by Gerald Kersh
And Dutoit was dying, of sheer old age.
They watched his bedside. His heart was limping slower.
It happened one morning.
A young doctor, standing over the old man, saw him open his eyes. And to everybody’s amazement, Dutoit spoke, for the first time in seventy years.
He said: “Where are the Prussians?”
Taken by surprise, the doctor stammered: “We have counterattacked and driven them back from Sedan.”
“I told you so,” said Dutoit, with a sweet smile; and he closed his eyes and died.
Macagony’s Fist
Having left theological college to become a salesman of corsets, and having left that job on account of an unconquerable habit of practical demonstration, Macagony became a welter-weight boxer. His career in this line is not recorded in the history of the ring. His enemies suggest that he hit the referee with a stout-bottle because he was disqualified for biting. He came to Chicago in 1909, and went into politics in the company of Hinkydink Kenna; was congratulated on having emerged with only a fractured jaw, and jumped the first freight-train to Nevada where he went to work in a copper mine.
Here he found his real vocation—blowing things up. He learned exactly what to do with gelignite. If you wanted to know just where to place your ballistite cartridge so as to remove the front of the foreman’s house, or precisely how much damage could be done with an oil-drum packed with black powder, you went to Macagony. He carried with him a high-explosive atmosphere. He had one of those tense Irish faces, with eyes that seemed to burn deeper and deeper into the orbits—you felt that in a few seconds that would touch some blasting charge inside his skull, and then that would be the end of everything. He had the traditional Irish nature, which is compounded of equal parts of poetry and picric acid . . . the soul of Dion O’Banion, who sang “The Rose of Tralee” to his aged mother before rushing out to put five bullets into John Dougherty—John Dougherty, who believed in fairies, and murdered Anna Kaniff with an ice-pick.
As soon as the Civil War broke out, Macagony went to Dublin to throw some bombs. He must have been the original Irish Troubles. I lost sight of him at that period, and quite forgot him until I met him in 1936 in Hooligan’s Spanish Bar. Macagony had changed; aged; lost flesh and acquired a hunted look. Moreover, there was something wrong with his right hand. It appeared to be horribly deformed—bulbous, like a turnip, and covered with a woollen thing like a sock.
“Nice to see you again,” he said, and added, in the same breath, “loan me five.”
I asked: “How was the revolution?”
He replied: “Great. Great! I blew up three armoured cars. Once, I threw seventy-seven Mills bombs in sixty-three seconds, by the clock.”
“Is that how you hurt your hand?”
Macagony became furtive. Then, pocketing my five dollars with his left hand, he soared into a good mood. An Irish good mood. When Irish eyes are smiling, watch your step: and when you hear the lilt of Irish laughter, take care to arm yourself either with a quart bottle or a fire-extinguisher. “That . . .” he began; then seized my coat, and whispered: “Swear on the head of your mother that you’ll keep your lip buttoned.”
“You bet I’ll keep my lip buttoned.”
“I’d get twenty years.”
“Do I talk?”
“All right; listen, then. You know I always like a good explosion?”
“Didn’t you once put a bicycle-pump filled with gun-powder under my chair?”
“Don’t interrupt. Well, you know I was in the troubles, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Ssssh! . . . Well, it was great. I used to go about with a sawed-down forty-four in my pants pocket, and a Mauser on a lanyard down me leg. . . . Bombs? Un-limited! I once dropped one down a tuba mirum in a military band. Boy, oh boy, have you ever heard a pineapple explode inside a tuba? You haven’t lived, man, till you’ve heard that. Ahhh . . .”
Macagony sighted an acquaintance—one of the waiters—and leapt up to exchange conversation.
“You’d think he was a baby-face,” he said, on returning, “but with these two eyes, I’ve seen him shoot six with his own hand when we burned Dunville’s wharf. . . . What was I saying? Oh yes; me mitt.”
“You hurt it in an explosion . . .”
“I did not. It was a different thing altogether. Me and some of the boys were making a bit of a raid on the Orpheus Cinema, see?”
“Well?”
“There was Murphy, there was Flash Guinness, there was Guts McGrath, there was——”
“Well, go on.”
“Well, first of all, we gets a couple of petrol cans, see? And I fills them nice and tight with sticks of dynamite, see? And I fits a detonator in each cap, runs a wire, presses the button, and up she goes. See?”
“Very nice.”
“I wish you could have been there. There wasn’t an unbroken window for miles around. It was raining bits of Black-and-Tan for hours afterwards. The dogs in the streets got into the habit of sitting on their haunches with open mouths, making a meal off the falling bits.”
“As long as you were kind to the animals.”
“Sure. Well, we start to make a get-away, when what should we see but a couple of detachments of the Black-and-Tans coming down from both ends of the street. So we broke into a house, and got on the roof to fight it out. See?”
“Uh-uh.”
“I had a couple of tramcar conductors’ money-bags full of Mills bombs, and we all had our guns. See? So we held the roof. It was a sight worth seeing. You could hardly see a hand in front of you, for bullets. Murphy got his first. You fire a rifle at a tiled roof, and the bullet will ricochet round and round for weeks. It’s not fair. Me, I did my best with the bombs, but we were outnumbered, see? They got on the other roof, and we fought a duel from chimney to chimney. It was great. But they were coming in on us, and I was down to me last bomb. Well, I waited till I should see the best chance to use it. I had me finger in the ring of the pin, and me hand round the bomb, and I waited. Then, at the last moment, I swings the pin out of the bomb, and I throws, ZING!”
“Did you do plenty of damage?”
“I didn’t wait to see. I got down on my belly, and make a get-away, across the roof and down a fire-escape, right through the soldiers, hell for leather across town, and down to our hideout.”
“Where was that?”
“In a cellar. . . . Well, we get together there, and we lie doggo. The streets are lousy with soldiers, see? We could not dare to move. Then, all of a sudden, Guts McGrath says to me: ‘Macagony, what’s the matter with your hand?’ I looks at my right hand, and what do you think I see?”
“It was bleeding?”
“Bleeding! No. I still had me right hand tight round the bomb. I’d thrown the pin, and kept hold of the bomb. And there we were, not daring to move, down in a little cellar with a live Mills bomb, with me holding down the spring; and if I’d let go, we’d all have been in hell in three seconds.”
“Good God! What did you do?”
“Nothing. I kept tight hold. We was down there five days. I didn’t get a wink of sleep. I lost me nerve. I didn’t dare do anything . . .”
Macagony winced. I said: “But, Mac. You could have wedged the spring down with a nail, or a hairpin, or something.”
“I know. But none of us thought of that till later. And me muscles were atrophied, or something: I couldn’t open me hand . . .” Macagony tapped his covered right fist.
“And what happened then?”
“Nothing. Nothing, me boy. Nothing. I resigned meself to me fate, and here I am.”
“And the bomb?”
“Here it is to this day,” said Macagony, pointing to his bulbous hand, “but don’t say a word to anybody, I’d get twenty years if you did—hey! wait a minute! Where are you going to, in such a hurry . . .”
Grey Old She-Wolf
Nature is absolutely pitiless. When you can no longer run you lie down. When you lie down, die.
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br /> The old she-wolf had run with the pack for many years fulfilling the bitter life-cycle of the species, hunting, killing, eating, starving, fighting, mating and giving birth. Many generations of wolves had come and gone. Only she remained. She had fought time. Time had torn out her hair, stiffened her legs and rotted her teeth.
Now alone she was marked for death. She was starving. It seemed that in the whole breadth of the world no life was stirring. Even the trees might have been dead—frozen to death. Nothing moved, nothing breathed.
She knew that unless she could find food very soon she would be too weak even to walk, then she would lie down in the snow and die.
If an old wolf could think, she might say to herself: “To what purpose should I struggle to outlive this day, since, food or no food, I must die to-morrow?” But above all things comes the will to live. The old she-wolf slunk on smiling, listening, creeping in the strong black shadows between the trees.
The moon rose higher—the big, blinding, white Siberian moon. The wolf moved faster, throwing herself forward with that long, smooth stride with which wolf eats up distance, weaving through the trees. Hunger was gnawing at her stomach.
Suddenly she stopped, crouching. She could smell man—or rather that which appertained to man, fire. It came from miles away to the south. There came into her mind the taste of blood which she associated with that smell, and also a memory of pain. She, with her pack, had once run through the streets of a village and eaten two men. She knew that man had means of biting hard and deep, but she would have fought a bear now, for a scrap of fish.
The miles passed. The smell grew stronger, burning wood. The moon soared higher. The she-wolf ran faster and faster. Saliva hung in a frozen spike from her lower jaw, and her breath hung in little icy diamonds to the hair on her skull.
Then something bit her. She yelped and tried to leap away. But she was caught by a forefoot in the teeth of a wolf-trap. She tried to pull her foot away. The steel bit to the bone. She stood still, panting.
In the course of her long life, she learned all that a wolf can ever know. She had seen these things before. When they bit they held on, held on for ever, and bites could not hurt them, nor all the tugging in the world tire them, and when the sun rose, a man came with an axe.
The teeth of the trap bit deeper. She opened her throat and expressed her anguish in one utter howl so mournful and protracted that people in the distant village stirred in their sleep.
From the south came always the tantalising smell of life.
She lay down. But neither age nor weakness could change the fact that she was a wolf—more than a wolf: a mother of wolves. She bit at the trap. A tooth broke. She snarled and bit at her leg above the teeth of the trap. Her mouth was sore, and her teeth worn and loose, but she bit hard and fast. It was like an amputation with a dull knife during which even the knife feels pain.
An hour passed. The trapped paw hung by one tendon. She tugged once and was free, but on only three feet. And then she became again aware of hunger.
The she-wolf looked at the paw in the trap, and licked it. It was cold and strange, no longer a part of her. She bit a piece out of it, swallowed it, bit again and again, until nothing was left but a sliver of furry bone between the interlocked spikes. But dawn was coming. She limped on, southward, sometimes whimpering with pain.
From time to time she stopped, sniffed, listened, and changed her path. Her breath came heavily now, and every step was terrible. Needles of frost had begun to bite into the gnawed red stump of her leg. She knew that it would be necessary to use cunning, since men also run in packs and are difficult to kill.
At this hour, very few human beings were awake, and it happened that the only one who had yet ventured out of doors into the awful cold was an old woman called Katka.
She, like the wolf that was coming, had outlived all of her generation. There was nobody in all the world who could say: “I knew Katka when she was in her prime.” She had lived so long that nobody knew how old she was—even she had forgotten, but she claimed to be able to remember the passing of the legions of Napoleon when she was a little girl.
Katka, also, was terribly hungry, and looking for food. If she could have reasoned, she would have thought: “To what purpose should I struggle to outlive this day, since, food or no food, I must certainly die to-morrow or the next day?”
But human beings do not live according to reason any more than wolves—even less, in fact. Katka had begged a little wood for the stove and the village butcher had given her a few scraps of meat such as one might throw to a dog. Another well-disposed person had presented her with a few handfuls of flour and some salt.
There came into her head an idea. If only she had a griddle she could cook herself a griddle-cake of flour, water and salt, to eat with her meat. She looked out of doors and felt the cold and thought: “No, it is too cold to go out. I will simply boil the flour in water with the meat.”
But the desire for the hot cake was too strong. She wrapped herself in all her rags, and crept to the cottage of a kind-hearted neighbour to beg for the loan of a griddle. “Before God, I will bring it back to you in an hour. Before God!” she said.
“An hour?”
“Only an hour.”
The neighbour handed Katka the griddle, a kind of hot-plate with a long flat handle all of iron. “Take it,” she said, “but bring it back. It must be heavy, though, for you to carry.”
“No, thank God I am still very strong.”
“Listen, Katka, I will give you a cake later on when I make some. Don’t bother with the griddle.”
“Thank God,” said Katka, “I still have my health and strength and can still cook myself a cake, old as I am.” She held the griddle on her shoulder as a man carries a rifle. “Good day, and God be with you. I heard a wolf howling last night, so look after your little ones. They are devils, wolves.”
“Nonsense, there are no wolves.”
“I heard one. I once saw Napoleon pass. I am old enough to know a wolf when I hear one, I hope? Mark my words.”
Katka went out, somewhat offended, carrying the griddle. She had walked, perhaps, twenty yards, when she heard a soft, throaty snarl.
She started and then saw the old she-wolf—bloody and terrible, skeletal in her emaciation, panting so that the breath steamed out of her mouth and nostrils as if her throat were boiling like a kettle, slavering, grimmer, greyer, more gaunt than death itself, crouching for a spring with red ferocity in her desperate eyes, and menace in every bristling hair on her neck.
Their eyes met. They stood still. Then the wolf sprang. Automatically the old woman struck downwards with the griddle, its edge, worn by fire to the sharpness of an axe, struck the she-wolf between the eyes. She fell forward and died in silence.
Katka hobbled back to her neighbour’s cottage, crying: “Look! Look! Look! Look!”
The butcher skinned the wolf, and gave Katka the pelt for a bedspread, but for all that she died ten days later of what they called “a cold”.
We should have described it as pneumonia, perhaps adding: “The old man’s friend”.
The Frenchman who Understood Women
The woman with banana-coloured hair seemed to parade in front of herself banging a drum. When the attention of her companions wandered a little she talked louder. When they ran away she dragged them back.
The great room was full of the mutter of a hundred conversations, while, in a hall beyond, fifty couples danced to the music of a fifteen-man band and a negress with a voice like warm honey sang the “Basin Street Blues”.
Yet I give you my word of honour; the conversation of that uproarious woman was clearly audible from where I sat, ten yards away. Kyak-yak-yak-wak! It was as penetrating as the voice of a terrified duck in a thunderstorm. She laid about her with punches and coy slaps. Once, with cowish coquetry, she chased a startled youth right round a sofa.
She waddled like a Manatee—one of those shapeless sea-beasts which showmen keep in tanks and des
cribe as “Genuine Mermaids”. I wanted to throttle her, tie her up. She embarrassed me, that blaring brass band of a blonde. It was not as if she had even good looks to recommend her. Pig-eyed, buck-toothed, with a face as red and shiny and a voice as shrill as a penny squeaking balloon.
“Bah!” I said to the gentleman who sat on my right.
“Pardon?”
“I said ‘Bah’. I was referring to that intolerable woman. Listen to that voice!”
“True,” he said. “Her voice is appalling. As Houelle so neatly put it: There are beautiful flowers which are scentless, and beautiful women that are unlovable. To my mind, the most beautiful woman in the world is unattractive if her voice is not melodious. Shall we walk into the garden?”
“Why not?”
We went out. He carried himself with a kind of precise grace, that pale and interesting old gentleman. There was something about him that reminded me of Conrad Veidt. The shattering yellow voice pursued us: the blonde was beating a fat man with a carnation. “Women!” I growled.
He replied: “Pigault-Lebrun says: Those who always speak well of women do not know them enough: those who always speak ill of them do not know them at all. I am a Frenchman, sir, and have studied women. Having always had reasonable intelligence and a highly-developed critical faculty, as well as a lot of money and (in my youth) a fair share of good looks, I have not lacked opportunities. Are you married?”
“No.”
“But you are still young. You are wise not to marry young. I think it is impossible to achieve happy marriage before the age of forty. One must select with infinite care the perfect mate. For, as Petit-Senn says: Marriage with a good woman is a harbour in a tempest; but with a bad woman it proves a tempest in a harbour. I was fifty-five when I married, and thank God I have never regretted it.”
Over the din of the “Basin Street Blues” came the cackle of the banana-blonde.
“That voice!” he said. “Let us walk a little farther. Yes . . . I have had a wild, irresponsible life, my friend, and know women. I was restless. Having an artistic soul, if you will allow me to say so, I sought perfection. I married when I finally discovered the one woman in the world with whom I could happily share my life and fortune. Mark my words, the woman you really love is she who would have been your friend if she had been born a man. She should be your equal, so that you may enjoy life hand-in-hand with her. The perfect marriage should never be founded on passion, for, as Feuchères says: Every great passion is but a prolonged hope.
