Devils' Spawn

by Charles Birkin

“Do you think it will clear?”

  The farmer shrugged his shoulders. “One cannot say. Maybe in two . . . three hours. You go to Fuiza?”

  “How far is it from here?”

  “Thirty miles . . . or a little more.”

  When, after a substantial breakfast, and having changed once more into his riding breeches, Michael walked along the passage that led from his bedroom to the stairs, he was startled to hear the sound of low sobbing from Maria, who sat by the table at which they had eaten, her head buried in her arms, her shoulders shaking.

  “It is terrible . . . terrible.” The words were broken by her emotion. Behind her stood Pedro, his face stern.

  “What must be . . . must be.” He spoke slowly.

  Michael started down the stairs, making an unnecessary clatter. Maria raised her head and dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her apron.

  “I’m afraid I could not help seeing your distress. Is there anything I could do?”

  Pedro answered him. “You? No. You can do nothing, Señor.” His words were oddly quiet.

  An awkward silence descended on the room. Finally Michael said, “I think it is clearing.”

  A watery gleam of sunshine struggled to meet the steaming ground.

  “If you wish to continue your journey to-day it would be wise to start as soon as you can be ready. I myself have to go as far as Mirano—so I will come with you the first part of your way.”

  Michael measured him with a glance. It was a wild country through which they were to travel—and they would be likely to meet few people. . . .

  “You are too thoughtful. But I could not think of troubling you further.”

  “It is no trouble at all, Señor. I should appreciate your company.”

  Michael turned to Maria. “Then I must say good-bye. I cannot thank you sufficiently for your hospitality.” Again his penetrating look was met by a pleasant but impassive smile. “I would like to say farewell to your daughter,” he ended, somewhat brusquely.

  “I am afraid that is impossible,” Pedro broke in. “Dolores left here a few minutes ago, and I regret that she will not have returned by the time we go. By your leave I will go and see to your horse. You may help me if you wish.”

  Together the two men crossed to the stable. “He does not mean to give me an opportunity of talking alone with his sister,” Michael thought.

  He was sorry that he would not see Dolores again. He remembered her slim beauty, her long-lashed eyes. . . .

  For some time Pedro had been silent. The track along which they rode skirted the foothills. The day was clean and fresh after the storm, and the sun had won through to its accustomed brilliance. Michael felt it strike hot on his back and neck, and pulled the knotted handkerchief he wore a little higher for protection against the hot rays.

  “In two miles from here we part,” Pedro said. “You take the right-hand fork, and I the left.” They rode at a leisurely trot; Michael’s reins held loosely in his left hand, the other playing idly with his belt. The solitude of their way was very peaceful; only once had they met other men—two peasants driving a battered wagon, drawn by oxen. The scent of washed earth rose sweetly from the countryside. Michael drew great gulps of air into his lungs.

  “You have placed me under a great obligation . . .” he hesitated. It was difficult to put into words what he wanted to say. These fellows were so damnably proud. He began again, “Your sister seems worried. After all your kindness to me I wondered if there was anything I could do to be of assistance?”

  “Nothing, Señor.”

  Michael persevered. “I would be only too glad to help. . . . If it is a question of money that is worrying you. . . . If a loan would be timely. . . .”

  Pedro drew rein. “I do not ask for charity and will not accept it, in return for what anyone would have done, Señor. My sister’s anxiety is of a very different nature. As she told you on your arrival, I am a widower. But I have one daughter, to whom Maria is devoted. And she is the cause of our sadness; for to-morrow she leaves us . . . we fear for ever.”

  “Dolores . . . is leaving you!”

  “No, Señor. Dolores is Maria’s daughter. I was speaking of my own. Poor child, she has experienced nothing and will know nothing of life—or love. It is unbearable to think about. And she realises it . . . that is what is so horrible.”

  His voice was bitter and hopeless.

  They rode on. Michael was curious, but felt chary of breaking the silence. They came to the point where the trail forked. A bird began to sing—its clear melody rising joyously to the sky.

  “I am sorry for you, my friend,” Michael said at last, holding out his hand. “I offer you my full sympathy. Would it be presumptuous to ask what ails your daughter, Señor?”

  Pedro looked him full in the eyes, ignoring the proffered farewell.

  “She is being taken to-morrow, Señor, because she is a leper.”

  He wheeled his horse as he spoke and cantered down the left-hand trail. The bird’s song of the praise of living swelled in ecstasy.

  Michael’s knuckles showed ivory white underneath the tightly stretched skin, his nails pressing cruelly into the palms of his hands. His thoughts milled furiously. He remembered Maria and Dolores; their lack of response to his tentative inquiries. He remembered also the sound of a gently closing door as he went to his room. Pedro’s words rang in his ears, “She has known nothing of life or love”. . . but she had known of the future. . . .

  The sun beat on his back; automatically he brushed away a fly that buzzed about his face.

  Other birds joined the first in the paean of thanksgiving. A butterfly zigzagged an erratic course among the flowering grasses that bordered the road. The storm was over. Once again the world was good to live in.

  Michael rode on, seeing little of the beauty that surrounded him.

  THE COCKROACH

  Jane sat at the little table and slowly drank her coffee. Peter was late—but then Peter was always late. However hard she tried Jane found it impossible to be angry with Peter, for he would agree with her indignation, saying that she was, as usual, absolutely right; and forthwith dismiss the subject with some absurd and disarming joke.

  The Dôme Café was crowded. Jane did not really mind waiting . . . there was so much to see . . . but half an hour! She looked at the people at the next table with a vague annoyance. A party of young Englishmen living in Montparnasse, she surmised, and dabbling in art by their care-free appearance. She felt a sharp pang of envy. Here was she, taking her painting very seriously, forced to work like a beaver—and then hardly able to keep herself even with the help of the small monthly cheque that her mother sent her from New York; and there were these jocular, well-fed young men just pleasantly idling away a couple of years in Paris with Art as an excuse for one long whoopee . . . doubtless in magnificent studios where they held ridiculous and certainly drunken parties. Suddenly Jane laughed. She was probably doing her innocent neighbours an injustice, and in any case it was no business of hers. Still smiling, she lit a cigarette.

  “Sorry I’m late, darling.”

  She looked up and saw Peter standing over her. He was wearing a fisherman’s jersey of thick blue wool and grey flannel trousers, and his black hair was as tousled as she had known it would be. He sat down and blinked contentedly at the spring sunshine. She thought that she would make some show of displeasure. She regarded him coldly.

  “Why are you so late?” Jane asked.

  “I was fixing up with Adrian about going to the Blue Lizard to-night,” he broke off, as a waiter hurried by their table. “Hi! Waiter! Beer . . . and lots of it.”

  “Bien, Monsieur.” The man bustled away.

  “The Blue Lizard? Where’s that?”

  “Somewhere near the Bastille. Very tough . . . grand fun. Real apache stuff!”

  “Then I’m coming too!”

  “Oh no you’re not. You’re going to stay peacefully in your flat, and then if I don’t return you can barge along with a whole
regiment of gendarmes, and stage a terrific rescue scene at the eleventh hour!”

  He put his hand on her knee and smiled at her. He loved her serious expression, the grey, rather solemn eyes, the freckled tip-tilted nose. She looked absurdly young. He could never believe that she was twenty-three . . . four years junior to himself. And in the autumn, if all went well and he got that job in America from old Crosbie, they would be able to be married and live in a flat . . . in Greenwich Village perhaps. . . .

  “But, Peter—don’t be a fool—a lot of those dives are not safe.”

  “I know, darling; and that, as you may guess, is half the fun.”

  The beer arrived in its long thin glass, a symphony of amber and foam.

  “Well anyway,” she said, “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Adrian chucked at the last minute, and that is why Peter went alone. He must have been crazy to do such a thing.” Jane was talking quickly. “The police are no good, I tell you. They say they’ve done all they could; and that he was seen leaving the Blue Lizard. But I can see that they think Peter had good reasons of his own for disappearing. The French are like that. The man who came here implied that I was the good reason. God, how I hate them all! Tony, you must help me. There’s nothing else we can do.”

  The young man thus addressed took his pipe from his mouth and uncrossed his long legs.

  “But, Jane, if what you think is true, and he has been . . .” he faltered over the word “. . . murdered, it would be madness for you even to think of going to the Blue Lizard. What do you expect to find there?” He raised his hand to stem the protest on her lips. “No, if it will help you, I’ll go, but you can’t even consider it.”

  “Yes I can. Don’t you see that it’s perfectly safe now? After the police visits and interrogations they wouldn’t dare . . .” and abruptly she began to cry: cruel, tearing sobs that shook her whole body. “Tony, it’s too awful. I know he’s dead. I know it. Oh, God! Peter’s dead, I tell you.”

  “Now, Jane. You can’t know it, darling. Don’t, honey, don’t.” Tony’s soft southern voice was comforting.

  He held her to him, stroking her hair. After a while she grew quieter until, spent with emotion, she was wracked by a last piteous shudder.

  “Tony—I’ll get them . . . whoever did it . . . I’ll get them . . . if it kills me.”

  “Don’t worry, Janey. Don’t . . . don’t.”

  The Rue de Bayonne was one of the most sordid and uninviting in the whole of Paris. Ill-lit and badly paved, it consisted of a depressing expanse of warehouses and squalid shops broken by an occasional café. Few people disturbed its solitude, and those who did went about their business with the maximum of despatch and self-effacement; oddly furtive. Two policemen stood talking under a street lamp, legs apart, thumbs tucked into their belts.

  Tony and Jane paused in front of what appeared to be the shuttered façade of Maison Levick’s storehouse. A battered arch gave entrance to a narrow courtyard. They peered into the gloom, uninviting in the extreme.

  “It’s in here. You’re sure you want to go on with it, Jane?”

  She squeezed his arm, and Tony knew that as far as she was concerned there would be no turning back.

  “You go first,” Jane said.

  They went down a flight of stone steps, and pushed open a heavy door in which was set an iron grille.

  The Blue Lizard was like hundreds of cheap café chantants; the floor coated in sawdust, the low wooden platform for the performers, the benches and tables stained with the droppings of innumerable drinks. To-night it was half empty. A dozen burly men of the navvy class, and maybe half as many women of the type politely known as “unfortunate,” were listening to an old bawd who, dressed as a ballet dancer in soiled pink tulle, was singing filth to her apathetic audience. Tony led the way to a table near the door. At their entrance the performer interrupted her song to give them an intent stare.

  “We don’t seem very popular,” Jane murmured, as they received a battery of sullen and uneasy glances from the assembled company.

  The proprietor, an old man of revolting aspect, hurried to their table. A purple growth further disfigured his already unprepossessing countenance.

  “A beer and a fine,” Tony said.

  While they waited for their order he suggested to Jane that they should ask the man to have a drink with them. “Not,” he finished, “that he will say a word that will help us . . . but one never knows.”

  His prophecy proved correct; the old man not only refused to speak, but he mumbled some obvious excuse and left them immediately after they had been served.

  “None of the others look any more hopeful. Lord, I’ve never seen such a gang of crooks. And that,” said Tony, “is that.”

  “I feel certain that if we keep on we’ll discover something,” Jane replied. “We must, that’s all. And I feel we shall.”

  “There may be some explanation, darling. After all, it’s only four days; and you know how vague Peter is. Probably he went off to Marseilles or somewhere when he was tight, and has written to you and forgotten to post it or something; and even in Paris a body is not exactly easy to dispose of. . . . Peter is not a child, he can take care of himself alright.”

  “Tony, you’re very sweet—but I’m absolutely convinced that something terrible has happened to him.” She picked up a dirty card on which the bill of fare was pencilled. “Anyhow, I’m going to stay here for a while, and since we haven’t eaten we might as well do so now.”

  Tony glanced with distaste at their surroundings. “My dear, you can’t eat here. You’ll most likely be poisoned.”

  Jane was scanning the menu.

  Soup . . . . . 1.50

  Stew . . . . . 2.50

  Bread . . . . . .25

  “Well, they’re not exactly Ritz prices,” she said, as she handed him the bill of fare.

  Reluctantly he beckoned to the patron and ordered the food. The singer had at last finished her happily limited repertoire, and had sat down at the next table, from which point of vantage she bestowed arch smiles on the unresponsive Tony.

  “Jane, I wish you wouldn’t insist on staying. This is a lousy place . . . and how can we hope to succeed where the police failed? They’re up to all the tricks.”

  “Because we know he came here, and the police are certain that Peter ‘disappeared voluntarily.’ ”

  The ancient houri was now smiling upon Tony with more determined blandishments, ignoring the fact that he already had an “amie.”

  “Give the old girl a drink,” Jane suggested. “She may tell us something.”

  “If I did we’d have the whole lot over here in half a second. No, the fascinating siren will have to go thirsty a little longer.”

  A door at the far end of the room was kicked open, and a woman appeared carrying two steaming plates. She was the wife of the man with the tumour, and in appearance and villainy appeared to be an extremely suitable mate for him. From her frouzy grey head to the soles of her ragged slippers, she looked the incarnation of mean squalor. She banged her burden on to the table before Jane and, saying that she would bring the bread, disappeared into her kitchen.

  Tony looked at his plate with misgiving. Vegetables and macaroni, mingled with lumps of meat of indefinite origin, floated in a thick congealed gravy of most unappetising appearance. His inspection was interrupted by the reappearance of the maker of this dish carrying in her not overclean hands two rolls, which she placed before them.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Merci,” Tony answered drily. The woman’s face glistened with heat from her culinary labours.

  “That will be nine francs seventy-five with the drinks.” With the back of her hand she wiped the beads of moisture from her forehead.

  Tony fumbled in his trousers pocket, and finally produced a tattered five-franc note and various small change. The woman took the money and went away.

  Jane picked up her fork and gingerly explored the contents of her plate. “It
’s not so bad,” she said, after a few cautious mouthfuls. And then she found almost immediately afterwards a dead cockroach. It floated in the gravy; its legs, coated with the sticky substance, protesting in mute appeal against its untimely demise.

  “Tony, look! Isn’t this disgusting? I’m going to show it to that old hag.”

  And before he could stop her she was across the room and through the door that led to the kitchen. Tony got to his feet to follow her, and then decided to remain where he was. It would be stupid to make a scene in a dump like this. He looked round for the proprietor, but he wasn’t visible. He turned his attention to the food. After all, what else could Jane expect if she ate in such places? . . .

  Jane found herself in a dirty passage that led to a second door behind which, no doubt, was the kitchen and its unlovely ruler. She walked towards it, anger in her eyes. Pushing the door open she looked in. No one was there. Several saucepans simmered on the stove. She shivered. The door and the table were black with busy cockroaches—vile and big-bodied. She turned round. Hanging behind the door were some old clothes—faded aprons and overalls; boots that had seen better days; a sweat-stiffened leather waistcoat, green with age—a medley of useless rubbish. Then her eyes widened. Rolled up, and crammed under a wooden dresser, she saw a glimpse of some grey stuff, cleaner and in a better condition than the rest of the rubbish. She bent down and pulled. What was it that had been thrust out of sight? The bundle was wedged tightly in the small space between the dresser and the floor, but at last it gave to her efforts.

  Jane stood holding a pair of flannel trousers and a fisherman’s jersey of thick blue wool.

  Peter’s! She must go back to Tony and tell him what she had found; and above all she must not panic. She turned towards the door. She must get out before she was discovered. Now she had evidence with which to convince the police. She noticed that the dresser stood between two doors. The loathsome cockroaches were thick in front of the second; hurrying through the crack which was left by shoddy hanging. Perhaps, Jane thought, there was another way out which it would be useful to know—in case there was any trouble. She turned the handle which opened at her touch.