“A pet, then. Not a toy.”
“Oh, no,” said the professor, and shuddered. “It was a toy, all right. My mother thought it was, anyway. It made me—dream real.”
“You mean, like Peter Ibbetson?”
“No, no. Not like that.” He leaned back, rolled his eyes up. “I used to see myself as I would be later, when I was grown. And before. Oh. Oh—I think it was then—Yes! It must have been then that I began to see all those terrible accidents. It was! It was!”
“Steady,” said Catherine. “Tell me quietly.”
He relaxed. “Fuzzy. The demon—the monster. I know what it did, the devil. Somehow it made me see myself as I grew. It made me repeat what I had learned. It—it ate knowledge! It did; it ate knowledge. It had some strange affinity for me, for something about me. It could absorb knowledge that I gave out. And it—it changed the knowledge into blood, the way a plant changes sunlight and water into cellulose!”
“I don’t understand,” she said again.
“You don’t? How could you? How can I? I know that that’s what it did, though. It made me—why, I was spouting my lectures here to the beast when I was four years old! The words of them, the sense of them, came from me now to me then. And I gave it to the monster, and it ate the knowledge and spiced it with the things it made me do in my real-dreams. It made me trip a man up on a hat, of all absurd things, and fall into a subway excavation. And when I was in my teens, I was right by the excavation to see it happen. And that’s the way with all of them! All the horrible accidents I have witnessed, I have half-remembered before they happened. There’s no stopping any of them. What am I going to do?”
There were tears in her eyes. “What about me?” she whispered—more, probably to get his mind away from his despair than for any other reason.
“You. There’s something about you, if only I could remember. Something about what happened to that—that toy, that beast. You were in the same environment as I, as that devil. Somehow, you are vulnerable to it and—Catherine, Catherine, I think that something was done to you that—”
He broke off. His eyes widened in horror. The girl sat beside him, helping him, pitying him, and her expression did not change. But—everything else about her did.
Her face shrank, shrivelled. Her eyes lengthened. Her ears grew long, grew until they were like donkey’s ears, like rabbit’s ears, like horrible, long hairy spider’s legs. Her teeth lengthened into tusks. Her arms shrivelled into jointed straws, and her body thickened.
It smelled like rotten meat.
There were filthy claws scattering out of her polished open-toed shoes. There were bright sores. There were—other things. And all the while she—it—held his hand and looked at him with pity and friendliness.
The professor—
Jeremy sat up and flung the monster away. “It isn’t funny!” he screamed. “It isn’t funny, it isn’t, it isn’t, it isn’t!”
The monster sat up and looked at him with its soft, bland, teddy-bear expression. “Be quiet,” it said. “Let’s make her all squashy now, like softsoap. And hornets in her stomach. And we can put her—”
Jeremy clapped his hands over his ears and screwed his eyes shut. The monster talked on. Jeremy burst into tears, leapt from the crib and, hurling the monster to the floor, kicked it. It grunted. “That’s funny!” screamed the child. “Ha ha!” he cried, as he planted both feet in its yielding stomach. He picked up the twitching mass and hurled it across the room. It struck the nursery clock. Clock and monster struck the floor together in a flurry of glass, metal, and blood. Jeremy stamped it all into a jagged, pulpy mass, blood from his feet mixing with blood from the monster, the same strange blood which the monster had pumped into his neck . . . .
Mummy all but fainted when she ran in and saw him. She screamed, but he laughed, screaming. The doctor gave him sedatives until he slept, and cured his feet. He was never very strong after that. They saved him, to live his life and to see his real-dreams; funny dreams, and to die finally in a lecture room, with his eyes distended in horror while horror froze his heart, and a terrified young woman ran crying, crying for help.
Like the composer Tchaikovsky; IVAN TURGENEV (1818—83) was greatly influenced in his art by Western models. Turgenev’s years in Paris infused an urbanity and polish into his masterwork, Fathers and Sons, as well as other tales and vignettes of Russian life that he created in Sketches of a Sportsman, Virgin Soil, etc. In the following tongue-in-cheek adventure, we are afforded a generous dollop of Turgenev’s dryly understated sense of the ridiculous, without, however, sacrificing character credibility. Bubnoff himself is a familiar sort of chap, and we can only assume that his diabolical hosts derive from the (second class) lieutenant’s thoroughly Slavic view of things infernal.
Bubnoff and the Devil
By Ivan Turgenev
Twilight was falling. The old women who owned the three houses lining the half-mile country road closed up the shutters for the night; the chickens were already asleep in their sheds.
But Lieutenant (second class) Ivan Andreivich Bubnoff did not mind the solitude. He strolled briskly down the quiet roadway, his hands in his pockets, and imagined what it would be like if he were Napoleon.
His reverie was disturbed by the approach of a short man, who appeared out of the gathering dusk. The stranger affected outlandish garments, and Bubnoff concluded that it must be Telyushkin, a wealthy local who was reputed to dress in the manner of the Turks. But Bubnoff had never set eyes on Telyushkin, and when the stranger spoke, the soldier immediately realized his assumption was incorrect.
“Good evening,” the other said casually. “I would like to introduce myself. I am the Devil.”
“Uh-oh,” thought Bubnoff. “One of us is drunk. Either way, I’m getting out of here.”
But the grinning stranger gestured and the lieutenant suddenly found he could not move.
“Neither of us is drunk, my good Ivan Andreivich Bubnoff. I actually am the Devil.”
“One of us is crazy,” thought Ivan. “Either way, I’d better get going—”
But the other grasped the officer by his coat collar and spoke again. “Now tell me, Bubnoff,” he said in a loud voice, “what do you think it would be like if you were Napoleon?”
When Bubnoff heard the tenor of his recent thoughts so accurately echoed, he was somewhat reassured. “After all,” he said to himself, “perhaps this is the Devil.”
“I will convince you that I am,” the other replied. “Look at those thistles. What would you like me to do with them? Perhaps you would care to see them dance like Cossacks?”
With a bored gesture of his hand, the short man caused the thistles to perform a really first-rate Cossack dance. Bubnoff was impressed, but the Devil did not stop there. To further prove his identity, he swallowed his hooves and brought them out through his throat. He merrily juggled his eyeballs, then removed his nose and made a present of it to Ivan Andreivich, who put it in his jacket pocket.
“Now, Ivan Andreivich Bubnoff, who am I?”
“You are the Devil, right enough!” the other exclaimed. “But what do you want of me?”
“Nothing in particular. I was just a trifle bored, to tell the truth, and thought I might join you for a little walk and perhaps a talk. Do you mind?”
“Not in the least!” said Bubnoff and the two tramped along the road like two old comrades.
“This is what I would call an absolutely unique experience,” the lieutenant said to himself. “Perhaps I am drunk after all.” He grabbed the bristles of his mustache and yanked at them to see if he would wake. His neck began to creak.
“I shouldn’t do that, if I were you,” said the Devil. “You might pull too hard and yank your head from your shoulders—like this!” With that, he grabbed a handful of Bubnoff’s hair and tugged his head straight off his neck. It would have surprised the soldier, if he’d had time to think about it, but a headless officer cannot command such a function by the very nature of the experi
ence. The Devil played ball with Ivan Andreivich’s head, then replaced it on the soldier’s neck. As soon as he did, Bubnoff contrived to make an appropriate remark which he thought wittily suited to the occasion. The Devil winked and the two laughed like childhood friends.
After a time, they came to a forest and the soldier began to grow uneasy. “Look here,” he asked anxiously, “you aren’t planning to lead me to some ravine where I will fall and die and be munched by buzzards, are you? I should not much care for that, you know!”
“My, my, what a notion!” exclaimed the Devil. “What do you take me for? I should never do such a thing to my good friend, Ivan Andreivich!”
As he spoke, the Devil approached the bole of a gigantic oak tree, withered and twisted like some malignant creature of the night. He rested there, and Bubnoff heard an eerie croaking from somewhere above. Looking up, he saw the flutter of wings and an ancient raven settled into the branches of the oak.
Bubnoff was not a bird fancier, so what he thought was a raven was actually a crow. But, in truth, the crow was really one of the many changing shapes of the Devil’s Grandma. (He did not have a mother, only a grandmother—why, nobody knew, not even the Devil.)
“I am now going to introduce you to my Grandma,” the Devil told the soldier, who began to protest.
“But I am not properly attired!”
“Never fear, she does not stand on such ceremony. But,” the Devil cautioned, “I must ask you to please refrain from crossing yourself, or we will have to part company. Now will you kindly bite my tail off? Just the very end will do, you know.”
As he made his peculiar request, the Devil flicked his tail so that the soft spade-tip hovered just a few inches in front of Bubnoff’s lips.
“What a disgusting idea!” cried the soldier. “I shall do no such thing!”
“And why not?”
“Well,” Bubnoff sputtered, floundering for a reason, “because it would hurt you, I suppose.”
“Bah! What an idea! It would give me the greatest pleasure!” He pushed the appendage into Ivan Andreivich’s mouth, but the officer yanked it out again.
“I say,” he pleaded, “is it absolutely essential that I do this?”
The Devil nodded solemnly. Bubnoff, with a sigh, grasped the tail and raised it to his lips, then paused.
“I suppose,” he said, “your tail will taste positively awful!”
“I beg your pardon!” the other said, his feelings a trifle ruffled. “My tail will taste exactly like whatever food you wish to taste. Go ahead, imagine any culinary delight whatever—that is what my tail’s flavor will resemble.”
“Very well,” Ivan said, after a moment’s thought, “I am partial to pickles and syrup.” He bit the tail . . .
The Devil did not lie. His tail tasted like pickles and syrup (with just a trace of brimstone).
By the time Bubnoff had swallowed the tail-tip, the universe whirled about his ears and he found himself inside a small, reasonably neat room. An old harridan with a huge nose was sitting in a rocking chair cracking walnuts. The Devil waved his arm in her direction.
“Grandma, allow me to present Lieutenant (second class) Ivan Andreivich Bubnoff, Ivan Andreivich . . . my Grandma.”
The introductions completed, the Devil indicated a chair for the officer and left him alone with his Grandma so he could go try on a new pair of horns.
Bubnoff sat there in awkward silence. Not only did he not know what to say to the old crone, but his knowledge of protocol did not extend to the proper form of address for so venerable a personage as the grandmother of the Devil. At length, he began to utter a polite inanity, but the old woman immediately stopped him.
“There’s no need for empty words,” she cackled in a strange voice. As she did, each syllable seemed to fly through the air at him in a concentric spiral. Bubnoff’s awkwardness disappeared, but the crone simply sat there, cracking walnuts, looking at him as if she expected him to speak. He shrugged and kept his peace, until at last, wearied by the silence, the Devil’s Grandma jumped up from her rocker, grasped Bubnoff by the hands and began to dance with great speed about the room.
“Come, love, come dance with me, little Bubnoff,” she sang as they cavorted.
Ivan Andreivich’s head began to spin and at length he called out to the Devil to come rescue him.
The Devil dashed in, his new horns upon his head. Catching his ancestor under the arms, he respectfully led her to her seat. Then he asked the lieutenant to forgive the old woman’s whims.
“Now, Ivan Andreivich,” he added, “because I wish to be a good host to you, I am going to let you meet my lovely little granddaughter. Her tail is barely sprouted, for she is quite young, but I trust in your honor and know you will not play upon her lack of experience. Bibbidibobbidibu! Please come in!”
The Devil’s granddaughter entered from another room, curtsied before the soldier, and shyly clung to her great-great-grandmother.
Bubnoff bowed to her. “What did you say her name was?” he asked.
“Bibbidibobbidibu,” the Devil replied.
“That doesn’t sound like a Russian name,” observed the soldier.
“We are from other parts,” the Devil answered.
Bubnoff approached the Devil’s granddaughter and bent over to kiss her hand, noting the slight curvature of the nails as he did. It made her fingers look like claws. As he pressed his lips to her dainty hand, he felt a tingling in them like sparks of lightning.
“Will you come with me to the garden for a walk?” she asked him in a low voice.
“Nothing could make me happier,” Ivan Andreivich replied, although it was evident by the way the crone eyed the Devil that she was not much in favor of the proposed stroll. But the Devil did not object, so Bubnoff and Bibbidibobbidibu left the room in one another’s company.
Though the Devil’s garden looked like any other garden, Bubnoff noted uneasily that the vegetation therein was apparently in some kind of pain since every flower, bush and shrub emitted groans of anguish.
The Devil’s granddaughter walked by the lieutenant’s side for some time in silence. Then she looked up at Bubnoff, emitted a deep sigh and told him that she was in love.
“With whom?” he asked politely.
“With you, Ivan Andreivich,” she answered, her tongue flicking lightly over her lips.
“Pray contain yourself,” he told her, remembering that his honor was at stake.
“But how may I? For I love you, and I want you to reciprocate my ardor,” she said cajolingly. “I will make a garland of roses for you, redder than the blush of my cheeks. I will give you nuts to eat and the juice of many ferns to drink, and we will be glad and good, my Bubnoff, for I love you!”
He stared at her, moved, and nearly spoke his love to her, but as he looked into her eyes, it seemed they shone like some predator cat; her nostrils flared and the tongue flicked again over her lips, which parted to reveal the whitest and sharpest of teeth . . .
“I am sorry,” he said firmly, “but I cannot say I love you, my child. Let us go back to your home.”
“But where is it?” she mocked.
Bubnoff took a step, faltered, and flailed his arms about to keep balance. He was on the pinnacle of a high column, standing on one leg only; the other kicked in the empty air. The column was slippery with some kind of sticky fluid and thousands of tiny demons clambered with great difficulty towards the top, falling back, climbing again, chattering and laughing as they tried to attain the grand prize of the slippery race—Bubnoff himself.
High in the air above his head floated Bibbidibobbidibu, tittering evilly at his plight.
“Help!” called the lieutenant. “Devil, this is unkind of you!” He found it hard to call out for fear of disturbing his precarious balance.
“Bubnoff Child! Where have you gone?” the Devil’s voice suddenly called.
As soon as the voice rang out, the soldier found himself back in the garden, with Bibbidibobbidibu by his side.
“For shame, my little one!” the Devil chided the girl. “Ivan Andreivich is an honored guest. You have treated him ill. Come, my friend, let us leave this silly urchin!”
“Silly urchin!” she snapped. “Indeed! Why, I am not so young as all that. Already my horns are beginning to sprout.” She lowered her head, parted her hair and showed two tiny, delicate horns to Bubnoff.
The officer, who had always been the most earthbound of mortals, suddenly leapt in the air, pirouetted twice and bent down to kiss the tips of Bibbidibobbidibu’s horns. As he did, the horn swelled and punched him smartly on the chin.
Later that evening, the family sat around the table with their guest. Bubnoff sat to the right of the old crone who occupied the head of the table. The Devil faced him, and Bibbidibobbidibu’s chair was at the foot of the table.
“I wonder,” thought Bubnoff, “what we are going to have for dinner.”
Just then, a huge covered platter entered the room, bowed and hopped up on the table by itself.
Turning to her grandson, the old woman said, “I do believe we had better marry Lieutenant (second class) Bubnoff to our little Bibbidibobbidibu.”
“Positively,” nodded the Devil.
“What a notion,” thought the soldier. “I cannot marry the Devil’s granddaughter. Just think if there were children! What rank in society would they occupy? If I had a son by her, could he become a soldier? This is dreadful! I should never have nibbled on the Devil’s tail!”
“Now understand,” said the Devil, “while I wish this marriage to take place, I would not for a moment consider it without the consent of both principals. I have too much love for my granddaughter to coerce her to wed one she does not fancy. Likewise, I have the highest esteem for my companion Ivan Andreivich. We shall put the matter to the question directly. My child—tell me truly—do you love my friend Bubnoff here?”
“Oh, she certainly does,” cackled the Devil’s Grandma. “Look at the way she is licking her lips!”
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural Page 4
