Fancies and Goodnights

by John Collier

  An elderly, fat, and most unprepossessing devil had been hanging off-shore in the shallows for no other purpose than to play the Peeping Tom. The sight of this lovely creature aroused a ticklish and insistent longing in the old reprobate; it rose up in his black heart like a belch in a tar caldron. He swung in and seized her as a shark might seize on a bathing beauty, and he swept her swooning off to his little verdant planet, and on to the rickety porch of his cabin, which jutted out from the rocks for all the world like one of those fishing shacks that are to be found on any island in the tropics.

  She came to herself with a gasp, and looked with horror at her repulsive captor, whose paunch sagged over his greasy belt, and whose tattered jeans scarcely sufficed to conceal his devilishness. He, with a rusty pair of shears, was already at work clipping her wings, and, gathering up the feathers: «These,» said he, «will clean my pipe out to perfection. I like to smoke while I fish. Here is my favourite line; it is stronger and longer than it looks. With this I can dabble deep into the dormitories of the Y.M.C.A. For bait I use some pleasant little dreams I've had at one time and another. I keep 'em in this bucket over here, and you can take one right now and put it on the hook.»

  «The nasty, wriggly, slimy things!» cried she, shrinking away from the sight. «I wouldn't touch them for anything.»

  «You'd better,» said he, «if ever you want to taste the heart and sweetbreads of a tender young divinity student»

  «I'll feed myself,» said she, with a curl of her lip. «I eat nothing but honey and flowers, and sometimes the egg of a hummingbird, when I'm extra hungry.»

  «Very uppish!» said he. «Very snooty! If you think you're here to play the fine lady, you'd better think again. Soft, silly, and good-hearted-that's old Tom Truncheontail if you stroke his fur the right way! But cross me up, and I can be rough, I can be tough, and I can be quarrelsome. You'll bait my hooks when I tell you, and you'll scrub and you'll scour and you'll sweep, and you'll cook the dinner and tend the still and make the bed…»

  «The beds?» said she. «I'll make my own bed. As to yours … !»

  «Do one without doing the other,» said he, «and you shall ride me back to Heaven with a bridle of daisies. I said bed. If a singular, that is, and it'd be a lot more singular if it were plural.» With that he laughed fit to split his sides.

  The angel thought it a very poor joke. «I know I broke the rules,» said she. «And I know you can make me work and slave for you. But what I did wasn't a real sin, so you can't make me suffer a fate worse than death.»

  «Worse than death, eh?» said the devil, his vanity wounded. «That shows how much you know about it.»

  «If I wished to know more,» she replied, «I wouldn't choose you for my master.»

  «Not if I made you a sparkling necklace,» said he, «out of the tears of innocent chorus girls?»

  «Thank you!» said she. «Keep your trumpery jewelry, and I'll keep my virtue.»

  «Trumpery!» said he indignantly. «It's clear you don't know what's what in the jewelry line, or in the virtue line either. All right, my dear, there are more ways than one of taming an absolute little spitfire!»

  The old sensualist, however, reckoned without his host. In the days that followed, he tried this and he tried that, but neither tyranny nor cajolery availed him in the very least against her snowy virtue and his own sooty complexion. When he frowned she feared him, but when he smiled she hated him worse than ever devil has been hated before.

  «I can,» said he, «put you into a whisky bottle, from which you will have to emerge when a cloak-and-suit buyer draws the cork.»

  «Do so,» said she. «He can be no uglier than you, and no more of a nuisance.»

  «Perhaps not,» said he. «Though I imagine you have very little experience of cloak-and-suit buyers. I can feed you to an oyster, from which you'll come out imprisoned in a pearl, and find yourself traded, in the most embarrassing circumstances, for a whole wagon-load of the chastity you hold so dear.»

  «I shall scream 'culture,'» said she, very coolly. «And the victim will reach for her .22, and thus we shall both be saved.»

  «Very neat,» said he. «But I can send you to earth as a young girl of nineteen or twenty. That's the age when temptations are thickest, and resistance is very low. And the first time you sin, your body, soul, virtue and all is mine at seven years' purchase. And that,» said he, with an oath, «is what I'll do. I was a fool not to have hit on it before.»

  No sooner said than done. He took her by the ankles, and heaved her far out into the seas of space. He saw her body descending, turning, glimmering, and he dived after it like a schoolboy after a silver coin flung into a swimming bath.

  Some ordinary people, going home very late over Brooklyn Bridge, pointed out to each other what they took to be a falling star, and a little later a drunken poet, returning from an all-night party, was inspired by what he thought was the rosy dawn, glimmering through the skimpy shrubbery of Central Park. This, however, was not the dawn, but our beautiful young she-angel, who had arrived on earth as a young girl who had lost both her clothes and her memory, as sometimes young girls do, and who was wandering about under the trees in a state of perfect innocence.

  It is impossible to say how long this would have continued, had she not been found by three kindly old ladies, who always were the first to enter the Park in the morning, for the purpose of taking crumbs to their friends the birds. Had our young angel remained there till lunchtime, anything might have happened, for she retained all her original beauty, and was pinker and more pearly than any dawn. She was round, she was supple, she was more luscious than peaches; there was a something about her that was irresistibly appealing.

  The old ladies, with a twittering and fluttering like that of their feathered favorites, charitably surrounded this pink perfection of innocence and desirability. «Poor creature!» said Miss Belfrage, «undoubtedly some man has brought her to this condition.»

  «Some devil!» said Miss Morrison. This remark afforded infinite amusement to the lubber fiend, who stood invisibly by. He could not resist giving Miss Morrison a little pinch, of a sort entirely new to her experience. «Dear me! Did you do that, Miss Shank?» cried Miss Morrison. «Surely you did not do that?»

  «I? I did nothing,» said Miss Shank. «What is it?»

  «I felt,» said Miss Morrison, «a sort of pinch.»

  «So did I,» cried Miss Belfrage. «I felt one that very moment»

  «So do I,» cried Miss Shank. «Oh, dear! Perhaps we shall all lose our memories.»

  «Let us hurry with her to the hospital,» said Miss Morrison. «The Park seems all wrong this morning, and the birdies won't come near. They know! What experiences she most have gone through!»

  These kind old ladies took our beautiful but unfortunate she-angel to a hospital for nervous diseases, where she was received charitably and to some extent enthusiastically. She was soon hurried into a little room, the walls of which were of duck's-egg green, this color having been found very soothing to girls discovered wandering in Central Park with neither their clothes nor their memories. A certain brilliant young psychoanalyst was put in charge of her case. Such cases were his specially, and he seldom failed to jog their memories to some purpose.

  The fiend had naturally tagged along to the hospital, and now stood there picking his teeth and watching all that transpired. He was delighted to see that the young psychoanalyst was as handsome as could be. His features were manly and regular, and his eyes dark and lustrous, and they became more lustrous still when he beheld his new patient. As for hers, they took on a forget-me-not glimmer which caused the devil to rub his hands again. Everyone was pleased.

  The psychoanalyst was an ornament to his much maligned profession. His principles were of the highest and yet no higher than his enthusiasm for his science. Now, dismissing the nurses who had brought her in, he took his seat by the couch on which she lay.

  «I am here to make yon well,» said he. «It seems you have had a distressing experi
ence. I want you to tell me what you can remember of it»

  «I can't,» said she faintly. «I can remember nothing.»

  «Perhaps you are in a state of shock,» said this excellent young analyst. «Give me your hand, my dear, so I may see if it is abnormally warm, or cold, and if there is a wedding ring on it.»

  «What is a hand?» murmured the unfortunate young she-angel. «What is warm? What is cold? What is a wedding ring?»

  «Oh, my poor girl!» said he. «Quite evidently you have had a very severe shock. Those who forget what wedding rings are often get the worst of all. However, this is your hand.»

  «And is that yours?» said she.

  «Yes, that is mine,» he replied.

  The young angel said no more, but looked at her hand in his, and then she lowered her delightful eyelashes, and sighed a little. This delighted the heart of the ardent young scientist, for he recognized the beginning of the transference, a condition which indescribably lightens the labors of psychoanalysts.

  «Well! Well!» said he at last. «We must find out what caused you to lose your memory. Here is the medical report. It seems you have not had a blow on the head.»

  «What is a head?» she asked.

  «This is your head,» he told her. «And these are your eyes, and this is your mouth.»

  «And what is this?» said she.

  «That,» said he, «is your neck.»

  This adorable young angel was the best of patients. She desired nothing more than to please her analyst, for, such is the nature of the transference, he seemed to her like some glorious figure out of her forgotten childhood. Her natural innocence was reinforced by the innocence of amnesia, so she pulled down the sheet that covered her, and asked him, «And what are these?»

  «Those?» said he. «How you could have possibly forgotten them. I shall not forget them as long as I live. I have never seen a lovelier pair of shoulders.»

  Delighted by his approbation, the angel asked one or two more questions, such as at last caused this worthy young analyst to rise from his chair and pace the room in a state of considerable agitation. «Unquestionably,» he murmured, «I am experiencing the counter-transference in its purest form, or at least in its most intense one. Such a pronounced example of this phenomenon should surely be the subject of experiment. A little free association seems to be indicated, but with a bold innovation of technique. In my paper I will call it The Demonstrative Somatic Method as Applied to Cases of Complete Amnesia. It will be frowned upon by the orthodox, but after all Freud himself was frowned upon in his time.»

  We will draw a veil over the scene that followed, for the secrets of the psychoanalytic couch are as those of the confessional. There was nothing sacred, however, to Tom Truncheontail, who by this time was laughing his ugly head off. «Because,» thought he, «what sin in the world could be greater than to make such an exemplary young psychoanalyst forget himself, his career, and all the ethics of his profession?»

  At a certain moment the wily old devil allowed himself to become visible, leaning over the end of the couch with a cynical smile on his weather-beaten face.

  «Oh, what is that, darling?» cried the young she-angel, in accents of frustration and dismay.

  «What is what?» asked the analyst, who was at this moment somewhat preoccupied by his researches.

  The young she-angel became very silent and melancholy. She knew what she had seen, and now remembered things she wished she had thought of before. It is well-known that this makes sins of this sort no smaller. «Alas,» said she, «I think I have recovered my memory.»

  «Then you are cured,» cried the analyst in delight, «and my method has been proved correct, and will be unanimously adopted in the profession. What an inestimable benefit I have conferred upon my colleagues, or at least on those whose patients are half or a quarter as beautiful as you are! But tell me what you remember. I ask you, not as your doctor, but as your future husband.»

  How easily one sin follows upon another, particularly the sin of lying upon that which had just been committed! The poor angel could not find it in her heart to destroy his happiness by telling him that after seven years he would have to relinquish her to the gross and bristly fiend. She murmured something about having fallen asleep in her bath, and having a tendency to somnambulism. Her story was eagerly accepted, and the happy young analyst hastened out to procure a marriage license.

  The fiend immediately made himself visible again, and smiled upon his victim with abominable good-nature. «Quick work!» said he. «You've saved me a lot of trouble. There are girls in this town who'd have shilly-shallied for the best part of a week. In return, I'll get you a box or two with some clothes in 'em, so your story will hold together, and you can marry the guy and be happy. You have to hand it to old Tom T. — he hasn't a jealous hair in his tail!» The truth is, the old rascal knew she'd sooner or later many someone or other, and as actually he was as jealous as a demon, he thought it better to be jealous of one than of two. Also, he felt she might just as well choose a good provider, with a well-stocked ice-box and liquor closet, and a basement furnace beside which he could sleep warm of nights. Psychoanalysts are always well furnished in these respects. And what had finally decided him was the reflection that a marriage which is founded on a lie is usually fertile in other transgressions, as pleasant to the nostrils of a fiend as are roses and lilies to the rest of us.

  In this last respect, we may say at once that the old villain was bitterly disappointed. No wife could possibly be more angelic than our angel. In fact, the sweet odours of domestic virtue became so oppressive to the devil that he took himself off to Atlantic City for a breath of fresh air. He found the atmosphere of that resort so exhilarating that he remained there most of the seven years. Thus the angel was almost able to forget the future in the extreme happiness of the present. At the end of the first year she became the mother of a sturdy boy, and at the end of the third she had a beautiful little girl. The apartment they lived in was arranged in the best of taste; her husband rose higher and higher in his profession, and was cheered to the echo at all the principal meetings of psychoanalysts. But as the seventh year drew to a close the fiend came around to see how things were getting along. He told her much of what he had seen in Atlantic City, and embroidered on the life they would live together when her time was up. From that day on he appeared very frequently, and not only when she was alone. He was utterly without delicacy, and would permit himself to be seen by her at moments when even an elephant-hided devil should have realized his presence was embarrassing. She would close her eyes, but fiends are seen more easily with the eyes dosed. She would sigh bitterly.

  «How can you sigh so bitterly at such a moment as this?» her husband asked her. The angel could hardly explain, and it almost made a rift between them.

  «I wonder,» said the analyst on another such occasion, «if this can be connected with your experiences before yon lost your memory. Is it possible your cure is not complete? It almost shakes my faith in my method.»

  This thought preyed upon his mind until he was on the point of a breakdown. «My work is ruined,» said he one day. «I have lost, faith in my great discovery. I am a failure. I shall go downhill. I shall take to drink. Here is a grey hair! What is worse than an old, grey, drunken psychoanalyst, who has lost faith in himself and his science, both of which he believed equal to anything? My poor children, what a father you will have to grow up with! You will have no pleasant home, no education, and probably no shoes. You will have to wait outside saloons. You will get inferiority complexes, and when you are married you will take it out on your unfortunate partners, and they too will have to be psychoanalyzed.»

  At this the poor young angel gave way altogether. After all, there were only a few weeks left She thought it better to destroy the remnant of her happiness than to ruin the lives of her husband and children. That night she told him all.

  «I would never have credited such things,» said her husband, «but you, my dear, have made me believe in a
ngels, and from that it is a short step to believing in fiends as well. You have restored my faith in my science, which has frequently been likened to the casting out of devils. Where is he? Can I get a sight of him?»

  «All too easily,» replied the angel. «Go upstairs a little earlier than usual, and hide yourself in my wardrobe. When I come up and begin to undress, he'll be quite certain to show himself.»

  «Very well,» said her husband. «Perhaps tonight, as it is rather chilly, you need not…»

  «Oh, my dear,» said she, «it is far too late to bother about trifles of that sort.»

  «You are right,» said he, «for after all, I am a psychoanalyst, and therefore broad-minded, and he is only a devil.»

  He at once went upstairs and concealed himself, and his angelic wife followed him soon after. Just as she had expected, the devil appeared at a certain moment, lying stretched out on the chaise-longue and leering insolently at the angel. He went so far as to give this innocent creature one of his humorous little pinches as she went by. «You're getting thin,» said he. «However, you'll soon be back in your old form once we've started our honeymoon. What fun we shall have together! You've no idea how much I've learned in Atlantic City!»

  He went on like this for some time. In the end the husband stepped out of the wardrobe and took him by the wrist

  «Let go of my wrist!» said the devil, trying to pull himself free, for these old, gross, and sensual devils are like scared and sullen children when a psychoanalyst gets hold of them.

  «It is not your wrist that interests me,» said the analyst in a tone of lofty detachment. «It's that tail of yours.»

  «My tail?» muttered old Tom, taken altogether aback. «What about my tail? What's wrong with it?»

  «I'm sure it's a very good tail,» replied the analyst. «But I imagine you'd like to get rid of it.»

  «Get rid of my tail?» cried the startled devil. «Why in the name of all that's unholy should I want to do that!»