At last it seemed that she was intruding on a tête-à-tête, eavesdropping on a monologue; so that when Clarke would emerge from his reveries, Diane resented the inevitable thought that he was robbing himself to keep her company. But patience reaches its limit, finally.…
She saw it, one night, twinkle and smile through a lustrous haze that played over its surface, smile the slow, curved smile of a carmine-lipped woman through the veils of her mystery; saw Clarke sitting there, eyes shearing the veil and half smiling in return, a devotee in the ecstatic contemplation of a goddess shrouded in altar fumes.…
“Ham!”
“Yes,” answered Clarke’s lips. He had now perfected the trick of having his body act as his proxy.
“Are you taking me to that show tonight?”
“What show?” Clarke the simulacrum stirred lazily in the depths of the cushion-heaped lounge. “The truth of it is, my dear,” he resumed after a pause during which some memory of the proposed entertainment must have returned, “truth of it is I’m awfully busy tonight—”
“Busy sitting there staring at nothing and sipping Pernod!” flared Diane, the wrath of months flashing forth. Then, as she saw Clarke settle back into the depths: “Listen, once for all; this nonsense has lasted too long. I might as well have married a mummy! Either get that thing out of the house, or I’ll leave you to your pious meditations indefinitely—”
“What? Good Lord, Diane, what’s this?”
“You heard me. You used to be half human, but now you’re utterly impossible. And if you can’t show me a little attention, I’m leaving here and now. For the past many weeks you’ve acted like a model for a petrified forest. Ever since that yellow beast—”
“Yellow beast?”
“Exactly! That damned rug is driving me crazy—”
“Is, or has driven?” suggested Clarke.
“Lies there like a beast of prey just ready to wake. And you sit there, night after night, staring at it until you fall asleep in your chair. Does it go, or do I?”
“What do you want me to do? Throw it away?”
“I don’t care what you do with it. Only I won’t stay in the house with it. It gives me the creeps. You’ve said entirely too much in your sleep lately—first yellow rugs, and now it’s a yellow girl. I’m through!”
Clarke’s brows rose in Saracenic arches. And then he smiled with surprising friendliness and a touch of wonder.
“Di, why didn’t you tell me sooner? I could understand your craving alligator pears at three in the morning—I might have understood that, but hating a rug is really a new one on me—”
“No, stupid, it’s nothing like that! I just hate the damned thing, and no more to be said.”
“Well, lacking the infallible alibi”—Clarke glared and assumed his fighting face—“if you mean I choose between you and the rug, I’ll call a taxi right now.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll walk.”
The door slammed.
Clarke twisted his mustache, and achieved a laugh; not merry, but still a laugh. And then he sank back among the cushions.
“Yellow Girl, I thought you were fantastic.…”
* * * *
Le Vieux Carre wondered when the next morning it was rumored that la belle Livaudaise had been seen hurrying down Saint Peter Street without speaking to any one of the several acquaintances she had met; but when at the Green Shutter and the Old Quarter Bookstore it was announced that Diane was living in a loft of the Pontalba Building, wonder ceased. For Diane’s friend Louise had been no less garrulous than she should have been, so that the habitués of the French Quarter were prepared for the news.
And then it was said that to gain admittance to Clarke’s studio one must know the code of taps whereby someone who at times left a certain side door bearing bottles of Pernod announced his arrival; for Clarke answered neither doorbell nor telephone. The vendor of Pernod was certainly a discreet person; yet even a discreet seller of absinthe could see no harm in mentioning that his patron found enormous fascination in watching the play of sunlight and the dance of moonbeams on the golden buff pile of a rug that was more a sleeping, breathing creature than any sane child of the loom.
Finally the courier failed to gain admittance, despite his tapping in code. And this he thought worthy of Diane’s ear.
“He starves himself, petite—since three days now he has not admitted me. All the while she lies there, gleaming in the moon, that awful rug—mordieu, it is terrible.…”
Diane had stedfastly denied that which had been clamoring for recognition. But when this last bit was added to what had gone before, logic gave way, and Diane’s fears asserted themselves. That rug was haunted, was bewitched, was bedevilling Clarke; logic or no logic, the fact was plain.
Driven by that monstrous thought, Diane exhumed the little golden keyring and started up Royal Street, determined to cross the barrier before it became impassable. But her determination wavered; and before fitting the well-worn key into the lock, she applied her ear to the keyhole, listened, and heard Clarke’s voice.
Diane resisted the temptation to use her key and stage a scene that even in the imperturbable Vieux Carre would be sensational for at least a week. Then her pride conquered, and she achieved a most credible smile of disdain.
“Sly devil, pretending it was a rug, He was so absorbed in.…”
And, since it was but an amorous escapade, Diane’s unbelievable speculations were replaced by thoughts reasonable enough not to be terrifying.
* * * *
That very night, Clarke was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his studio, full under the red glow of a tall bronze mosque lamp. Before him, shimmering in the moonlight that streamed in through the French windows, lay the rug from Samarcand, mysterious and golden, with its pale sapphire corner pieces glittering like a distant sea viewed through a cleft between two mountain crests.
All the witchery and ecstasy that had ever been lost in the entire world were reassembled, pulsing in the silken pile which he contemplated. And this was the night, the Night of Power, when Fate stalked through the corridors of the world like a colossus just risen from an age-old throne of granite, resistless and unconquerable. Clarke had spent so many nights and days of staring that it was inevitable that there must be such a night. He saw more than the wonder before him: in place of the marvel woven by deft, forgotten hands, there gleamed enchantingly as through moon-touched mist a garden in the valley of Zarab-shan.
Then came a faint, oddly accented drumming and piping, music to whose tune dead years reassembled their bones and danced forth from their graves. And their ghosts as they danced exhaled an overwhelming sweetness that made Clarke’s brain reel and glow, and his blood surge madly in anticipation of that which he knew must follow.
Then out of the blackness just beyond the range of the ruddy mosque lamp and full into the moonlight that marched slowly across the rug came a slim Yellow Girl, diaphanously garbed and veiled. Her anklets clicked faintly; and very faint was the tinkle of the pendant that adorned her unusual coiffure.
“All these many days I have sought you, my lord,” she began, as she extended her arms in welcome. “But in vain, until tonight, when at last I parted the veil and crossed the Border.”
Clarke nodded understandingly, and looked full into her dark, faintly slanted eyes.
“And I have been thinking of you,” he began, “ever since someone sent me this rug on which you stand. It is strange how this rug could bridge the gap of twenty years and bring into my very house a glimpse of the valley of Zarab-shan. And stranger yet that you could escape from your father’s house and find me here. Though strangest of all, time has not touched you, when by all reason you should be old, and leathery, and past forty.… Yet you are lovelier now than you were then, by that fountain in a garden near Samarcand.”
“It is not strange,” contradicted the Yellow Girl, as she pirouetted with dainty feet across the moon-lapped silk. “For you see me now as I was when I wove my soul i
nto this very rug.”
Clarke smiled incredulously; which was illogical enough, since, compared with the girl’s presence, nothing else should be incredible.
“How can that be, Yellow Girl, seeing that we two met one evening twenty years ago, whereas this rug was woven when the Great Khan sat enthroned in Samarcand and reproved the Persian Hanz for his careless disposal of the Great Khan’s favorite cities. This was the joy of kings hundreds of years before you and I were born—”
“Before the last time we were born,” corrected the Yellow Girl. “But the first time—at least, the first time that I can recollect—the barred windows of a prince’s palace failed to keep you from me. And eunuchs with crescent-bladed scimitars likewise failed. But in the end—why must all loveliness have an end?—a bowstring for me, and a sword-stroke for you.…”
The Yellow Girl shuddered as she stroked her smooth throat with fingers that sought to wipe off the last lingering memory of a cord of hardspun silk.
“And from the first,” continued the girl, “I knew what our doom would be. So I started weaving, and completed my task before they suspected us and the bowstring did its work. My soul, my self, being woven cunningly and curiously into silk rich enough to hang on the wall of the khan’s palace, waited patiently and wondered whether you and I could have our day again. Thus it was in the beginning—”
“Ah…now it does come back to me,” interrupted Clarke, “as in a dream dimly remembered. How compactly and stiflingly they would wrap me in a bale of silk and carry me past the guards and into your presence. And by what devious routes I would leave you…yes, and how painlessly swift is the stroke of a scimitar.…”
The Yellow Girl shuddered.
“A scimitar truly wielded is really nothing, after all,” continued Clarke. “I might have been sawn asunder between planks.… Well, and that meeting in the garden these short twenty years ago was after all not our first…it seems that I knew then that it was not the first. Though but for an evening—”
“Yes. Just for an evening. So to what end were we spared bowstrings and the stroke of swift scimitars, since we had but an evening?” And thinking of the empty years of luxurious imprisonment that followed, she smiled somberly. “For only an evening. And then you forgot, until this rug—this same rug I wove centuries ago—interrupted your pleasant adventuring, and reminded you.
“Death stared me in the face. The end of life more vainly lived than the first. I knew that I was leaving this avatar after having lived but one stolen evening. So I sent a trusted servant to carry this very rug to Meshed. For when we met in the garden, you were hunting rugs for him who now seeks them for your delight. And I knew that he would find you if you still lived. Thus it is that I have crossed the Border, and stand before you as I did once before—this time on that wry rug which I wove centuries ago, while living in hope of another meeting and in dread of the bowstring I knew would in the end find me.”
The moon patch had marched toward the end of the rug from Samarcand, and was cutting into the blue web at its end. Clarke knew that when there remained no more room for her tiny feet, she would vanish, not ever to reappear. But Clarke hoped against knowledge.
“Yellow Girl,” he entreated, “my door will be barred to friend and acquaintance alike, if you will but return on whatever nights the moon creeps across our rug.…”
Had Diane, listening at the door, understood, she would have used her key. But Diane merely heard:
“And I shall wait for these nights as long as life remains in me. For all that has happened since then is nothing and less than nothing; and all has been a dream since that one night in a garden of Zarab-shan.”
Very little remained of the moon patch. The Yellow Girl stepped a tiny pace forward, to prolong her stay yet another few moments. All but the moonlit strip of the rug from Samarcand glowed bloodily in the flare of the brazen mosque lamp.
“No, forgetful lover,” eluded the Yellow Girl, “I can not return. I can not cross the Border again. In Samarcand, eight hundred years ago we mocked for a while the doom that hung over us, and in the end called the bowstring but a caress of farewell. Again, in the garden of Zarab-shan we met, we parted, and you forgot: so this time I take no chances. While I can not return, you at least can follow me…if you will…for it is very easy.…”
She edged along the ever narrowing strip of moon-bathed silk, and with an embracing gesture, lured Clarke to rise and follow her.
“It is so easy…move lightly…but be careful not to disturb your body or overbalance it.…”
Had Diane not turned away from the door, were she not even now strolling insouciantly clown Royal Street—
“Yellow Girl, you and I have had enough of farewells!”
Something left Clarke, tottered perilously on the two handbreadths of moonlight that remained, then caught the Yellow Girl by the hand and took the lead.
The blue web of the rug from Samarcand gleamed for another moment in the moonlight, then sweltered in the red glow of the mosque lamp.
THE MONKEY SPOONS, by Mary Elizabeth Counselman
The little shop seemed to have taken the musty, worm-eaten quality of furniture and relics it offered for sale. There was an all-pervasive odor of mildew and decaying wood. Dust motes whirled in a shaft of sunlight as the street door opened, with the hushed tinkle of a bell above the sedate gold letters:
JONATHAN SPROULL, ANTIQUES
The three young people who entered, arm in arm, looked as out of place in such a shop as three children at a board meeting. The girl, a vivacious brunette with a large diamond solitaire on her left hand, linked the two men together—one a tall, easygoing Norse blond, the other small, wiry, and dark, with sensitive features that resembled those of the girl. They stood for a moment, laughing and chattering together—but in lowered tones, somewhat subdued by the atmosphere of the old shop.
“No, no; not three rings, Bob. Rings are so trite,” the girl was protesting. “What we want is something unusual—eh, Alan? Something distinctive to link us three together always, like the Three Musketeers, and remind us of our undying…”
She broke off with a stifled gasp as a stooped, wrinkled gnome of a man, a hunchback, scuttled out from the shadowy recesses at the rear of the place. There was something spider-like about his appearance, until he smiled. Large luminous brown eyes beamed upon each of them in turn.
“I overheard,” he murmured in a mellow friendly voice that matched his eyes. “You are looking for some little memento?” His eyes drifted keenly to the girl. “Soon is your wedding day—yes?” he hazarded.
“And you and your…your brother?…and your fiance wish to buy some antique curio, in (revolting term!) triplicate? As a bond of love and remembrance?”
The trio glanced at one another, jaws dropping.
“Why—yes!” the girl laughed. “You must be psychic!”
“Observation, merely observation and deduction,” the old proprietor chuckled pleasantly. “I have very little trade here, worse luck, and much time to meditate!… Now, what did you have in mind? Three identical snuffboxes, perhaps? 17th Century? Or what about lockets, Renaissance Italian, with your pictures in each? I have some that fold open in three sections. Two of them could be worn as watchfobs, of course,” he smiled at the two utterly unlike but congenial young men.
They grinned back at him, wandering curiously among the cluttered displays of crow’s-nest tables, hammered brass fire-dogs, old spinning wheels, and a hundred other reminders of generations past. Idly they wandered over to a showcase of antique silverware—ornate gold-and-silver sugar shells, pickle forks with tiny demons on the handle, little salt spoons, and graceful kris-shaped butter knives. The girl strolled away by herself, poking about with quiet fascination. Presently her eyes fell on a small, worn, black velvet case pushed half out of sight on a shelf. She leaned to open it, and called out eagerly:
“Look! Oh, Alan—Bob, look! I found some monkey spoons!” She beckoned to her brother and fiance, then smiled a
cross the shop at the old proprietor—whose sudden look of agitation she failed to notice. “These are monkey spoons, aren’t they, Mr. Sproull? I’ve never seen any with a drinking monkey perched on the knop—it’s always something stylized, a faun or a skull. These must be very old.”
The two men moved to her side, fondly amused at her excitement. The blond one, Bob, looked at the dark one, Alan, and spread his hands humorously.
“What on earth,” he drawled, “are monkey spoons? Alan, if we’re going to open that antique shop of ours, with my backing and Marcia’s and your experience, you’ll just have to brief me on these…”
* * * *
The brother and sister started explaining, both at once, interrupting each other. They gave up, laughing. Then suddenly Mr. Sproull stepped forward, edging unobtrusively between the three young people and the black velvet box.
“Monkey spoons,” he explained diffidently, “were presented by the old Dutch patroons to honored guests and relatives, as late as the 17th Century. They were mementoes of some occasion—a funeral, most often. As you can see from these very fine specimens—” Skillfully, he steered the trio away to another showcase, shutting the black velvet box behind him with a furtive gesture. “These,” he pointed out one set of five, “are typical. Note the wide, shallow, fluted bowl of the spoon—very thin silver—bearing a hammered-out picture symbolic of funerals: a man on horseback delivering the invitations, with a churchyard in the background. These bear a likeness of St. Michael, weigher of souls on Judgment Day. This one has a picture of a mourner weeping over a cinerary urn…”
“Br-r! Cheerful little trinkets, aren’t they?” Bob laughed, resting one hand on Alan’s shoulder and sliding his other arm about his fiancee’s waist. “Mean to say they passed out these things at funerals, like flowers at a party?”
“Not exactly.” Mr. Sproull smiled. “They were hung around the rim of the punch bowl at the Dood Feest—‘dead feast.’ Something like the Irishman’s wake. A small silver lozenge, the seal, was always welded at the center of the handle, engraved with the name of the deceased, and the dates of his birth and death. The handles are quite slender, as you see. They curl backwards like the end of a violin to form the knop—on which is mounted a silver faun, or a skull, or…”
The Weird Fiction Megapack Page 33
