by Gerald Kersh
Happy in my new project and anxious to be friendly, I shouted, “What’s cooking?”—whereat Costas started and splashed himself from chin to groin with his acrid mixture, and Kyra got a screwdriver under her thumbnail. The stuff must have been somewhere near boiling point, but he did not flinch. He pulled a long revolver out of his hip pocket and pointed it at me. I do not know exactly how stupid a man can get but, having always been something of a connoisseur of weapons and being a shortsighted and good-natured kind of fool, I thought he was simply showing it to me. So I approached, got hold of it by the barrel, took it out of his unresisting hand, and said, “Why, this is a rarity. Isn’t this the so-called Russian Colt revolver? I mean, the one made by America for the Czar’s army? One of the best-balanced pistols in the world. You don’t see one of these every day. I’ll give you a pound for it.”
He said, with one eye on the boiler, “For Christ’s sake, keep your finger off that trigger. It’s loaded. For Jesus Christ’s sake, don’t even let it off in fun, not even at the floor!” Then the iron in this man seemed to melt. His eyes filled with tears; something snapped at the back of his voice, and he called to Kyra, “Darling, make him put it down!”
Then I saw a new Kyra. She had always been hard as nails; now she was hard and cold, and you could have shaved yourself on the edge of her voice as she said to him in French—which, I presume, she thought I could not understand—“Species of imbecile that thou art! Never draw a weapon you are not prepared to use, bollock-head! Oh, must it be, then, holy Mother of God? Take out the bullets, twot-head, and give him, the idiot, the fornicating gun!” Then she told him off in Italian, in what I dare to print only in the following terms: “Oh, penis! Oh, by the body of seven thousand bombs, by Bacchus, you private part, give the idiot the penising pistol, you anus!”
I pretended not to understand. Costas broke the revolver, unloaded it, and gave it to me, saying over his shoulder in Spanish, “Be silent, copulating cow, there is not wherefore. I double-defecate in your milk!”
“Feces!” she cried.
“Since your mouth is full of them, devour!” said he. “But, in the name of our Maker, get this vagina out of here, because this had better go in the icebox.”
“Wait till your hands are steady, then, urine! Be calm, ear wax! This species of female organ of reproduction turned inside out and whitewashed still does not know his derriere from an excavation in the ground. I will take him upstairs, micturation of a camel—if there still is an upstairs by the time we get there—and you break up ice. Only do it outside, obscenity! Spongocolarius!”
All this was with machine-gun diction. As I must have said somewhere before, to the ignorant much is told— there is nothing like a good proverb—so I kept a straight face and pocketed the Russian Colt with one hand while I offered Costas a pound note with the other. But he said, “Please keep it, keep it. I have plenty more pistols.”
She said to him in German, “You are a cretinous all-too-soon abortion of a harlot of the very lowest type. I suppose you know that, don’t you? Dung-face!” To me, she said, “I forgot to make your bed. Let’s go up. You see what I have to put up with. He keeps trying out new recipes. And look at the mess he’s made of himself—soaked.”
He said, “It is a kind of soup. Only it needs a filler to stabilize it. Otherwise—”
He was evidently one of those conspiratorial characters whose cryptic remarks so frequently turn out to be the death of them. Kyra said to him, in French, “Oh, in the name of God! Stand on your hands and whistle through your arse hole! Get the ice, defecatory swine; get the ice, cuckold!... Mr. Laverock, let me turn down your bed.”
“No, let me,” I said. “I beg you not to disturb yourself.”
Costas said, “It is no trouble.” Then, in Italian, “In the name of seven thousand penes, get that colonic irrigation out of this obscene kitchen, mother of dogs! ... No, Mr. Laverock, it is a delight to have a gentleman in the house.”
Then, as he made to light a candle, Kyra firmly took the matches out of his hand and, in a quiet, reasonable kind of voice, said to him in French, “Oh, you frightful son-of-a-bitch! Species of clitoris! My faith, you droppings that you are! What is it that it is that this is? Ah, no, but you enshit me! Enough is enough. The more it changes, the more it is the same thing. You are a turd with teeth, and there is nothing to be done about it. Pig, take the ice out into the garden, ten paces away, break it up fine, and bring it back in a tub. It is nothing to me—ah, my God then!—if Fowlers End goes up like...” She started to clap her hands but stopped herself before the palms met, keeping an anxious eye on the boiler. “Mr. Laverock, I am going to turn down your bed.”
I said, “This pistol, Mr. Costas: it’s the one with the extra grip for the second finger, like this—”
Knowing it to be empty, I pointed it at him in demonstration. God knows anything I aim at is safe unless I get to within three feet, but Costas did not know this. Also, he must have forgotten that he was still clutching the six big bullets in his sticky left hand, for he crossed himself right-to-left in the Greek style and said, “Fire if you will, sir, and let us die together!”
Losing patience, presumably, Kyra screamed at me, “Give me that f—ing gun!” I gave it to her, obediently, while Costas whispered, in French, “For the love of God, dearest, your voice vibrates! The soup is cooling, and I conjure you this is neither the time nor the place for vibration.”
“Then get the ice,” she said, calling him an odious name which coy ladies call by the diminutive of “cat” for fear of using a four-letter word.
Then, having given over that Russian Colt, I followed Kyra upstairs. Having closed the door on us, her manner changed. It was not merely that she wept—which she did—it was that she seemed to acquire a certain helpless dignity. It was as if everything was happening in spite of herself, and those large, lambent eyes were being opened with oyster knives, and those tears had been made, film upon film, the precious product of a generation or two of irritation. But for me she let them fall, in such a manner that I wanted to have them mounted or, at least, strung on catgut.
Soon she composed herself, dried her eyes on the backs of her hands, and asked me haughtily for a handkerchief. When I said that I was temporarily out of handkerchiefs she said, with dignity, that the tail of my shirt would do; and helped herself to it. Then she said, “Mr. Laverock, I don’t know if you noticed what I have to put up with? If you want my opinion, I do not believe that Costas is altogether in his right mind. In spite of your appearance, Mr. Laverock, I believe you to be a gentleman. Could you swear on your word of honor to keep a confidence?”
Already under the impression that this lady believed I had robbed her of her honor, I kissed her hand—which tasted bitter and gave me a splitting headache almost instantaneously. She continued: “You see how he is. No, I beg you, don’t pat my hand or it might go off. I must leave him, Mr. Laverock, or God knows what might happen to me. You remember, of course, that you have given me your word of honor as a gentleman? Then tell me something: are you going into town on Sunday?”
With all the courtesy in the world, I said, “For you, anything.”
“I must get away,” she said. “I must go to my aunt. But if he sees me leave the house with a suitcase, he will kill me. Will you do something for me? All I ask is that you take my suitcase to Charing Cross Station and put it in the cloakroom. It will cost about sixpence. I’ll give you the sixpence—”
“Oh, for goodness sake, don’t let’s discuss that,” I said.
“And you will bring back the check?” “Of course I will,” I said. “But what is that stuff your brother’s cooking?”
“It is an old-fashioned recipe,” she said. “When it cools, you add to it one other ingredient and make something like marzipan. But let us forget that. You will take my suitcase Sunday? I can have faith in you?”
“Oh, absolutely,” I said.
“In it there will be some heirlooms—Crown Derby china—so you must not
drop it.”
“Oh, I won’t drop it,” I assured her. “Incidentally, why don’t you get Copper Baldwin to give you a hand with that clock? Honestly, Copper can do anything with a screwdriver.”
“I only ask favors of people I love,” said she. “Now let’s work this out. You see how insanely jealous Costas is. Will you be catching the nine o’clock tram, darling? It is better that we know exactly. Only you must swear not to let me down.”
“I’ve got to catch the nine o’clock tram,” I said, “and I promise not to let you down.”
“Then I will have my suitcase ready for you at precisely eight-thirty. Only you must swear to me to be careful with it. Simply take it to the cloakroom at Charing Cross and leave it there. Look, here is a shilling. You can keep the change if you like.”
“That is quite all right,” I said.
“I will send you a post card from my aunt’s. Thank you. And now I had better go and help my crazy brother with his marzipan.... Do you, by any chance, happen to want me first?”
“Exactly at this moment—forgive me—my main desire is to take my shoes off and put my feet in cold water.”
“Ah, you’re lucky you are not a woman.... Thank you, thank you.” She kissed me tenderly with bitter lips and tiptoed downstairs, where I heard her calling Costas all the permutations and combinations of the reproductive organs in four languages—not counting Greek, which I do not understand.
I should have had more sense, of course; but it was the Greenburgers that, literally, put me off the scent. And it never occurred to me to ask myself what she was doing with a broken clock at that hour of the night: Sam Yudenow’s place was in a state of permanent debility and perpetual repair, and everybody had to turn his hand to everything and anything, no matter what time it was. Only a matter of two nights previous I had had to get up and eject from the cinema a stray dog which had secreted itself in the orchestra— attracted, it was assumed, by the odor of the violinist’s feet—and had howled there, disappointed of carrion, far into the night. Was it for me, therefore, to raise an eyebrow at a restaurateur doing a bit of cooking while his sister tinkers with the works of an old clock? I have always been sympathetic to both occupations, cookery and clockwork. Without claiming to be good at either hobby, I insist that they do no harm to anyone but yourself provided you have not the pernicious habit of begging your friends to taste your latest version of a simple old dish. I nearly killed somebody once with a rissole. It was not that I put marjoram in it—it was that somehow or other it happened to contain the hairspring and several cogs of a Waterbury watch which I was playing about with.
But I could not get that bitter taste out of my mouth or that crumbly sensation out of my eyes. If this were not enough, my heart was going like a trip hammer and my skin in general reminded me of something I had read about a Mexican patriot named Zapata. His apologist, a German-Californian whose name I cannot recall, said that Zapata, like Villa, was not a cruel man; only if he killed you he liked you to know what was going on—for days, if possible. Otherwise, where was the point in killing you? Quite right, too; once you grasp mestizo psychology it is astonishing how clear and simple everything gets. It appears that this man Zapata used to peg people out on an ant heap and smear their eyes, armpits, and genitals with honey. A busy man, he could not wait to see the end, but my informant wrote that the victim remained conscious until he was practically a skeleton. He had some tricks, also, with telegraph wire that took you four days to die—but these do not apply here. Then again, he had an innovation of the thorn-bush game. There exists, in Mexico, a flowering bush full of formidable thorns, which grows at the rate of a couple of inches a day. The Mexicans are easygoing people, children of nature and lovers of music. So all Zapata needed to do was, tie you to one of those bushes while it was sprouting, sit down with a guitar and a bottle of mescal, sing “La Cucaracha” and let natural history take its course. I began to understand what this felt like, that night. Similarly, I began to get the idea of Villa’s trick with the bull hide. There is no cruelty involved; it is simply a way of thinking. Skin a steer. While the hide is still wet, sew somebody up in it very tight, and leave him in the sun; roll a cigarette and— preferably with a guitar—wait in the shade. As the hide dries, it contracts, squeezing its contents out from both ends. This takes only thirty-six hours.
So I felt, and I wondered why. And since I could not sleep, I wondered harder and harder. My mind went back to the kitchen and what I had seen there. Now, nervous and bewildered as I was, letters and figures started to dance behind my eyes. Nitric acid and glycerin? What kind of marzipan was this? ... Then, suddenly, a formula clicked into place in my head. It may have been that my mind was running on figures, since I had been working on the return sheets that evening, and I never was good at figures. But this formula obsessed me like a half-forgotten tune:
And it occurred to me, belatedly, that Costas was cooking nitroglycerin. My reaction was: It would certainly be criminal to allow Kyra to stay in this house a moment longer than necessary. I must certainly get her luggage to the station first thing Sunday morning and go about my business afterward. Then I sat up with what must have been a kind of yelp. I remembered that nitroglycerin is one of the unstable high explosives. There is no way of knowing how to take it: you may walk around with a pint of it in your pocket, and nothing will happen; or you may wave your finger at it, or cough in its presence, and up it goes. Three or four ounces of it will wreck at least one story of a house— any house, let alone this. According to my calculations, Costas had at least a gallon and a half of the stuff under steam in the kitchen.
But such was my character so many years ago that I said to myself, It would serve Sam Yudenow right—and went to sleep.
It seems that I forgot I was on the premises.
Kyra’s suitcase was standing in the passage on Sunday morning. It was not so much a suitcase as half a trunk—one of those antproof things, lined with zinc, that people take to the tropics. It was of remarkably light weight for its size, so that I almost fell over when I lifted it. At this, Kyra clung to me, whispering, “You do not know your strength. Be careful, Mr. Laverock, be careful of the Crown Derby china, and for my sake don’t fail to leave it at Charing Cross!” Then she gave me something like a running sheet: I was to catch the nine o’clock tram; change at such-and-such a place for the bus; and arrive at Charing Cross Station (give or take a few minutes) not a minute later than eleven-forty-five. And she gave me a shilling, which, not wishing to hurt her feelings, I dropped into the breast pocket where I generally keep a handkerchief for show. I have that shilling still.
“Hurry!” she whispered, and I promised that I would, saying that I had quite a bit of business of my own to attend to that day.
“And you’re all dressed up too,” I remarked, wishing to be amiable.
“Oh, go—go—go!” she said, in a hushed voice, between her teeth.
So I went, and she ran away to the kitchen. I was in no hurry; it was only a quarter past eight. I ambled rather than walked toward the tram terminal. Halfway there I met Copper Baldwin, who asked, “Shooting the moon, cocko? Doing a flit? ... ‘Old on a minute, cock, who’s bag’s that you got there? I bet you I’ve seen that one before.”
I said, “It’s the property of a lady, between ourselves, and if you must know I’m leaving it at Charing Cross Station for her.”
“Oh, you are, are you? Charing Cross Station, is it? What’s it got in it? Death-tick beetles or something?”
“Why death-tick beetles?” I asked.
“Bloody well sounds like it. Or clocks.”
“I suppose a lady’s personal property might contain a clock,” I said.
“I suppose it might. Well, anyway, you got bags o’ time. I’ll walk you to the terminus and we’ll ‘ave a cuppa.”
“Come along by all means, Copper, but I don’t think I fancy a cup of tea.”
“Oh, yes you do. ‘Ere, let’s ‘ave that bag.”
“Carry it if you
like,” I said, “only be careful. It’s got some valuable Crown Derby china in it.”
“I won’t shake it,” said Copper Baldwin. And so we strolled to the tram terminal, where there was a humble and unacceptable apology for a cafe, owned by a bald old lady whose tea was notorious the length of the tram line for its potency and astringent qualities. The drivers and conductors used to call her “Ma.” For threepence she gave them a pint jug of her appalling brew; only they had to leave sixpence deposit on the jug—they might be transferred to another route, or elope, or emigrate, or fall dead. It was always a safe place to wait; the trams had to stop there, and the drivers had no objection to pausing for a little badinage while they steadied their hands after the jolting ride.
Copper Baldwin said, “Mine enemy’s dog though it ‘ad bit me ... No, I’d put the tea on the wound. But I’ve got a bit of gin in my pocket, and you can ‘ave a bite if you like.”
“Well, not that tea,” I said.
“Is that a clock you got in ‘ere, or a bloody woodpecker?”
“Come to think of it, it does tick a bit, doesn’t it?”
“You spat a bootful, it ticks! Blind O’Reilly, I never ‘eard such ticking since my father’s aortic aneurysm burst. Let’s ‘ave a dekko inside this ‘ere case.”
