Melmoth

by Sarah Perry

  “He’d sit hunched where you are now, but with a habit of looking up all the time—up at the windows, up at the door. Then today came, and we fought, because I wanted to go out, and he wouldn’t take me; and I made him tell me what he’d learned, late at night, whispering at the papers spread out on the table.”

  Helen says nothing. She is conscious of standing for a moment between realities, and neither appeal: on the one hand, a life which, though dreary, is dreary in the manner of her choosing; on the other, regions of confusion and darkness for which she’s been given no map. The candle gutters in its blue glass dish. The tea is cold. She says, “Go on.”

  “It is all vague—I am a hopeless witness!—but I know he took my hand, saying, ‘Hoffman was right, you know, the old fool!’ All the while his eyes roamed all around the room with a kind of longing frightened look. There were accounts of her all over Europe and the Middle East, he said, and it’s always the same: a woman in dark clothes seen just at the very corner of your eye, slipping from view when you turn your head. It is Melmoth the Witness, wandering the earth until she’s weary and her feet are bleeding—in some countries they leave out a chair, just in case she happens to pass by. And she’s lonely, and she wants a companion, so she goes to cells and asylums and burned-out houses and gutters—and she whispers, and croons, and always knows your name. Or she’ll follow you down paths and alleys in the dark, or come in the night and sit waiting at the end of your bed—can you imagine it, feeling the mattress sink, and the sheets move? When she turns her eyes on you it’s as if she’s been watching all your life—as if she’s seen not only every action, but every thought, every shameful secret, every private cruelty . . . there, Helen, you shivered! Don’t you worry, we’re only children telling tales by the fire—”

  But it is quite impossible not to turn, slowly—to look, with a shameful prick of fear, at the window, and see that it is fastened. Helen says, “But if she’s been watching all their lives—watching, since they were children—are they damned, then? Is there no hope?”

  Thea frowns. “I’ve surveyed the evidence,” she says, gesturing at the papers on the table, “and I do not think it quite the case that some are born to sweet delight, and some are born to endless night, as Blake has it. Sometimes she is seen once, and never again—though of course after that you’d look for her in every dark alley, in every shadow, and be minded to keep your nose clean.”

  “So we have free will, I suppose.” (Helen looks again: the window is fastened, and on the sill a jackdaw is pecking at the glass.)

  “More’s the pity. I always thought it would be rather relaxing to have one’s life organized by the Fates. If Karel was always going to leave me—if I was always to get old, and sick—there’d be no sense railing against it, and no use seeking out someone to blame.”

  “What then?” says Helen. “What then, when she sits on the end of your bed, or waits for you in a stairwell at midnight? What does she do?”

  “In every legend, in every account, it’s always the same. She holds out her arms, and says: Take my hand—I’ve been so lonely! It would be tempting, wouldn’t it, if you felt no other hand would ever be offered, to take hers, and go wherever she took you? Others, like Hoffman I suppose, expire on the spot—would you hand me that bottle? I’ll make do without a glass.” She cradles the bottle in her lap, because it is too heavy to lift.

  Now Helen finds she cannot lift her eyes to the window (though she could not, if you asked her, say what she thinks might regard her from beyond the glass).

  “So does she come only for the most wicked of us—for people beyond all hope of redemption?”

  “I think not,” says Thea. “There is a story, there, in Karel’s papers, of Melmoth coming to a prison cell. But the prisoner has done nothing wrong, carries no burden of guilt. She is merely in despair—but all the same, Melmoth was watching.”

  “Then is nobody safe?”

  “Nobody, I think, who might be tempted—even if it’s just because they’re lonely—to take her hand . . .” Thea, fumbling, puts the bottle on the table. Wine drips down the neck. “So,” she says: “Last night Karel told me all this, saying he knew it was all fairy tales—but I wasn’t fooled: I could see that he was afraid, in an odd, excited way. And then we drank, and it made me dazed, and someone was here—I’d swear to it in court: someone in black, who came to the door—or had been here all along—look—another glass, you see? Three glasses, three chairs . . .” She is distressed: her leonine head droops over weak, half-clenched fists. Helen stands, and busies herself at the table: cups decently cleared, scarlet rings of wine wiped with a cloth. When she returns Thea is herself again, or as much herself as she can be, these days. “I remember Karel talking softly and cozily, as though to an old friend—I remember feeling sleepy: it was like walking down into a pool of warm water. Then, my dear Helen, I was aware of nothing until you saw fit to give me, a woman of indifferent constitution, a good hard slap.”

  She laughs, which permits Helen to laugh also, and say: “Yes, I’m sorry about that. Hardly the manners my mother taught me.” She sits again at the table, and surveys Thea, lightly clasping her hands. “Maybe she came for Karel,” she says, because it is of course a ludicrous notion (Karel Pražan, his hand in that of Melmoth the Witness, tramping the lands of the Bohemian crown in his excellent tan leather shoes!); and because it would be so infinitely preferable to his having merely tired of his lover.

  “Oh, certainly, certainly,” says Thea. The wine has caused her to flush, and to look well. “That is likely to be it. She would not have had to watch him long to catch him out in a sin.” She pauses, grows serious, and says: “Go on. You’ve got some of the Hoffman document. You may as well take the rest.” She fumbles with the nearest paper: photocopied sheets from a paperback book. “Though let me keep this—I’ve not finished reading it yet. But take the rest—don’t you think I want them out of my house?”

  Helen stands, and lightly touching her shoulder in passing, begins to gather the notebooks and documents disordered on the table. Karel’s handwriting is mercifully neat—indeed, almost troublingly so: it gives the effect of a student working without pleasure and in fear of failure. There are photocopied excerpts from seventeenth-century works in German and in French; there are newspaper clippings from the Daily Express dated 1953. There is also a single typed sheet entitled Melmoth the Witness: Primary Sources, to which Helen is immediately drawn. “Seen this?” she says, and sets it before Thea, in the light of the burned-down candle, so they can read together:

  Melmoth the Witness: Primary Sources

  Dr. Karel Pražan, February 2017

  “The Ballad of Wheal Biding” [collected 1921 by Cecil Sharpe, Cornwall] A woman with bloodied feet seen “watching ever waiting” by the sole miner who survived the collapse of the Wheal Biding copper mine in 1823 (NOTE: consult Hansard??)

  Der Schimmelreiter (The Rider on the White Horse) [Theodor Storm (1888)] One supposes the Rider to be an iteration of Melmoth (?male, not travelling on foot, &c.)

  Letter from Sir David Ellerby to his wife Elizabeth [29th September 1637, original in National Trust archives, UK] Persuasive account, if second person only (useful comparison w/ Foxe: see Ridley, Hooper et. al.!!!)

  The Hoffman document [J. A. Hoffman (2017): personal collection of K. Pražan] Elaboration unnecessary.

  Melmoth the Wanderer [C. R. Maturin (1820)] Melmoth rendered as male (differs in key respects incl. Faustian pact/no qualities relating to bearing witness. NOTE: the author’s poverty, isolation &c. —telling?? Had C. R. Maturin himself encountered the Witness?! Likely if not probable. Consult eg letters, remains &c????)

  arod jnice v Zeleném Lese (The Witch in the Greenwood) [Janá ek (1899)] Incomplete opera depicting a witch dwelling in the Moravian forest and spying on sick children. Never performed (NOTE: Consult diaries, &c)

  “The Testimony of Nameless and Hassan,” in The Cairo Journals of Anna Marney, 1931 (Virago Women’s Life Writing Seri
es, 1985, ed. C. Callil) Elaboration unnecessary.

  “Elaboration unnecessary,” says Helen, frowning; and it is fondness, not contempt, that makes her laugh and say: “What nonsense is this—primary sources!—a failed opera, a folk song, a novel nobody reads?”

  “Watching, ever waiting,” sings Thea, gruffly, as some Cornish balladeer might do; then she laughs, too. “Maybe she’s got him though, Helen, eh? Came in through the window on her bleeding feet and whisked him off to a tin mine.” Her laugh falters; she says, “Well. I hope she brings him back. Listen, Helen: I feel sick.”

  “I should think you do,” says Helen, briskly. “You must go to bed.”

  “I can’t go to bed without Karel. I can’t get in.”

  Helen surveys her friend. “Have you tried?”

  Thea is petulant. It does not sit well on her. “I don’t want to try. Why should I? He shouldn’t have left me! I shouldn’t be alone!”

  Helen, with swift indifferent movements (it would hardly do to let Thea dwell on the humiliation of requiring help, when she has only ever given it), neatly piles the papers and notebooks, clears the wine, blows out the candle.

  “Since I’m here,” she says, “why don’t you see how far you can walk?” There are three jackdaws on the windowsill. There is nothing curious in this—nothing odd in their watchful blue-eyed gaze—but it seems to her, as she stands and crosses the room, that six blue eyes go with her. “Just see what you can do alone,” says Helen, “then you know what help you need. Think of it as gathering evidence.”

  Thea is mollified. “Very well.” She stands. The wheelchair rolls back. She is on her feet. She says: “Give me your arm.”

  “No.” Helen will not unbend. “Use the table, the back of that chair.”

  “Then bring these, at least”—Thea gestures to a pile of papers on which is written: The Testimony of Nameless and Hassan—“don’t ghost stories make the best bedtime reading?”

  Twenty uncertain paces and Thea is on her bed. She shakes with the effort of it, she is breathless, but she cannot quite conceal her pride.

  Helen kneels. She removes Thea’s slippers. “If you can get in,” she says, “you can get out.” The air between them is uneasy, but she will not allow her friend to slide into helplessness. The climb out, she thinks, will be impossible. She puts the manuscript on the oak cabinet beside the bed.

  “You need to bring my medication.” Thea fumbles at the belt of her dressing gown, at the turned-down quilt; gives instruction, briskly, as to which packet, which bottle. Then Helen is alone for a moment in the empty kitchen. It is possible to summon up, if she closes her eyes, the memory of evenings there, in which she ate little, and drank less, but allowed herself nonetheless to take the pleasure she did not deserve. How was it possible that these things could be lost: that Karel could have gone, and taken with him his love, his companionship? When she returns with a glass of water and a dish of tablets, Thea has contrived to slide beneath the quilt. She has wiped off her lipstick, the green glaze on her eyelids; she is flushed and weary; she might be a worn-out child. She is already reading the document (Helen leans forward and reads: Altan Sakir his father was a tailor . . .).

  “Thank you,” says Thea. She is grateful and ashamed.

  “I will come back tomorrow evening,” says Helen. “But sooner, if you need me.” She pauses. Then with a careful diffidence she says, “If it seems you need help, we can find it, I’m sure.” Thea’s hand is on the cover. She has taken off the splints that strengthen her wrist, and the skin there is very tender. Helen touches it. She says, “Sleep well. I’ll close the door. Let’s not let Melmoth in,” and Thea laughs, and feigns fear.

  Before she goes home, Helen puts in her satchel the remainder of Josef Hoffman’s document, feeling that she ought at least to follow that dour unlikeable boy to whatever end awaited him. Then, feeling pleasantly as if she transgresses, she takes a notebook in which Karel has transcribed, in that eerily neat hand, a letter from a man named Ellerby to his wife Elizabeth. The jackdaws on the window are gone; the snow still falls. From Thea’s room, the long shallow breaths of a sleeper. Helen Franklin turns out the light, and leaves. In the Old Town Square it is quiet: only Master Jan Hus, awaiting the flames of his martyrdom, cannot sleep a wink. But—no, it is perhaps not only Master Hus; for if you are a diligent witness you might see, concealed in the courtyard which Helen is now leaving, a figure dressed in black: patiently waiting, patiently watching, patiently biding its time.

  The following morning it is not sound that wakes her, but sensation. Coming out of the half-death of sleep she grows conscious of the rough uncovered mattress against her shoulder, her buttocks—of light shining through the closed lids of her eyes so that she sees in them a fretted network of veins. She rises up through all the accumulations of memory that must be sifted through before the day begins: Thea in her chair; the spill of bright hair across the rubber handle; the one light shining in the dark above her door; the clean snow drifted on the step. She is conscious of a feeling of unease which is not the usual morning anxiety of I am still alive, it seems, but of something more immediate. Her skin pricks: she feels all at once alert, awake, as if she has been doused in icy water. She cannot quite open her eyes—they are weighted with worry—it seems to her inescapably the case that she is not alone. She has come, she thinks, drowsily: she has come for me; then there is the sudden shaking off of sleep, and with it the lessening of unease—it would not do to let nightmares follow her beyond the dawn! She opens her eyes, half-smiling at herself—and finds that, indeed, she is not alone.

  Seated in the small chair at her desk is a woman in black. Hard light from the east causes a blurred brightness all around the figure, as if she herself is the source of light: the image is indistinct, but all the same there is quite clearly the long drape of black silk fabric against a thigh, the movement of a white hand. Helen’s heart rises and sinks—she feels it move, feels the panicked slamming shut of valves, the hectic coursing of her blood. Then the woman speaks. “No wonder you look so bad, eh?” she says. “Didn’t know about Melmotka, is that it? Didn’t know and only just found out and now you think she’s coming. Ha! Stupid Englishwoman. You think she’d come for you?”

  It is not after all the drape of fine silk, but of Albína Horáková’s dressing gown—black, certainly, but made of some cheap stuff that (Helen sits up) smells distinctly of cooked meat.

  “Look at this,” says Albína. She has sheets of paper in her hand—holds them at arm’s length—peers scowling at the poorly copied manuscript. “Sir David Ellerby to his wife,” she reads, with the special contempt she reserves for English, which she considers a language best confined to its miserable little island. “I make a true relation of what has befallen thy husband—Ha! Ha! Now there’s a liar if ever I heard one!”

  “How dare you?” says Helen. She is grateful for the clarity of outrage. Albína, magnificently, shrugs; in doing so the garnet pin on her breast glitters. “Ah, don’t mind me. Just a nosy old woman, you know? I wanted to talk to you.”

  “How dare you open my bag?” says Helen, who will not be disarmed. “Those are not yours to read.”

  “Nor yours either. Not this man’s wife are you, eh? Not any man’s wife, thank God! Ha!” The idea evidently amuses her beyond endurance, and she begins to laugh. It is a delighted childish chuckling which might have been contagious had she not all the while dribbled a little from places where teeth were missing.

  “What do you know about Melmoth—about Melmotka?” Helen is conscious of feeling envious, as if the legend is something she has personally acquired, and not common currency. How dare this vile old woman—graceless, ugly, smelling of fragments of food and stale smoke—take part in it?

  Albína clucks, clasps her hands across her stomach, and surveys Helen with a look of pity. “Never got told stories when you were a girl, then? Could have done with it. Might have made a difference. Too late now, huh! Ha! Not at your age!” She smooths the sheet of
paper on her lap. “Maybe you better not have this. Maybe it’s not for people like you.”

  “Put it back,” says Helen, very calmly now, and thinking: really it would be preferable to wake and find the devil incarnate tapping a cloven hoof. “Put it back, and go away. Let me dress.”

  “Ah, well.” Albína Horáková shrugs again, and Helen envies, for a moment, her majestic rudeness, her ironclad self-worth. She stands, throws the document on the desk with a sound of disdain, and walks slowly, grunting, past Helen to the door. She pauses. She leans against the doorframe, and patting at her hair with a coquettish gesture says, with something astonishingly like shyness, “Day after tomorrow: my birthday. Ninety-one! Ninety-one years! Twenty more than God promised, eh!” For a moment the shyness vanishes behind spite. “You won’t live so long, little weak ugly Helen, but I did, yes! I want dinner.”

  I certainly hope I do not, thinks Helen. “Dinner?” she says.

  “Dinner, idiot! Wine. Napkins. Don’t you think I should celebrate?”

  “Where?” Helen feels herself tugged in a current she had not foreseen.

  Again, that quick patting of her hair, which is dyed black, and through which the pink dome of her scalp gleams. Shyly, she names a café on the river, overlooking the National Theatre. “I booked seats! I phoned up! You think I don’t know how to use a phone?”

  “You want me to come?” Helen is astonished.

  “You, the cripple, the other one. Come! Why not?”Albína Horáková is astonished. “I never hated anyone! Not anyone, not even when I might have done! Hate! Haha! I bake you cakes! Don’t I? Stupid girl!” It is not entirely convincing—indeed there is a glint in her eye which arouses in Helen a corresponding light: it would be useless, she thinks, to protest. Worse, it would be bad manners.