“You and I, Jonathan, are brothers. Closer than brothers. Made of the same flesh, the same blood, the same mind and soul. Don’t you see that when I wrote Accursed Humanity! I gave you the greatest gift that was mine to give? I gave you the gift of being right, in a world that was wicked and twisted. Of course you suffered and died….but that was the inevitable consequence of your rightness. You had no chance in an unequal struggle. People who are right never do. But you saw through the sham! How could you think that the oppression and the pain and the misery and the final defeat weren’t worthwhile, when you had that…that most precious of gifts? I gave you everything I had to give. How can you come to me now and say that I cheated you? Are you really so shallow?”
Jonathan Shaw looked perfectly relaxed.
“You tell me, Marcus,” he purred. “Am I really so shallow? You created me. Was I really so utterly, completely, powerlessly right? Or was I just shallow. Just another fake. Like you, Marcus. A miserable fake. There you sit, a drunken wreck, tormented and wretched, utterly degraded—and you whine and you whine and you whine.
“Tell me, Marcus, isn’t it enough that you’re right. Isn’t it enough that you see through the sham? Of course you’re being ripped into little pieces. You don’t have a chance. People who are right never do.
“Tell me, Marcus…isn’t it all worthwhile? I’m the you that ought to have been, and even I had to suffer and die. What about the you that is, Marcus? What can there possibly be in life for him? What possible destiny is there for a man like you?
“For God’s sake, Marcus, can’t you even be consistent?”
Marcus, though maudlin, took another swig of the vodka. It wasn’t bad vodka by any means—smoother than the genuine article, in fact—but at that particular moment, virtually everything Custer took into his mouth had the taste of bile.
“You bastards,” he whimpered. “You’re even trying to take the success out of my noble failure.”
He mumbled some more, but realized that he was again talking to an empty armchair. Shaw had returned to the wintry darkness outside, to wait for whatever might follow.
Anger suddenly blazed up within Custer’s booze-sodden belly—anger so powerful that it ignited his creative soul and brought him lurching to his feet in a single graceless motion. He hurried, full of determination, to his typewriter.
“Fuck you, Jonathan Shaw!” he shouted, at the top of his voice. “Fuck the lot of you! I can beat you! You can’t stop Marcus Custer! The world won’t stifle my soul! I refuse to be stifled!”
He threaded paper into the machine, not bothering about carbons but only wanting desperately to string words together, to create.
As he lined up the page he muttered: “I’ve got you, you bastards. Get a load of this. I know how to beat you. You can steal my characters, and you can steal my plots, but there’s one thing you can’t ever take away from me….”
And he typed a title in capital letters: MY STRUGGLE by MARCUS CUSTER. Beneath it, he added the annotation: An Autobiography.
* * * * * * *
He was on page three, and typing at a furious pace, when the hand fell on his shoulder.
He looked at it, feeling very much as Fay Hartshorn must have felt in The Groping Ghoul—‘shocked to the very core of her being by the hideous reality’—but it was not the hand of Hector Nettleship. It was ‘a beautifully-sculpted hand, the hand of an artist’.
It was, in fact, the hand of Jonathan Shaw.
It felt very solid and firm.
“You can’t do that,” whispered Custer. “You’re insubstantial. You’re only pretend people. Just ghosts.”
Then his eye fell on the page that was half-complete in the typewriter.
“That’s right, Marcus,” said Shaw, who had stopped smiling at last. “You plotted yourself into a corner. You’re one of us, now.”
* * * * * * *
A retired painter-and-decorator living in Salford, in Greater Manchester, read about Marcus Custer’s death by alcohol poisoning in the obituary column of the Times. He marveled at the glowing account of Custer’s literary achievements and the sad circumstances of the great author’s demise.
The obituarist claimed that Custer had never been properly appreciated while he was alive, but that the time had now arrived to pay tribute to a man who might one day be recognized as the Daniel Defoe of the twentieth century.
The front page headline offered a rather different perspective on the significance of the event. BOOZE KILLS CUSTER it said, and added, in smaller type: STRIKERS VANISH INTO THIN AIR.
The painter-and-decorator had not read a book since he had been conscripted in 1944 and had got half way through Mein Kampf while in basic training in Aldershot. “Ah well,” he mused, sympathetically. “He was probably one o’ them spew-do-nims anyhow.”
THE REQUIEM MASQUE
The god of plague and pestilence held unsteady empire over the entire region of Capracola. Sometimes his epidemics would fall upon the towns and villages like a wrathful scourge, mercilessly destroying the very old and the very young and bringing everyone else near to death. At other times the fevers would abate; babes in arms would grow to be thankless children, old ones would live on as desiccated witch-wives and petty sorcerers, and those in the prime of life would learn to be unafraid of coughs and petty influenzas.
To the majority of the people of Capracola the unsteadiness of the empire of the Lord of All Fevers was testament to the enduring opposition of a better and kinder god, to whom they offered their frequent and humble prayers; but to the minority who made their offerings of appeasement to the Emperor of Decay the unsteadiness was merely proof that he took such great and merry delight in tormenting his victims that he was prepared to deny himself the orgiastic pleasure of their utter annihilation.
In the delirious opinion of his devotees, the Visitor of Maladies allowed the population of the region periodically to grow merely in order to increase the suffering caused by his subsequent visitations. Once or twice in every thousand years, his most devout believers maintained, their cunning overlord would allow several consecutive generations of men to remain unafflicted by the worst of the diseases that were at his beck and call, so that all but a tiny few would come to believe that his attritions were things of the past—and then he would strike again, with a fine flamboyant ferocity that would delight the hearts of those who had remained faithful to his worship.
At one time, there was such a long and absolute decline in the power of malady to fell and frighten men that the faith of the followers of the Emperor of Decay was tested to its limit. His secret shrines and temples fell into ruins, and his rites were all but forgotten. Throughout the land there was only one place where his most sacred rituals were still practiced and the sacrifices most precious to him still offered, and that was the demesne of a petty princeling named Merkades. There, and there alone, was the dark heresy preserved; and Merkades himself was the only man in the land who never doubted for an instant that the god of plague and pestilence would return in due course, prouder and more wrathful than ever before.
So jealous was Merkades of his more prosperous neighbors that as soon as he had entered into the prime of life he made it his daily habit to implore the Lord of All Fevers to return to the land. He prayed most fervently that some awful epidemic might sweep through Capracola while he still had eyes to see what damage might be wrought, and a heart to rejoice in it. “Take my own sons and my own daughters,” he begged, while he offered up blood sacrifices in his secret chambers. “Take my hunting-dogs and my finest horses. I ask only that thou shouldst come again while I still live, so that I may laugh to my bitter heart’s content at the unbelievers who have forsaken thee!”
Perhaps it was in answer to Merkades’ prayers, and perhaps it was not, but when that mediocre tyrant was in his fortieth year Capracola was stricken by a horrid plague, more terrible than any recorded in the lore of legend. The invisible champions of the Lord of All Fevers took arms not merely against the defense
less and the decrepit, but against the bravest knights and stoutest merchants of the region, and with devastating effect. The merchants were pursued from their whore-ridden marketplaces, and the fighting-men from their festering battlefields, by crippling agues and all-consuming contagions whose origins none could begin to guess.
It was immediately clear to Merkades and his few parishioners that some special excitement had brought their lord to an unprecedented pitch of vigor, and they rejoiced to see their neighbors filled with dread by contemplation of the poxes that ran riot throughout the region. This dread was entirely natural, for those who fell victim to these reinvigorated pestilences felt pain unimaginable as the flesh shriveled on their bones to leave each one a desiccated husk. At first, people were anxious to tend the sick, but when the venomousness of the plague was fully revealed, no one any longer dared offer mercy to the dying, and no one dared stay where the dying lay.
In all the land, Merkades alone was able to laugh at what the god of plague had done, and take pleasure in its dire result. Even though his own serfs and vassals were dying in droves, he was not at all afraid for himself.
“The god of plague and pain can bear no grudge against those who cleave to me,” he assured his flatterers. “I have ever been his most devoted servant and admirer. I have the keenest torturers in all the known world, and I am ever enthusiastic for increased taxation. Starvation and wretchedness have never been strangers to my estates, not even in the years of our most bountiful harvests. Any god who delights in suffering must certainly approve my rule without qualification. My lord and I are the dearest of friends, although we have never actually met. I feel in my bones that he knows me well, and likes me very much—for after all, he is a god after my own heart, and I am a man after his.”
While the plague destroyed his lowlier subjects, Merkades withdrew with all his courtiers to a lonely tower on a mountain-top. He raised the drawbridge behind his retinue, so that they might wait as long as was necessary while the epidemic ran its measured course. He planned to spend the time in feasting and in making merry.
Many were those who, upon hearing of Merkades’ proud boasts, came to the little castle and pleaded to be admitted to his company. There were noblemen from neighboring domains as well as errant knights, wealthy merchants and skilful craftsmen. Merkades turned them all away, telling them to keep their various bribes until they died, at which time he would come to collect them. And when there was at last a lull in the desperate cries for aid that issued from without the stronghold, Merkades proclaimed himself King of all Capracola, and gave all his sycophants new titles and new estates.
“Now that the true aristocracy is restored to its rightful place,” he told them all, when they had crowned him, “there must be a requiem to mourn the extinction of the lower orders, who have served us well by dying so numerously.”
This decree was greeted by laughter, and much applause.
“But we must always remember,” the new king later confided to his favorite mistress, with a sigh of disappointment, “that the business of mourning is a serious one. When his subjects die in droves, a great king can hardly help but feel sad to think of so many lost opportunities for taxation.”
Merkades did not, however, intend that the great requiem should be an over-solemn affair. In order that gloom might sensibly be kept at bay, he ordered that the requiem ought to take the form of the grandest masked ball ever to be held in his demesne.
The tower was so well-provisioned that it had an abundant store of gaudy costumes—enough for everyone to wear. In the cellars there was wine enough and more to make everyone deliriously drunk. And there were among the ladies of Merkades’ court—who far outnumbered the men, by virtue of being more useful to him as well as more pleasing to his eye—many who could produce exultant music, and perform lascivious dances, and play the merry fool in other and more ingenious ways.
When the appointed night arrived, Merkades set a fine example for the revelers at his peculiar requiem by adopting a grotesque costume which exhibited his notion of what the god of plague and pestilence might be like, were that deity to condescend to make himself incarnate. His entire body was covered by a false skin, which was greenly-tinted and crowded with multicolored sores. Beneath this outer tegument were numerous small sacs filled with various horrid-smelling substances, which exuded gradually through many tiny pores.
When the festival was well under way he had himself carried in triumph around the hall, mounted upon a litter that had been most carefully painted, so that it seemed to be made of knitted bones. It was decorated with simulations of curling fingernails, and hung with what appeared to be curtains of human skin hemmed with ancient hair. This palanquin was carried by six of his most voluptuous serving-maids, each one costumed as a syphilitic whore. Their burden was occasionally increased for a while, when he invited one or other of his favorites to join him in bumptious play, but they bore it willingly nevertheless.
As the wine flowed and the music grew slowly more furious, the air within the tower became increasingly hot and fetid, and Merkades found his senses reeling with the feverish excitement of it all. He roared with delight at the antics of his loyal followers, and encouraged them to further feats of recklessness.
So excited did the new king of Capracola become that he did not notice precisely when the second palanquin entered the room, but he eventually became aware of its presence. At first he was amused to see it, because it seemed to him that one of his most faithful friends must have been quick to see an opportunity to exercise the sincerest form of flattery—but when his drink-befuddled sight had cleared sufficiently to let him see the thing more clearly, he realized that the imitation was altogether too sincere, and that its clever artifice outshone by far the work of his own patient craftsmen.
The creatures that bore the other palanquin were dwarfish things like great grey toads with slimy skins, and it was difficult to see how they had the space inside their outer teguments to be serving-maids—even very little ones—in clever disguises. The platform itself was very ornate, and Merkades could easily have believed that bloody and partly-rotted corpses had somehow been petrified and ingeniously glued together to form its base and cupola.
Worst of all, the creature that sat upon the second palanquin was such a magnificent travesty of all things wholesomely human that it put the costume which Merkades wore entirely to shame. The prince could not tell how its many tentacles could possibly be set a-writhing so excitedly, or how its skin could be so leprous in color and so redolent with viscous slime. Nor could he understand how the single great and rheumy eye which the rival overlord possessed could contrive to wink at him while he stared in reluctant admiration.
“Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the buxom courtier who was endeavoring to reignite the fires of his flagging lust. “Who dares outdo his overlord on this most auspicious of occasions?”
Hearing this unhappy exclamation, his litter-bearers halted in their tracks. Whispering voices carried the rumor of their prince’s displeasure throughout the room. The dancers paused in their reckless cavorting, and the musicians, one by one, put down their instruments. As soon as silence had fallen all movement ceased, and all eyes turned to the second palanquin.
“My dear and noble prince!” said a complaining voice, which was underlain by a curiously unpleasant gurgling sound. “I am direly disappointed by thy hesitation, for I have not seen such a lovely requiem as this for many, many years! Wouldst thou really end it now, when thy most honored guests have only recently arrived?”
“Guests?” enquired Merkades, not without a certain anxious gurgling of his own. “What guests?”
“Why,” replied the other, “canst thou not recognize that lord of suffering which thou hast claimed for thy spiritual kin? Canst thou not see that thy gladness in the face of Capracola’s misfortune has called forth its mightier echo, and that the Uncleanest One of All has come to tell thee that he does indeed approve of thy stern and stalwart rule?”
> There was an awesome silence, because the prince did not know what to say in reply. But then, defiantly endeavoring to prove his bravery beyond the shadow of a doubt, Merkades gathered his scattered wits and said: “My lord, I bid thee welcome to my humble abode—but I must ask that in return for my hospitality, the horrid diseases which thou hast visited upon my other subjects should be kept at bay from these, my most dearly beloved friends.”
Those most dearly beloved friends would have applauded, if only they had dared—but alas, the laughter that echoed from the walls of their lonely tower was not of a kind to encourage them to clap their hands in glee.
When the laughter finally died, the true lord of all that he surveyed, said only this: “Why, beautiful Lady Death has been before me, my kindred spirit, as piquant and peccant as ever. This is already the aftertime, my pompous princeling, for as thou hast set out to commemorate the extinction of others, so thou, in thy turn, shalt be commemorated.”
When Merkades urgently cast his costume from him, he found that the flesh had already shriveled upon his bones, and that his blood had already turned to sparkling dust; and yet, he found to his dismay that he was still fully conscious of himself.
Still drunk with bitter wine, Merkades discovered that he was becoming filled, as though in every fiber of his rotten being, with a most dreadful pain; and he knew full well that this was a pain that could not and would not diminish or end, until the other might be disposed to say, at last, that the carnival requiem was over....
The Cosmic Perspective and Other Black Comedies Page 12
