the Mexican sense of the term. In this respect it closely resembles its human counterparts. Oxoxoco is
picturesque
and interesting, indeed; at a suitable distance, and beyond the range of one’s nostrils. Having become acquainted with it, the disillusioned traveller looks to the snowy peak of the volcano for a glimpse of cool beauty in this lazy, bandit-haunted, burnt-up land. But if he is a man of sensibility, he almost hopes that the vapours on the peak may give place to some stupendous eructation of burning gas, and a consequent eruption of molten lava which, hissing down into the valley, may cauterise this ulcer of a place from the surface of the tormented earth, covering all traces of it with a neat poultice of pumice stone and a barber’s dusting of the finest white ashes.

They used to call me a good hater. This used to be so. I despised my contemporaries, I detested my wife – a feeling she reciprocated – and had an impatient con tempt for my sons; and for their grandfather, my father. London appalled me, New York disgusted me, and
California
nauseated me. I almost believe that I came to Mexico for something fresh to hate. Oxco, Taxco, Cuernavaca – they were all equally distasteful to me, and I knew that I should feel similarly about the (from a distance enchanting) village of Oxoxoco. But I was sick and tired, hunted and alone, and I needed repose, because every bone in my body, at every movement, raised its sepulchral protest. But there was to be no rest for me in Oxoxoco.

Once the traveller sets foot in this village, he is affronted by filth and lethargy. The men squat, chin on
knee, smoking or sleeping. There is a curious lifelessness about the place as it clings, a conglomeration of hovels, to the upland slope. There is only one half-solid building in Oxoxoco, which is the church. My views on religion are tolerably well known, but I made my way to this edifice to be away from the heat, the flies, and the vultures which are the street cleaners of Oxoxoco. (In this respect it is not unlike certain other cities I have visited, only in Oxoxoco the vultures have wings and no politics.) The church was comparatively cool. Resting, I looked at the painted murals. They simply christen the old bloody Aztec gods and goddesses – give them the names of saints – and go on worshipping in the old savage style.

A priest came out to greet me. He radiated benevolence when he saw that I was wearing a complete suit of clothes, a watch-chain, and boots, however down at heel. In reply to his polite inquiry as to what he could do for me, I said: ‘Why, padre, you can direct me out of this charming village of yours, if you will.’ Knowing that nothing is to be got without ready cash, I gave him half a dollar,
saying
: ‘For the poor of your parish – if there are any poor in so delightful a place. If not, burn a few candles for those who have recently died of want. Meanwhile, if you will be so good as to direct me to some place where I can find something to eat and drink, I shall be infinitely obliged.’

‘Diego’s widow is clean and obliging,’ said he, looking at my coin. Then: ‘You are an American?’

‘I have that honour.’

‘Then you will, indeed, be well advised to move away from here as soon as you have refreshed yourself, because there is a rumour that Zapata is coming – or it may be Villa – what do I know?’

‘Presumably, the secrets of the Infinite, padre, judging by your cassock. Certainly,’ I said, ‘the secrets of
Oxoxoco
. Now, may I eat and drink and go on my way?’

‘I will take you to Diego’s widow,’ said he, with a sigh. ‘Up there,’ said he, pointing to the mountain slope, ‘you will certainly be safe from Villa, Zapata, and any other men in these parts. No one will go where I am pointing,
señor
– not the bravest of the brave. They are a superstitious people, my people.’

‘Not being superstitious yourself, padre, no doubt you have travelled that path yourself?’

Crossing himself, he said: ‘Heaven forbid!’ and hastily added: ‘But you cannot go on foot,
señor
?’

‘I’d rather not, padre. But how else should I go?’

His eyes grew bright as he replied: ‘As luck will have it, Diego’s widow has a
burro
to sell, and
he
knows the way anywhere. Come with me and I will take you to Diego’s widow. She is a virtuous woman, and lives two paces from here.’

The sun seemed to flare like oil, and at every step we were beset by clouds of flies which appeared not to bother the good priest who seemed inordinately concerned with my welfare. His ‘two paces’ were more like a thousand, and all the way he catechized me, only partly inspired (I believe) by personal curiosity.

‘
Señor
, why do you want to go up
there
? True, you will be safe from bad men. But there are other dangers, of which Man is the least.’

‘If you mean snakes, or what not——’ I began.

‘– Oh no,’ said he, ‘up
there
is too high for the reptiles and the cats. I see, in any case, that you carry a pistol and a gun. Oh, you will see enough snakes and cats when you pass through the Oxoxoco jungle on your way. That, too,
is dangerous; it is unfit for human habitation.’

‘Padre,’ said I, ‘I have lived in London.’

Without getting the gist or the point of this, he
persisted
: ‘It is my duty to warn you,
señor
–
it is very bad jungle.’

‘Padre, I come from San Francisco.’

‘But
señor
! It is not so much the wild beasts as the insects that creep into the eyes,
señor,
into the ears. They suck blood, they breed fever, they drive men mad——’

‘– Padre, padre, I have been connected with
contributors
to the popular press!’

‘Beyond the second bend in the river there are still
surviving
, unbaptized, certain Indians. They murder strangers slowly, over a slow fire, inch by inch——’

‘– Enough, padre; I have been married and have had a family.’

His pace lagged as we approached the house of Diego’s widow, and he asked me: ‘Do you understand the nature of a
burro,
a donkey?’

‘Padre, I attended the Kentucky Military Institute.’

‘I do not grasp your meaning, but they are perverse animals, bless them. Tell them to advance, and they halt. Urge them forward, they go sideways.’

‘Padre, I was drummer-boy with the Ninth Indiana Infantry.’

‘Ah well, you will have your way. Here is Diego’s widow’s house. She is a good woman.’ And so he led me into a most malodorous darkness, redolent of pigs with an undertone of goat.

The widow of Diego, as the padre had said, was
unquestionably
a good woman, and a virtuous one. With her looks, how could she have been other than virtuous? She had only three teeth, and was prematurely aged, like
all the women hereabout. As for her cleanliness, no doubt she was as clean as it is possible to be in Oxoxoco. A little pig ran between us as we entered. The padre dismissed it with a blessing, and a hard kick, and said: ‘Here is a gentleman, my daughter, who requires refreshment and wants a
burro.
He is, of course, willing to pay.’

‘There is no need of that,’ said the widow of Diego, holding out a cupped hand. When I put a few small pieces of money into her palm she made them disappear like a prestidigitator, all the while protesting: ‘I could not possibly accept,’ etcetera, and led me to a pallet of rawhide strips where I sat, nursing my aching head.

Soon she brought me a dish of enchiladas and a little bottle of some spirits these people distil, at a certain season, from the cactus. I ate – although I knew that the hot, red pepper could not agree with my asthma; and drank a little, although I was aware that this stuff might be the worst thing in the world for my rheumatism. The flies were so numerous and the air so dense and hot that I felt as one might feel who has been baked in an immense currant bun, without the spice. She gave me a gourd of goat’s milk and, as I drank it, asked me: ‘The
señor
wants a
burro
? I have a
burro
.’