Neither Man Nor Dog

by Gerald Kersh

“Well . . . once in . . . every little while. But what do you do?”

  “Oh, I have quite an amusing time. I travel an awful lot. Next month we’re going to Jamaica. And after that——”

  “We?”

  Charlotte shrugged, and said, definitely: “Yes, we. Myself, and a friend. And if you want to know, a man friend. He’s a duke’s son, and enormously rich, and really quite sweet. Well? What is there to stare at? If I didn’t somebody else would: and I can assure you, my dear, that I don’t lose anything by it.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “If you’re talking about ‘A dearer thing than life’, I may as well tell you, I don’t believe in it. I’m determined not to be a dowdy little Hausfrau, having to work my fingers to the bone, and scrape and struggle for every new hat and dress, and stagnate in some stupid suburb with some perfectly dull and boring husband and a house full of shrieking children . . .”

  “Oh? And neither do I. Harold is perfectly marvellous, and Geraldine does not scream, and I don’t work my fingers to the bone. And I can assure you that I’m quite happy, and I think you’re the fool, having to rush about all over the face of the earth looking for something to amuse you.”

  Charlotte laughed; but there was anger at the back of her voice. “We both started poor,” she said, “and I reasoned with you a thousand times. Now tell me; where d’you think all this married stuff is going to get you?”

  “Where should it get me? Where is what you’re doing going to get you?”

  Charlotte replied: “I shall have plenty of money, and be able to do what I like, and go where I like, and buy what I like, and if I pass a shop and see something in the window that I happen to take a fancy to, I can walk straight in and have it. If I want to take a trip round the world, I shall be able to do so as soon as the impulse strikes me——” Got her there! she thought. Poor Dolly; she’s always had a longing to travel—“And in other words, I shall be free!”

  “Free from what?”

  “Free . . . from domestic slavery, from poverty.”

  “And free for what?”

  Thirty seconds passed before Charlotte said: “Free to do as I like.”

  “And for how long?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you’re nearly thirty now. In another ten or fifteen years, what then?”

  Charlotte tore her cigarette to pieces. “And you? What about you? You’re thirty yourself. In another few years’ time, your husband will be fed up with you, and start running around after younger women.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. But I know men.”

  “Only unhappy men.”

  “All men are alike.”

  “Besides,” said Dorothy, “in another fifteen years, Geraldine will be seventeen, and I shall probably have some more children growing up, and there’ll be plenty to occupy my life.”

  “I wouldn’t have a daughter, not for the world,” said Charlotte. “Just think . . . Besides, the time comes when they all clear out, sons and daughters; and there you are, a miserable old woman, worn out, all alone, and nothing to look back upon . . .”

  “Oh, don’t let’s quarrel, Charlotte.”

  “I didn’t start anything, my dear.”

  “You did, Charlotte!”

  “Pardon me, Dorothy, I did not.”

  There was silence. Dorothy looked at the clock, and said: “I must catch my train.”

  The sisters kissed as they said good-bye.

  When Dorothy was gone, Charlotte paced her bedroom. She’s contented! she thought. The little fool; what right has she to be contented, when I . . . She looked in the mirror, examining her face closely. Was this the beginning of a wrinkle at the side of her nose? She picked up a pot containing some turtle-oil preparation, and began to massage her face, then she walked round the room again, savagely kicking at a pair of shoes which stood in her path. . . .

  By this time, Dorothy was twenty miles away. She thought: She has a lovely time and beautiful things. Harold will never earn enough to give me things like that.

  She opened the bag, and took out the hat which Charlotte had given her—the exquisite American hat. She looked at this for a long time. Then the idea came to her: What will Harold say? He’ll know I couldn’t have bought it. And he’d be terribly annoyed if he knew I got it from Charlotte. The window was open. She acted upon the impulse, and dropped the hat out. The wind caught it, and spun it away. She saw it fall in a field, and leaned out to watch it, until it was out of sight.

  Then, a thousand annoyances and a thousand little discontents burst their way to the surface of her mind, and she sat back in the empty compartment, weeping into her handkerchief. Some women have all the luck. . . .

  Tread Lightly

  “Once upon a time there was a time when there was no one but God,” said the old woman; and she proceeded to tell a tale that was old when Darius was young—a rambling, twisted Persian tale of demons and princes.

  But the baby on her knees was too young to understand. He blinked his enormous brown eyes and sucked his thumbs. “Once upon a time there was a King without a Kingdom . . .”

  Meanwhile the people at the loom worked steadily. There were five of them, all moving with a kind of feverish patience over a half-finished carpet of a design as colourful, intricate, and ancient as the grandmother’s story.

  “Now this King without a Kingdom had three sons, two of whom were dead. The third did not exist . . .”

  “Agoo,” said the baby.

  “Observe her,” said the leader of the weavers. “She is seventy years old. She is blind. She has woven her eyes into the carpets. I am eighty years old. My eyes are fading. You, my son; and you, my daughter-in-law; and you, my grandson and my granddaughter; you, also, shall weave your eyes into the carpets. Work! Work while you have the light!”

  He was a tall old man, with an outstretched neck and knotted eyebrows. Time and the loom had bent him like a bow. But there was a tensile strength in the curve of his coffee-coloured back, with its spine like a whangee cane and its muscles like jumping piano-wires.

  “Work on!” he shouted. “Work well, and thank God! Work, my son! In six months we shall be finished. It will be a fine carpet.” He paused over some tiny detail, some infinitesimal speck of red wool; stretched himself, rubbed his forehead, blinked a dozen times, and said: “They walk on your father’s eyes.”

  The old woman murmured: “Now the Prince who had no existence took a knife without a blade and cut . . .”

  The loom clacked. The wool rustled.

  “It is good work,” said the son.

  “For which thank God,” said the old man.

  The baby began to cry. “Wait, wait,” said the wife, and completed another row.

  Seven months passed. They finished the carpet. Fantastic yet harmonious, brilliant but delicate, bold and subtle in its multiplicity of colours and patterns, it lay on the ground at the feet of the dealer. The weavers stood by.

  “No good,” said the dealer.

  “Turn my face towards him,” said the old man. He had become blind. “You say no good? For a thousand years my fathers . . .”

  “I know,” said the dealer. “I know all about that. For a thousand years your fathers made carpets. Of course. And you, and your sons and daughters have worked day and night for a year. Or is it eighteen months? But look at it!”

  “Shahs have sat on such carpets,” said the old man.

  “I’m not saying the work is bad: far from it,” said the dealer. “But the size! Six hundred square feet! Nobody has such floors these days. Take it away.”

  “Take it away? Take it away? Where shall I take it, in the name of God? And look—I am blind! This is my last carpet. I shall never see another carpet. By God and by God, I am selling you these two eyes! Take it away, you say?”

  “May I never be a father to my children if I lie,” said the dealer. “May I go to Hell and burn for ever. By God and the Prophet. I shall lose by it
if I buy. I don’t want it, Omar, not at any price. In fact, I’d rather not have it as a gift. Spit upon my father’s grave if what I tell you is not the purest truth. I shan’t know what to do with it. Well, I don’t want to see you starve. This is my last offer. May I burn in Hell for ever . . .”

  Ten minutes later, the dealer walked away grinning. He had bought the carpet for something like four pounds.

  Speaking to the exporter a week later, he said: “It is a gem and a masterpiece. Talk to me of Tehran? I spit on Tehran. I spit on Ispahan. This Kirman carpet is fit for the palace of the King of France. It is one of Omar’s. His family has worked for my family for ten generations. I spit on all other carpets in the world.”

  They finished the deal over coffee. The exporter got the carpet for eight pounds. “May my sons’ sons be born with no eyes,” said the dealer. “I lose by this. It cost me more. Still, I don’t want to lose your friendship. And since this masterpiece goes with the rest. All right. God forgive you. And may I, also, be forgiven for robbing my children.”

  “It is I who lose, Abdallah,” said the exporter. “I take this carpet so as to keep alive the memories of old times. Upon the head of my father it is so. By the honour of my mother and my daughters, I lose on the deal. Let me rot in purgatory for eleven million years—me, and my father, and my father’s father—if what I say is not true. Ai-yah, fool that I am!”

  He sold the carpet to a Bond-street firm for £42. Mr. Roget ticketed it as a museum-piece, and sold it to Sir Morgan Tre­morgan for a hundred and sixty guineas.

  And so the carpet lay in Sir Morgan’s library for five years, until the chaos of the Rubber Slump. Men blew out their brains. Sir Morgan died of a broken heart. And his creditors took over his effects, and the carpet came under the hammer at Hodgson’s in the Strand. . . .

  It was rolled up with three other vast carpets and labelled: “LOT 69—FOUR VERY FINE ANTIQUE PERSIAN CARPETS.” A Mr. Garabed Mamoulian acquired the lot for sixteen pounds, unrolled them in his shop in the Haymarket; kicked the others aside while he lingered over Omar’s work, and walked away grinning.

  He had bought the carpet for something like four pounds.

  But he sold it, the following year, to the press-lord of Illinois, Johnson Williams Oliver, for seven hundred guineas, guaranteeing it to be the favourite carpet of Omar Khayyám.

  Oliver refused an offer of ten thousand dollars for it in California.

  The old blind carpet-maker, meanwhile, sat by the side of his old blind wife.

  The son, thinner and older, paused from time to time to rub his sore eyes.

  “Once upon a time there was a time when there was no one but God,” droned the old woman. But the baby, having achieved the age of eight years, was too busy at the loom to listen.

  The Naked Man

  In the forest things grew nightmarishly. Tree jostled tree. Weed strangled weed. Grabbing and sucking at the soil, vast plants raced leaf-to-leaf up towards the sun. Sometimes a great tree fell; the germs of decay that flourished in the wet heat ate it up, and the shoots of other trees wrestled for space in the place that was left. Staring blossoms of sickly scent coquetted with pollen-bearing insects in the steamy greenish shadows. Everything that had voice chattered, gibbered, roared, or sang; everything that had colour opened and blazed. Vitality ran loose—the gluttonous vitality of the forest. Ravenous birds snapped up beetles that flew like blue sparks. Sometimes, crashing and snarling, a big cat dragged down something that squealed. Fungi hid under roots, but wild swine dug them out. Even flowers turned themselves into death-traps and caught flies. One seed in a billion might germinate; one life in a million might survive birth; but that was still too much. Life ate life. To live, it was necessary to stay out of the reach of things. At least two creatures had discovered this: the louse that lived between the shoulders of the tiger; and the ape that swung in the high branches of the tree.

  The apes were new creatures. Nature was still making experiments, building and breaking things, making each animal in its way perfect. She had formed pterodactyls, birds with teeth, impossible lizards taller than trees, impracticable cattle with too many horns; but all these monstrosities had been rubbed back into the mud from which they had come. But new things were being born of the struggle. The defenceless beasts of the plain beyond the forest developed strength and speed. Springy power and lithe beauty were rising out of the terror and weakness of the antelope that bounded beyond the claws of the hunting cats. The shocks and worries of existence were changing the face of life. Species were becoming stabilized.

  But still there occurred strange accidents.

  A grey, primeval ape of nondescript form, mating with a big red she-monkey, begot strange twins. They were born one night in a tree-top. The one that died was grey like its father. The other, a male, lived. His colour was carrot-red; his fur widespread but sparse. His face was different; there was more of it above the eyes. Fed on insects and fruit, he grew slowly, but survived his perilous infancy and became big and strong. There was about this creature something that distinguished him from his fellows. He was either more, or less, than the things that swung, gibbering, from the branches. His hands were larger. Like the apes, he wandered purposelessly in blind curiosity, but he possessed a strange faculty for imitation. Seeing wild swine rooting, he would root. Seeing the tiger lie in wait, he also waited. He ate everything, cramming his mouth with fruit, flowers, bark, beetles, and carrion.

  And all the time he fought. Running with the apes, he nevertheless kept aloof from them, tolerating no companionship. In the season, he fought the bachelors for mates; but having won them, he drove them away, producing no offspring. He was at once intrepid and cowardly, shy and audacious, ferocious and treacherous. The apes hated him; he was of the wrong size and shape; an unmatchable freak; an accident.

  One day they drove him away. The battle was short and furious. He was outnumbered. Soon he disappeared in the trees and hid, licking his wounds. One sleek little female followed him, plaintively chattering. He sent her screaming with a red gash across her neck; turned, snarling and grunting, and swung away. He travelled steadily, hurling himself from branch to branch, sending burst blossoms and startled birds fluttering into the shadows. He ate as he travelled, snatching fruit, eggs, spiders, and on one occasion a gurgling green bird with a red crest.

  While the light lasted he went on, and slept briefly and suspiciously on a branch. Sunrise followed sunrise. Something was driving him. He grew thinner, but travelled faster. The trees became wider-spaced. He dropped to the ground and ran uncouthly, sometimes on his hind legs and sometimes on all-fours, skirting the steaming river and the black mud where crocodiles snapped and sank and rotting logs drifted. There was no more fruit. He ate bark and twigs. Once, smelling pig, he hung on a high branch and dropped to fight desperately with a small wild boar, which he killed with his hands and teeth as a child demolishes a toy—breaking legs, tearing hair. So he ate and slouched on his way.

  The river grew wilder. The air was cooler, and a breeze blew. The sounds of the forest faded, giving place to a murmuring, and unending sighing. He passed the last tree. There was silence, dreadful and immeasurable. He roared. Echo roared back. The sun sank. It was profoundly dark in the sand-dunes. He lay in a hollow, covering his face with his arms and slept. And then it seemed that he was again in the forest, sleeping high in the branches of a tree . . . and something was cracking, and he was falling. Instinctively, he reached out a groping hand to clutch a bough; found nothing; cried out despairingly, threshed wildly and awoke with his hands full of sand. The trees were far behind him, and he was sitting on a wide, sloping beach. He looked about him. The sun was rising. It burst over the horizon. Miles behind him the jungle stirred, shrieking and twittering. Before him lay the end of the world. It ended in green water, sparkling and heaving, running forward, drawing back.

  And as he looked, there flashed into his soul a strange pang: a pang of terror mixed with exaltation; a yearning to advance combin
ed with an impulse to go back; a ferocious anger; a misery. He rose erect on the dune, blinking at the dazzling water; sucked into his ponderous chest a vast draught of salty air, pounded his bosom, and roared with all his might at the shining, empty silence.

  He knew, then, that somewhere before him or behind him there was a mate. Meanwhile, he was thirsty. He ran down to the water, waited for a wave, and filled his mouth; spluttered, grimaced, and spat. He growled in his bewilderment. The water was bitter.

  He was the first man.

  Time passed. There were hot days and cold nights. Mountains became boulders. Boulders split in the frosts, and the wind ground them to sand. Grain against grain the sand milled itself to dust, and the wind drifted the dust into dark, waving heaps. There was no means whereby a man could find his way, for the face of the earth altered with every breath of breeze; hills became valleys, and even as one looked the valleys became lakes of rippling dust.

  In the middle of a dry hell of dust-dunes that shifted, murmuring, like a landscape in an evil dream—across the wilderness under a dreadful liver-coloured sky, a creature staggered while the light lasted. It was a male, covered from head to foot with shaggy hair, the colour of which was lost under a caked coating of grey dust. He might have been an ape, but there was something about him which made him either more, or less, than an ape. He walked almost upright. Above his reddened eyes there was a protuberance like a forehead. He was hungry; the skin hung from him in dry folds. Thirsty: his black tongue lolled, swollen, between big, prominent teeth. Something was driving him. He ploughed, reeling, between the singing dust-heaps, sometimes looking up at the huge red sun that hung low in the western sky. Suddenly it sank. There was no more light. The night was impenetrable and cold. He dared not rest, but lurched on in silence.

  The night passed. The last moment of endurance passed. He found that he had fallen, exhausted and without hope. The reddened eyes closed. And then there came into his soul a new terror, one which he could not understand. It seemed that he was in a high place, and was falling with inconceivable speed through empty space. Instinctively, he threw up a hand to clutch something; found nothing; tried to cry out, and awoke with his hands full of powdery dust.