Neither Man Nor Dog

by Gerald Kersh

  He had been a very bad man indeed, worse than I could have guessed. Among other things, he had been a professional killer, an assassin employed by one of the political murder organisations of the Balkans. I knew that the man was a liar, yet what he said rang true; I remembered, for example, the terrifying little trick by means of which he had first aroused my interest, that trick with the knife. He was not, he told me, one of the directors of political assassination; he was an operator, an agent. He might work, for example with a few underlings. He might, perhaps, train and arm a boy like Princip, the crazed student who fired the shot that started the first World War. Stavro had nothing to do with Princip, but he was involved in similar affairs. Several gentlemen (never heard of in Western Europe), big names in the Balkans, met their deaths through Stavro. In important cases he, Stavro in person, with his deadly right eye and terrible right hand, dealt with the killing. He was one of those men who have the knack of pointing a gun at you as I point a finger. He never missed. As for his nerves, he had none. It was not that he was fearless; he lacked the capacity to feel fear, just as he was incapable of understanding the meaning of pity. If it was necessary to torture somebody, Stavro would torture him, quite dispassionately. He was not a sadist; he found no pleasure in inflicting pain—it was all a matter of business, as far as he was concerned.

  I believe that in telling me all this he had in mind some rake-off from a fat fee such as the Sunday newspapers were paying for stories like his own. He became explanatory, almost eloquent. With a passionless wink he told me that he knew perfectly well how nothing was any good without a love interest; and if I wanted love interests, good Lord, he could embarrass me with the richness of his love-life: he was Cupid, the indiscriminate gunman.

  “There is, though I say so who should not, my dear friend, something in me to which women are—or have been—drawn, I tell you, as iron is drawn to a magnet. I was known as irresistible. Why? I will tell you why. With women, it is pretty much the same as with hunting wild animals; more often than not they run away a little ahead of the noise you make whilst approaching. Irritate them, and—in the case of fierce, proud animals—they will charge you in order to destroy you; and then, if you are a man with a clear eye, a cool head, and perfect confidence in yourself, the animal that charges you delivers itself into your hands. In other cases, for example shy and bewildered creatures, it is necessary to gain a certain advantage . . . to creep up, having calculated the wind. But that is neither here nor there. My successes have nearly always been with the wild, fierce ones: there is infinitely more satisfaction, as your Shakespeare says, in rousing a lion than in starting a hare. ‘The blood more stirs,’ I think he said. I am a big-game hunter. Irritate, stimulate; wound if necessary; arouse interest; then out of the undergrowth comes your animal, with slashing claws and foam at the mouth. Poor wretch! Little does it know that I am here with a thunderbolt, quite unafraid, almost sorry for it. Then . . . Bang! A rug for my study. For example, there was, in a certain city, a woman who was known as The Golden; gold hair, gold skin, gold eyes, and as good as gold. I will tell you details . . .”

  And Stavro told me details. The lady to whom he referred was a famous beauty who had come out of a good family to marry into an illustrious one. She was the toast of her country, and her husband, the well-born and noble gentleman who adored her, was regarded as a fortunate man, since she remained unspoiled. The Emperor Franz-Josef had tried to lead her astray; her virtue was impregnable. Stavro, however, managed to assail that virtue. In the case of The Golden it must have been the nostalgia for the mud, such as affects certain women from time to time. However it happened, Stavro succeeded. There was a hideous scandal. The lady’s husband blew his brains out. She had committed only social suicide, and lived on. She was ostracised; she went away, lived a gay life, ran through most of her money, lost the residue in the War, and went to the dogs. It was a nasty story. “Good, eh?” said Stavro.

  I made no reply. I could feel again in my nostrils the sulphurous bite of smouldering Evil that goes on and on and ends God knows where. Stavro continued:

  “I tell you all these things because I regard you as my personal friend. You don’t know what you have done for me in lending me this money”—he touched his waistcoat pocket.

  “To-morrow is a bad day in my life. To-morrow is my birthday. All my troubles began on my birthday. I was born. If I had not been born I should never have had any troubles. On my fourteenth birthday I was punished by my father for something I never did. On my sixteenth I did something and was found out. On my eighteenth, after a certain incident, I had to leave home. On my twentieth I went to prison, and escaped a death sentence by the skin of my teeth. On my twenty-first birthday I did an important job for Zedoff, risking my neck and getting two bullets in the shoulder, and I never got paid, because Zedoff, losing his nerve, ran away to America.

  “All my life misfortune has followed me and has caught up with me invariably on my birthday; that is, to-morrow. And if I can, when the calendar tells me that it is here, I spend my birthday in a quiet place, in retirement. Your two pounds will enable me to do this; I shall go to a village near London and spend my birthday in bed. No harm has ever come to me in bed. What does your Bible say? ‘Cursed be the day . . .’ etc? Cursed be the day, cursed be the night. . . . I am not a literary man. This arm, this good right arm, this piece of dead wood which I must carry with me to my grave—I got this on my birthday, too. And here, by the way, my dear friend, is another little incident which might provide food for your satirical humour and material for your penetrating pen. . . . I am sorry, by the way, about that pen I sold you, and will get you another, even cheaper, and much better. . . .

  “I knew it, I knew that if I started important business on my birthday I should come to grief. But there was no way out of it. I was under orders from Marko. It was, I may say, a big job, and I will give you the details of it later if you think you can use them. You have done me a favour and I will do one for you, and we will split fifty-fifty. It is true that you write it down, but without—for example—me, what would there be for you to write about? Do you realise, my dear friend, that I, the man you see before you, I, Stavro—I was the man delegated to kill a dictator? I will not insult you by asking whether you have heard of Mustapha Kemal Pasha, the Grey Wolf. God only knows what that man has survived. If I were religious I should say that God had chosen him, that God is keeping him for some kind of destiny, since he is the only man who, given to me for killing, is not yet dead. There was big money in it too. If I told you that my own share, after everything had been weighed and paid, was to be thirty thousand pounds, perhaps you would call me a liar? Yet this is the case, I give you my word of honour.

  “Marko had organised it. Kemal had to be at a certain place at a certain time, and when he got there, a certain gentleman (not a hundred miles from here) was to put a bullet out of a Mannlicher sporting-rifle into him—a semi-hollow, soft-nosed bullet. And there was a crowd, actually and positively a multitude of reliable men hired and ready to cover my retreat. I tell you that there are fates, as your Shakespeare has it, destinies that have us in their power whatever we may do. Is it ‘Rough-hew our ends?’ or ‘Shape them as we will?’ I am no poet. It was all organised.

  “It was organised, cher ami, so as to be foolproof, it couldn’t possibly fail. I may say that with me gripping that rifle—with my eye looking along that barrel—Kemal was as good as dead. And I as good as had thirty thousand pounds in the bank. (I mean in the Safe Deposit, because I don’t use banks.) All I had to do was catch the boat train from Victoria, and I left half an hour earlier in order to make assurance doubly sure. As I left my hotel I realised that it was my birthday, and fear came upon me. You know what I mean when I say Fear. I told the driver to drive with infinite care. He did, and a tyre blew out. By the time we were ready to start again, a little time had passed and it was necessary to hurry. And then, taking a short cut round Charing Cross and rushing through an absolutely empty street—wh
at happened? Ha!

  “Some drunken woman steps off the pavement, my driver spins his wheel, we hit the railings of the church across the road, I put up my hand to save my eyes and the shock of the impact sends it through a window; the glass cuts my arm into a fine fringe, and I am in hospital for two months. I lose my thirty thousand pounds; Mustapha Kemal lives, and I am a cripple. There, for example, is my birthday luck for you.”

  I said: “If your birthday is to-morrow, that makes it September the fourth, doesn’t it?”

  Stavro nodded and replied: “Too true.”

  I bought him another drink. “Did you ever hear of the Monk Paphnutius?” I asked.

  His eyes narrowed. “What makes you ask?”

  I said: “Nothing. And as a matter of curiosity, my dear Stavro, did the lady known as The Golden have a little scar on her face?”

  Stavro, tense as a hungry cat and watching me closely, said: “On her left cheek. What then?”

  I answered: “Nothing, nothing.”

  The waiter, having dealt with his impatient customer, came back with a deplorably soggy portion of pie and lingering, said: “And that other one, that one with the funny arm. Eh? Monsieur Gino, he didn’t like that one. And look what happened to him, eh?”

  “Stavro?”

  “That’s it, Stavro.”

  “What happened to him, then?”

  “It was in the papers. The police was after this man with this funny arm, this Stavro. So he goes to Waterloo Station. So he buys a ticket to Walton-on-Thames. So he puts down a pound note. So it is a bad pound note. A counterfeit, a forgery. So one thing leads to another, see? So in the end, so he runs away, and—bomp! Right into a motor-car. Smash-bang! . . . No more Stavro. Last thing he says is: ‘So this is my birthday?’ ”

  “Ha,” I said. “Bad? A bad pound?”

  “Yes, on his birthday. Coffee, sir?”

  “No, no coffee. On his birthday, eh?”

  Before I paid the bill I held a pound note up to the light. “Will you look the other way while I steal Gino’s spoon?” I asked.

  “Take! I give!” said the waiter, looking sideways to be certain that the manager’s back was turned. “What is it? You see somethink?”

  “I never passed a bad note before,” I said. “Keep the change.”

  The waiter laughed, and I, having shaken hands with him, went to catch my train.

  A Bang on the Head for Dutoit

  A queer story is told about an old man who died in 1940.

  His name was Dutoit, and he died at the age of eighty-nine. The joy on his face was wonderful to see. He was one of the happiest men in France in the moment of his death. For seventy years, he had been free from all earthly care. His life ended in a blaze of triumph, for he saw the realisation of his one great hope.

  He was an old soldier. His military career had lasted about twenty-five minutes, not counting a period of training. He was involved in one of the historic battles of the world—the Battle of Sedan, in 1871. You know what happened then. The French Army, sold, betrayed, and ill-equipped, went out to meet the gathered might of Prussia under Bismarck. Napoleon the Third was Emperor then—a fool blown up with pride.

  Sedan was a scene of horror. The Germans were always clever at the use of spies and the purchase of traitors. They had bought Bazaine, the greatest of the French generals. The great mass of French infantry went out singing. It was the old, old story. “To Berlin! To Berlin!” they shouted. But Napoleon III had neglected to buy the fine new cannon that the Krupp factories had offered him. He felt, no doubt, that there were more pleasant ways of spending his country’s money. Prussia, you may be sure, had not overlooked the possibilities of the newest kind of heavy artillery. The French infantry marched into a shattering blast of cannon-fire. They went down like skittles. The Prussians were sending over shells of a new and dreadful killing-power. The French artillery replied, out of the mouths of obsolete cannon.

  The infantry went to cover.

  And behind a bush, safely crouching under a tiny hillock, lay Dutoit and two others.

  Dutoit was a mere boy, a student of music who also loved history. He was a frenzied patriot. His imagination had been fired by the old glories of fighting France. He used to dream of the splendours of victory under Napoleon the First. He felt that somehow this other Napoleon would revive the glories of France and the Empire. He thrilled to the imaginary music of a Victory March. He laughed as the shells burst. He was part of France, and riding on the right hand of a shining destiny.

  But his companions began to grumble.

  One of them said: “What does that pig of a Badinguet think he’s playing at?” (Badinguet was one of the third Napoleon’s nicknames.)

  The other said: “The Prussians are hacking us to bits with their blasted big guns, and we are lying here like animals waiting to be slaughtered.”

  But Dutoit replied: “Be quiet. This is war. In a war you don’t run forward all the time. Sometimes you watch and wait. Do you realise that we are France? Do you realise that we cannot lose?”

  “Bah,” said the first man.

  Shells screamed overhead. The second man said: “They’re getting close . . .”

  Dutoit went on: “Have courage. What, are you men or mice? Our fathers were in worse holes than this, but they fought through. Where is your spirit? My grandfather fought under the Emperor at Marengo. He said: ‘In the end France must always win,’ and so it must. Has France ever lost; ever really lost? Think of the Battle of Austerlitz! Eylau! The Moskwa! Sometimes it only seems to go badly. But it is the last trick that wins the game.”

  “But where is our artillery, comrade?”

  “It will come.”

  “Where are our reinforcements?”

  “They will be here.”

  “Where is Bazaine?”

  “Rest assured, Bazaine is on his way with a hundred thousand good little soldiers!”

  “Meanwhile these damned shells are coming over like grasshoppers!”

  “Nevertheless we’ll win through,” said Dutoit.

  The first man said: “In my opinion, we’ve lost Sedan.”

  Dutoit replied: “Nothing of the sort. We’ll win, here as elsewhere. Mark my words, comrade, the Battle of Sedan will be ours; a French victory over the damned Prussians!”

  “French Victory my eye!”

  “I swear to you that at any moment we shall hear the Advance . . . we’ll tear into those Prussian guns and silence them, and push on, and win. Sedan is as good as ours.”

  The other man said: “Bah.”

  “You wait a minute,” said Dutoit.

  And perhaps thirty seconds later a shell came whining overhead, and moaning down. It burst twenty yards away. Dutoit rolled over and lay still.

  And the French lines broke. There was a hideous retreat under a murderous storm of gunfire. The Prussian cavalry came through. France was betrayed and beaten.

  That day, Dutoit was dragged into the temporary headquarters of the Medical Officer. There was a wound in his head. Only the scalp was torn. The bone was intact. Dutoit was unconscious, but breathing quite regularly. They bound up his wound, and left him to recover consciousness. A day passed. A week passed. Dutoit’s head healed. Yet he did not come out of his coma. He lay still, like a man asleep.

  He was taken to a hospital. A month passed. He still slept. He was sent home. He slept on. As he slept they fed and washed him. He lay motionless except for the rise and fall of his chest. A year passed. The war was over, lost. Governments changed. Dutoit slept. Such cases are not unknown to medical science: there was a Scots sergeant, wounded at Waterloo, who slept for thirty years! The human brain is an unknown quantity. A touch can overthrow or suspend its conscious life.

  Dutoit lived on at home. Years went by. He was a recurrent newspaper-story. His case made minor medical history. The family of Dutoit died out. He was taken to a hospital again. The hospital was condemned and pulled down. They moved Dutoit. He never knew. The century turned. The te
lephone came. So did the motor-car. He was unaware of this. Some crazy men tinkered with little engines and frameworks of cane supporting wings of silk. They thought they could fly! The world laughed. Dutoit slumbered. Man flew! The world marvelled. Dutoit slept. The Dreyfus affair shook France; but not Dutoit. Queen Victoria died in England: he never heard about it. Presidents and Prime Ministers came and went. Dutoit stayed in bed, blissfully unconscious. There was a mutter of rumour . . . a roar of rage. Germany was on the march again, and France and England were in arms against the Kaiser. France spoke of 1870, and revenge. People remembered Sedan: but Dutoit had forgotten it.

  1914 . . . 1915 . . . 1916 . . . 1917 . . . 1918. A howl of exultation shook the world. Germany had crashed. The Allies were victorious. The thunder of the Kaiser’s guns had made Dutoit’s bed tremble. But he slept through it all. France went mad with rejoicing. Dutoit remained still, deeply sleeping. His beard had grown more than two feet long. The hair of his head had fallen out. But his face was calm and healthy.

  Once in a while he opened his eyes, but saw nothing and slept.

  Peace swept France . . . a peace more nerve-racking than a war. Germany sank to the depths. Out of the great sadist underworld there came a wild-eyed man with an absurd moustache and a crazy book. He was called Hitler. He became the Führer. France became grave and thoughtful. Dutoit slept on.

  Germany rearmed. The rest of Europe went into a frenzy of weapon-making. Everybody knew that war was coming again . . . again with Germany. But not Dutoit!

  Munich sent Europe on tiptoe. Dutoit lay flat. It was coming! Poland! The world crouched, waiting. Then war broke again. Goose-stepping jack-boots crashed along the roads of France again. The great guns roared. Under a screen of treason the Nazi armies swept down. The Allied armies tried to fight. The French artillery thundered again at Sedan. The Germans rolled over them. The French counter-attacked.