It was true. Bibbidibobbidibu once more let her crimson tongue-tip flick hungrily over the sharp teeth in her dainty little mouth . . .
“She will eat me alive!” Bubnoff suddenly shouted in fear.
“Bon appetit!” the Devil murmured.
“What?” Ivan Andreivich shouted again. “I am an officer and an honored guest! One does not eat a guest!”
“But of course we do!” the Devil argued. “It is absolutely necessary for us to do it—and extremely enjoyable, besides!”
“You shall not enjoy me at my expense!” the soldier angrily proclaimed, making flamboyant gestures with his arms. “I am getting out of here. I was a damned fool to eat the tip of your tail!”
He tried to get up, but he could not budge. His chair had turned into a gigantic tarantula that grasped him with diabolic strength.
The Devil, the old woman and Bibbidibobbidibu all laughed at Bubnoff’s plight. The crone’s cackle was like the bleat of a goat, and the girl gurgled with sensual delight as the soldier squirmed helplessly.
“Let me out!” Bubnoff protested. “Avaunt, fiends, in the Holy name—”
“Stop him! He will cross himself!” the Devil roared.
Bibbidibobbidibu jumped up and, smiling in her predatory manner, bit off Bubnoff’s arm at the shoulder. The giant tureen opened and the screaming soldier was dumped inside and spiced with pepper and brimstone, oil and vinegar and the scarlet juice of cranberries. Weird music sounded in the air around the grisly supper scene as the three fiends ate the lieutenant and picked his bones clean. Bibbidibobbidibu was awarded the prize of the soldier’s heart, which she devoured with gusto, while the Devil almost gagged on a trouser-button.
In the morning, Lieutenant (second class) Ivan Andreivich Bubnoff woke face down in the middle of the lonely country road. He bounded up, terrified, sure that he was not there, but really in pieces in the viscera of the three demons. It took the better part of the day for him to calm down and realize he was still alive.
Bubnoff, though he lived to a ripe old age and eventually became a lieutenant first class, never forgot his evening with the Devil. Many times he would assure his fellow officers that if he were Napoleon, he would round up every single demon and murder them all on the spot!
—English adaptation by Marvin Kaye
Born in Fort Worth in 1921, PATRICIA HIGHSMITH now resides in Europe, where she divides her time between writing, painting and sculpture, with some piano-playing on the side. Author of the critically acclaimed suspense novels Strangers On a Train, The Glass Cell, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and others, Ms. Highsmith has written a remarkable series of horror stories, many of them concerned with the mistreated animal kingdom. It’s difficult to work up any sympathy, though, for the monsters in “The Quest for Blank Claveringi,” which, like the author’s earlier story, “The Snail Watcher,” does for escargot what Hitchcock’s The Birds did for our feathered friends.
The Quest for Blank Claveringi
By Patricia Highsmith
Avery Clavering, a professor of zoology at a California university, heard of the giant snails of Kuwa in a footnote of a book on molluscs. His sabbatical had been coming up in three months when he read the few lines:
It is said by Matusas Islands natives that snails even larger than this exist on the uninhabited island of Kuwa, twenty-five miles distant from the Matusas. The Matusans claim that these snails have a shell diameter of twenty feet and that they are man-eating. Dr. Wm J. Stead, now living in the Matusas, visited Kuwa in 1949 without finding any snails at all, but the legend persists.
The item aroused Professor Clavering’s interest, because he very much wanted to discover some animal, bird, reptile or even mollusc to which he could give his name. Something-or-other Claveringi. The professor was forty-eight. His time, perhaps, was not growing short, but he had achieved no particular renown. The discovery of a new species would win him immortality in his field.
The Matusas, the professor saw on a map, were three small islands arranged like the points of an isosceles triangle not far from Hawaii. He wrote a letter to Dr. Stead and received the following reply, written on an abominable typewriter, so many words pale, he could scarcely read it:
April 8th, 19—
Dear Professor Clavering:
I have long heard of the giant snails of Kuwa, but before you make a trip of such length, I must tell you that the natives here assure me a group of them went about twenty years ago to Kuwa to exterminate these so-called man-eating snails which they imagined could swim the ocean between Kuwa and the Matusas and do some damage to the latter island. They claim to have killed off the whole community of them except for one old fellow they could not kill. This is typical of native stories—there’s always one that got away. I haven’t much doubt the snails were not bigger than three feet across and that they were not **** (here a word was illegible, due both to the pale ribbon and a squashed insect). You say you read of my effort in 1949 to find the giant snails. What the footnote did not say is that I have made several trips since to find them. I retired to the Matusas, in fact, for that purpose. I now believe the snails to be mere folklore, a figment of the natives’ imagination. If I were you, I would not waste time or money on an expedition.
Yours sincerely,
Wm J. Stead. M.D.
Professor Clavering had the money and the time. He detected a sourness in Dr. Stead’s letter. Maybe Dr. Stead had just had bad luck. By post, Professor Clavering hired a thirty-foot sail-boat with an auxiliary motor from Hawaii. He wanted to make the trip alone from the Matusas. Blank Claveringi. Regardless of the size, the snail was apt to be different from any known snail, because of its isolation—if it existed. He planned to go one month ahead of his wife and to join her and their twenty-year-old daughter Wanda in Hawaii for a more orthodox holiday after he had visited Kuwa. A month would give him plenty of time to find the snail, even if there were only one, to take photographs, and make notes.
It was late June when Professor Clavering, equipped with water tanks, tinned beef, soup and milk, biscuits, writing materials, camera, knife, hatchet and a Winchester .22 which he hardly knew how to use, set forth from one of the Matusas bound for Kuwa. Dr. Stead, who had been his host for a few days, saw him off. Dr. Stead was seventy-five, he said, but he looked older, due perhaps to the ravages of drink and the apparently aimless life he led now. He had not looked for the giant snail in two years, he said.
‘I’ve given the last third of my life to looking for this snail, you might say,’ Dr. Stead added ‘But that’s man’s fate, I suppose, the pursuit of the non-existent. Well—good luck to you, Professor Clavering!’ He waved his old American straw hat as the Samantha left the dock under motor power.
Professor Clavering had made out to Stead that if he did find snails, he would come back at once, get some natives to accompany him, and return to Kuwa with materials to make crates for the snails. Stead had expressed doubt whether he could persuade any natives to accompany him, if the snail or snails were really large. But then, Dr. Stead had been negative about everything pertaining to Professor Clavering’s quest. Professor Clavering was glad to get away from him.
After about an hour, Professor Clavering cut the motor and tentatively hoisted some sail. The wind was favourable, but he knew little about sails, and he paid close attention to his compass. At last, Kuwa came into view, a tan hump on a sea of blue. He was quite close before he saw any greenery, and this was only the tops of some trees. Already, he was looking for anything resembling a giant snail, and regretting he had not brought binoculars, but the island was only three miles long and one mile broad. He decided to aim for a small beach. He dropped anchor, two of them, in water so clear he could see the sand under it. He stood for a few minutes on the deck.
The only life he saw was a few birds in the tops of trees, brightly coloured, crested birds, making cries he had never heard before. There was no low-lying vegetation whatsoever, none of the grass and reeds that might have been expected on an island such
as this—much like the Matusas in the soil colour—and this augured well of the presence of snails that might have devoured everything green within their reach. It was only a quarter to two. Professor Clavering ate part of a papaya, two boiled eggs, and brewed coffee on his alcohol burner, as he had had nothing to eat since 6 A.M. Then with his hunting knife and hatchet in the belt of his khaki shorts, and his camera around his neck, he lowered himself into the water. The Samantha carried no rowboat.
He sank up to his neck, but he could walk on the bottom. He held the camera high. He emerged panting, as he was some twenty pounds overweight. Professor Clavering was to regret every one of those pounds before the day was over, but as he got his breath and looked around him, and felt himself drying off in the warm sunlight, he was happy. He wiped his hatchet and knife with dry sand, then walked inland, alert for the rounded form of a snail’s shell, moving or stationary, anywhere. But as snails were more or less nocturnal, he thought any snails might well be sleeping in some cave or crevice with no idea of emerging until nightfall.
He decided to cross the island first, then follow the coast to right or left and circle the island. He had not gone a quarter of a mile, when his heart gave a leap. Ten yards before him, he saw three bent saplings with their top leaves chewed off. The young trees were four inches in diameter at their base. It would have taken a considerable weight to bend them down, something like a hundred pounds. The professor looked on the trees and the ground for the glaze left by snails, but found none. But rain could have ashed it away. A snail whose shell was three feet in diameter would not weigh enough to bend such a tree, so Professor Clavering now hoped for something bigger. He pushed on.
He arrived at the other side of the island. The sea had eaten a notch into the shore, forming a mostly dry gully of a hundred yards’ length and a depth of thirty feet. The land here was sandy but moist, and there was, he saw, a little vegetation in the form of patchy grass. But here, the lower branches of all the trees had been divested of their leaves, and so long ago that the branches had dried and fallen off. All this bespoke the presence of land snails. Professor Clavering stooped and looked down into the gulley. He saw, just over the edge of his side of the crevice, the pink-tan curve of something that was neither rock nor sand. If it was a snail, it was monstrous. Involuntarily, he took a step backward, scattering pebbles down the gulley.
The professor ran round the gulley to have a better look. It was a snail, and its shell was about fifteen feet high. He had a view of its left side, the side without the spiral. It resembled a peach-coloured sail filled with wind, and the sunlight made nacreous, silvery patches gleam and twinkle as the great thing stirred. The little rain of pebbles had aroused it, the professor realized. If the shell was fifteen or eighteen feet in diameter, he reckoned that the snail’s body or foot would be something like six yards long when extended. Rooted to the spot, the professor stood, thrilled as much by the (as yet) empty phrase Blank Claveringi which throbbed in his head as by the fact he was looking upon something no man had seen before, or at least no scientist. The crate would have to be bigger than he had thought, but the Samantha would be capable of taking it on her forward deck.
The snail was backing to pull its head from the narrow part of the gulley. The moist body, the color of tea with milk, came into view with the slowness of an enormous snake awakening from slumber. All was silent, except for pebbles dropping from the snail’s underside as it lifted its head, except for the professor’s constrained breathing. The snail’s head, facing inland, rose higher and higher, and its antennae, with which it saw, began to extend. Professor Clavering realized he had disturbed it from its diurnal sleep, and a brief terror caused him to retreat again, sending more pebbles down the slope.
The snail heard this, and slowly turned its enormous head toward him.
The professor felt paralysed. A gigantic face regarded him, a face with drooping, scalloped cheeks or lips, with antennae six feet long now, the eyes on the ends of them scrutinizing him at his own level and scarcely ten feet away, with the disdain of a Herculean lorgnette, with the unknown potency of a pair of oversized telescopes. The snail reared so high, it had to arch its antennae to keep him in view. Six yards long? It would be more like eight or ten yards. The snail turned itself to move toward him.
Still, the professor did not budge. He knew about snails’ teeth, the twenty-odd thousand pairs of them even in a small garden snail, set in comblike structures, the upper front teeth visible, moving up and down constantly just under transparent flesh. A snail of this size, with proportionate teeth, could chew through a tree as quickly as a woodsman’s axe, the professor thought. The snail was advancing up the bank with monumental confidence. He had to stand still for a few seconds simply to admire it. His snail! The professor opened his camera and took a picture, just as the snail was hauling its shell over the edge of the quarry.
‘You are magnificent!’ Professor Clavering said in a soft and awestruck voice. Then he took a few steps backward.
It was pleasant to think he could skip nimbly about, comparatively speaking, observing the snail from all angles, while the snail could only creep toward him at what seemed the rate of one yard in ten seconds. The professor thought to watch the snail for an hour or so, then go back to the Samantha and write some notes. He would sleep aboard the boat, take some more photographs tomorrow morning, then start under engine power back to the Matusas. He trotted for twenty yards, then turned to watch the snail approach.
The snail travelled with its head lifted three feet above the ground, keeping the professor in the focus of its eyes. It was moving faster. Professor Clavering retreated sooner than he intended, and before he could get another picture.
Now Professor Clavering looked around for a mate of the snail. He was rather glad not to see another snail, but he cautioned himself not to rule out the possibility of a mate. It wouldn’t be pleasant to be cornered by two snails, yet the idea excited him. Impossible to think of a situation in which he could not escape from two slow, lumbering creatures like the—the what? Amygdalus Persica (his mind stuck on peaches, because of the beautiful colour of the shell) Carnivora (perhaps) Claveringi. That could be improved upon, the professor thought as he walked backward, watching.
A little grove of trees gave him an idea. If he stood in the grove, the snail could not reach him, and he would also have a close view. The professor took a stand amid twelve or fifteen trees, all about twenty feet high. The snail did not slacken its speed, but began to circle the grove, still watching the professor. Finding no opening big enough between two trees, the snail raised its head higher, fifteen feet high, and began to creep up on the trees. Branches cracked, and one tree snapped.
Professor Clavering ducked and retreated. He had a glimpse of a great belly gliding unhurt over a jagged tree trunk, of a circular mouth two feet across, open and showing the still wider upper band of teeth like shark’s teeth, munching automatically up and down. The snail cruised gently down over the tree tops, some of which sprang back into position as the snail’s weight left them.
Click! went the professor’s camera.
What a sight that had been! Something like a slow hurdle. He imagined entertaining friends with an account of it, substantiated by the photograph, once he got back to California. Old Professor McIlroy of the biology department had laughed at him for spending seven thousand dollars on an effort he predicted would be futile!
Professor Clavering was tiring, so he cut directly for the Samantha. He noticed that the snail veered also in a direction that would intercept him, if they kept on at their steady though different speeds, and the professor chuckled and trotted for a bit. The snail also picked up speed, and the professor remembered the wide, upward rippling of the snail’s body as it had hurdled the trees. It would be interesting to see how fast the snail could go on a straight course. Such a test would have to wait for America.
He reached the water and saw his beach a few yards away to his right, but no ship was there. He’d
made a mistake, he thought, and his beach was on the other side of the island. Then he caught sight of the Samantha half a mile out on the ocean, drifting away.
‘Damn!’ Professor Clavering said aloud. He’d done something wrong with the anchors. Did he dare try to swim to it? The distance frightened him, and it was growing wider every moment.
A rattle of pebbles behind him made him tum. The snail was hardly twenty feet away.
The professor trotted down toward the beach. There was bound to be some slit on the coast, a cave however small, where he could be out of reach of the snail. He wanted to rest for a while. What really annoyed him now was the prospect of a chilly night without blankets or food. The Matusas natives had been right: there was nothing to eat on Kuwa.
Professor Clavering stopped dead, his shoes sliding on sand and pebbles. Before him, not fifty feet away on the beach, was another snail as big as the one following him, and somewhat lighter in colour. Its tail was in the sea, and its muzzle dripped water as it reared itself to get a look at him. It was this snail, the professor realized, that had chewed through the hemp ropes and let the boat go free. Was there something about new hemp ropes that appealed to snails? This question he put out of his mind for the nonce. He had a snail before and behind him. The professor trotted on .along the shore. The only crevice of shelter he was sure existed was the gulley on the other side of the island. He forced himself to walk at a moderate pace for a while, to breathe normally, then he sat down and treated himself to a rest.
The first snail was the first to appear, and as it had lost sight of him, it lifted its head and looked slowly to right and left, though without slackening its progress. The professor sat motionless, bare head lowered, hoping the snail would not see him. But he was not that lucky. The snail saw him and altered course to a straight line for him. Behind it came the second snail—it’s wife? it’s husband?—the professor could not tell and there was no way of telling.
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural Page 5
