The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  “Ah!” murmured Dutilleul. “You’ve recognized me!”

  This troubled him and he decided to hasten his departure for Egypt. It was the afternoon of that very same day that he fell in love with a blonde beauty whom he bumped into twice in fifteen minutes on the Rue Lepic. Straightaway he forgot his stamp collection and Egypt and the Pyramids. For her part, the blonde had looked at him with genuine interest. Nothing speaks more eloquently to the imagination of today’s young woman than plus fours and a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles. She will scent her big break, and dream of cocktails and nights in California. Unfortunately, Dutilleul was informed by Gen Paul, the beauty was married to a man both brutal and jealous. This suspicious husband, who happened to have a wild and disreputable lifestyle, regularly deserted his wife between ten at night and four in the morning, double-locked in her room, with all her shutters also padlocked. During the day he kept her under close supervision, sometimes even following her through the streets of Montmartre.

  “Always on the lookout, him. S’just a great bob who can’t stand the thought of other Bengals fishing in his pond.”

  But Gen Paul’s warning only fired up Dutilleul even more. Bumping into the young lady on Rue Tholozé the next day, he dared to follow her into a creamery and, while she was waiting to be served, he said that he loved her most respectfully, that he knew about everything—the dreadful husband, the locked door and the shutters, but that he would see her that very evening in her bedroom. The blonde blushed, her milk jug trembled in her hand and, her eyes moist with yearning, she sighed softly: “Alas! Monsieur, it is impossible.”

  On the evening of this glorious day, by around ten o’clock, Dutilleul was keeping watch in Rue Norvins, observing a robust outer wall behind which stood a small house, the only signs of which were the weathervane and a chimney. A door in the wall opened and a man emerged who, after carefully locking the door behind him, walked off down the hill towards Avenue Junot. Dutilleul watched him vanish from view, far away at a bend in the road below, then counted to ten. Then he leaped forward, strode through the wall like an athlete, and, after dashing through every obstacle, finally penetrated the bedroom belonging to the beautiful recluse. She welcomed him rapturously and they made love until late into the night.

  The following morning, Dutilleul was annoyed to wake up with a nasty headache. It did not bother him badly and he wasn’t going to let such a minor thing keep him from his next rendezvous. Still, when he happened to find a few pills scattered at the back of a drawer, he gulped down one that morning and one in the afternoon. By evening, his headache was bearable and in his elation he managed to forget it completely. The young woman was waiting for him with an impatience fanned by memories of the night before, and that night they made love until three o’clock in the morning.

  When he was leaving, while walking through the partitions and walls of the house, Dutilleul had the unfamiliar feeling that they were rubbing on his hips and at his shoulders. Nevertheless, he thought it best not to pay much attention to this. Besides, it was only on entering the outer wall that he really met with considerable resistance. It felt as though he were moving through a substance that, while still fluid, was growing sticky and, at every effort he made, taking on greater density. Having managed to push himself right into the wall, he realized that he was no longer moving forward and, horrified, remembered the two pills he had taken during the day. Those pills, which he had thought were aspirin, in fact contained the powder of tetravalent pirette that the doctor had prescribed him the year before. The medication’s effects combined with that of intensive overexertion were now, suddenly, being realized.

  Dutilleul was as if transfixed within the wall. He is still there today, incorporated into the stonework. Nighttime revelers walking down Rue Norvins at an hour when the buzz of Paris dies down can hear a muffled voice that seems to reach them from beyond the tomb and which they take for the moans of the wind as it blows through the crossroads of Montmartre. It is Werewolf Dutilleul, lamenting the end of his glorious career and the sorrows of a love cut short. On some winter nights, the painter Gen Paul may happen to take down his guitar and venture out into the sonorous solitude of Rue Norvins to console the poor prisoner with a song, and the notes of his guitar, rising from his swollen fingers, pierce to the heart of the wall like drops of moonlight.

  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) was an English writer, artist, and professor better known as J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien’s high fantasy novels The Hobbit (1937), the posthumously published collection The Silmarillion (1977), and The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) are his best-known works. Tolkien spent much of his adult life teaching Old and Middle English at Oxford and the Universities of Leeds. Writing was done in private simply as a way to amuse himself and pass the time. The Hobbit was one such story. The fame of this novel led to the publication of The Lord of the Rings as well as a cornucopia of short stories. “Leaf by Niggle” (1945) first appeared in the Dublin Review magazine but can be found in many of Tolkien’s collections. It is unique and, strangely, the only story that Tolkien ever wrote in one sitting. Additionally, he barely edited the piece before sending it off for publication and believed himself to be similar to Niggle in a number of ways.

  Leaf by Niggle

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  THERE WAS ONCE A LITTLE MAN called Niggle, who had a long journey to make. He did not want to go, indeed the whole idea was distasteful to him; but he could not get out of it. He knew he would have to start some time, but he did not hurry with his preparations.

  Niggle was a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he had many other things to do. Most of these things he thought were a nuisance; but he did them fairly well, when he could not get out of them: which (in his opinion) was far too often. The laws in his country were rather strict. There were other hindrances, too. For one thing, he was sometimes just idle, and did nothing at all. For another, he was kind-hearted, in a way. You know the sort of kind heart: it made him uncomfortable more often than it made him do anything; and even when he did anything, it did not prevent him from grumbling, losing his temper, and swearing (mostly to himself). All the same, it did land him in a good many odd jobs for his neighbour, Mr. Parish, a man with a lame leg. Occasionally he even helped other people from further off, if they came and asked him to. Also, now and again, he remembered his journey, and began to pack a few things in an ineffectual way: at such times he did not paint very much.

  He had a number of pictures on hand; most of them were too large and ambitious for his skill. He was the sort of painter who can paint leaves better than trees. He used to spend a long time on a single leaf, trying to catch its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdrops on its edges. Yet he wanted to paint a whole tree, with all of its leaves in the same style, and all of them different.

  There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots. Strange birds came and settled on the twigs and had to be attended to. Then all round the Tree, and behind it, through the gaps in the leaves and boughs, a country began to open out; and there were glimpses of a forest marching over the land, and of mountains tipped with snow. Niggle lost interest in his other pictures; or else he took them and tacked them on to the edges of his great picture. Soon the canvas became so large that he had to get a ladder; and he ran up and down it, putting in a touch here, and rubbing out a patch there. When people came to call, he seemed polite enough, though he fiddled a little with the pencils on his desk. He listened to what they said, but underneath he was thinking all the time about his big canvas, in the tall shed that had been built for it out in his garden (on a plot where once he had grown potatoes).

  He could not get rid of his kind heart. “I wish I was more strong-minded!” he sometimes said to himself, meaning that he wished other people’s
troubles did not make him feel uncomfortable. But for a long time he was not seriously perturbed. “At any rate, I shall get this one picture done, my real picture, before I have to go on that wretched journey,” he used to say. Yet he was beginning to see that he could not put off his start indefinitely. The picture would have to stop just growing and get finished.

  One day, Niggle stood a little way off from his picture and considered it with unusual attention and detachment. He could not make up his mind what he thought about it, and wished he had some friend who would tell him what to think. Actually it seemed to him wholly unsatisfactory, and yet very lovely, the only really beautiful picture in the world. What he would have liked at that moment would have been to see himself walk in, and slap him on the back, and say (with obvious sincerity): “Absolutely magnificent! I see exactly what you are getting at. Do get on with it, and don’t bother about anything else! We will arrange for a public pension, so that you need not.”

  However, there was no public pension. And one thing he could see: it would need some concentration, some work, hard uninterrupted work, to finish the picture, even at its present size. He rolled up his sleeves, and began to concentrate. He tried for several days not to bother about other things. But there came a tremendous crop of interruptions. Things went wrong in his house; he had to go and serve on a jury in the town; a distant friend fell ill; Mr. Parish was laid up with lumbago; and visitors kept on coming. It was springtime, and they wanted a free tea in the country: Niggle lived in a pleasant little house, miles away from the town. He cursed them in his heart, but he could not deny that he had invited them himself, away back in the winter, when he had not thought it an “interruption” to visit the shops and have tea with acquaintances in the town. He tried to harden his heart; but it was not a success. There were many things that he had not the face to say no to, whether he thought them duties or not; and there were some things he was compelled to do, whatever he thought. Some of his visitors hinted that his garden was rather neglected, and that he might get a visit from an Inspector. Very few of them knew about his picture, of course; but if they had known, it would not have made much difference. I doubt if they would have thought that it mattered much. I dare say it was not really a very good picture, though it may have had some good passages. The Tree, at any rate, was curious. Quite unique in its way. So was Niggle; though he was also a very ordinary and rather silly little man.

  At length Niggle’s time became really precious. His acquaintances in the distant town began to remember that the little man had got to make a troublesome journey, and some began to calculate how long at the latest he could put off starting. They wondered who would take his house, and if the garden would be better kept.

  The autumn came, very wet and windy. The little painter was in his shed. He was up on the ladder, trying to catch the gleam of the westering sun on the peak of a snow-mountain, which he had glimpsed just to the left of the leafy tip of one of the Tree’s branches. He knew that he would have to be leaving soon: perhaps early next year. He could only just get the picture finished, and only so so, at that: there were some corners where he would not have time now to do more than hint at what he wanted.

  There was a knock on the door. “Come in!” he said sharply, and climbed down the ladder. He stood on the floor twiddling his brush. It was his neighbour, Parish: his only real neighbour, all other folk lived a long way off. Still, he did not like the man very much: partly because he was so often in trouble and in need of help; and also because he did not care about painting, but was very critical about gardening. When Parish looked at Niggle’s garden (which was often) he saw mostly weeds; and when he looked at Niggle’s pictures (which was seldom) he saw only green and grey patches and black lines, which seemed to him nonsensical. He did not mind mentioning the weeds (a neighbourly duty), but he refrained from giving any opinion of the pictures. He thought this was very kind, and he did not realize that, even if it was kind, it was not kind enough. Help with the weeds (and perhaps praise for the pictures) would have been better.

  “Well, Parish, what is it?” said Niggle.

  “I oughtn’t to interrupt you, I know,” said Parish (without a glance at the picture). “You are very busy, I’m sure.”

  Niggle had meant to say something like that himself, but he had missed his chance. All he said was: “Yes.”

  “But I have no one else to turn to,” said Parish.

  “Quite so,” said Niggle with a sigh: one of those sighs that are a private comment, but which are not made quite inaudible. “What can I do for you?”

  “My wife has been ill for some days, and I am getting worried,” said Parish. “And the wind has blown half the tiles on my roof, and water is pouring into the bedroom. I think I ought to get the doctor. And the builders, too, only they take so long to come. I was wondering if you had any wood and canvas you could spare, just to patch me up and see me through for a day or two.” Now he did look at the picture.

  “Dear, dear!” said Niggle. “You are unlucky. I hope it is no more than a cold that your wife has got. I’ll come round presently, and help you move the patient downstairs.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Parish, rather coolly. “But it is not a cold, it is a fever. I should not have bothered you for a cold. And my wife is in bed downstairs already. I can’t get up and down with trays, not with my leg. But I see you are busy. Sorry to have troubled you. I had rather hoped you might have been able to spare the time to go for the doctor, seeing how I’m placed: and the builder too, if you really have no canvas you can spare.”

  “Of course,” said Niggle; though other words were in his heart, which at the moment was merely soft without feeling at all kind. “I could go. I’ll go, if you are really worried.”

  “I am worried, very worried. I wish I was not lame,” said Parish.

  So Niggle went. You see, it was awkward. Parish was his neighbour, and everyone else a long way off. Niggle had a bicycle, and Parish had not, and could not ride one. Parish had a lame leg, a genuine lame leg which gave him a good deal of pain: that had to be remembered, as well as his sour expression and whining voice. Of course, Niggle had a picture and barely time to finish it. But it seemed that this was a thing that Parish had to reckon with and not Niggle. Parish, however, did not reckon with pictures; and Niggle could not alter that. “Curse it!” he said to himself, as he got out his bicycle.

  It was wet and windy, and daylight was waning. “No more work for me today!” thought Niggle, and all the time that he was riding, he was either swearing to himself, or imagining the strokes of his brush on the mountain, and on the spray of leaves beside it, that he had first imagined in the spring. His fingers twitched on the handlebars. Now he was out of the shed, he saw exactly the way in which to treat that shining spray which framed the distant vision of the mountain. But he had a sinking feeling in his heart, a sort of fear that he would never now get a chance to try it out.

  Niggle found the doctor, and he left a note at the builder’s. The office was shut, and the builder had gone home to his fireside. Niggle got soaked to the skin, and caught a chill himself. The doctor did not set out as promptly as Niggle had done. He arrived next day, which was quite convenient for him, as by that time there were two patients to deal with, in neighbouring houses. Niggle was in bed, with a high temperature, and marvellous patterns of leaves and involved branches forming in his head and on the ceiling. It did not comfort him to learn that Mrs. Parish had only had a cold, and was getting up. He turned his face to the wall and buried himself in leaves.

  He remained in bed some time. The wind went on blowing. It took away a good many more of Parish’s tiles, and some of Niggle’s as well: his own roof began to leak. The builder did not come. Niggle did not care; not for a day or two. Then he crawled out to look for some food (Niggle had no wife). Parish did not come round: the rain had got into his leg and made it ache; and his wife was busy mopping up water, and wondering
if “that Mr. Niggle” had forgotten to call at the builder’s. Had she seen any chance of borrowing anything useful, she would have sent Parish round, leg or no leg; but she did not, so Niggle was left to himself.

  At the end of a week or so Niggle tottered out to his shed again. He tried to climb the ladder, but it made his head giddy. He sat and looked at the picture, but there were no patterns of leaves or visions of mountains in his mind that day. He could have painted a far-off view of a sandy desert, but he had not the energy.

  Next day he felt a good deal better. He climbed the ladder, and began to paint. He had just begun to get into it again, when there came a knock on the door.

  “Damn!” said Niggle. But he might just as well have said “Come in!” politely, for the door opened all the same. This time a very tall man came in, a total stranger.

  “This is a private studio,” said Niggle. “I am busy. Go away!”

  “I am an Inspector of Houses,” said the man, holding up his appointment-card, so that Niggle on his ladder could see it. “Oh!” he said.

  “Your neighbour’s house is not satisfactory at all,” said the Inspector.

  “I know,” said Niggle. “I took a note to the builders a long time ago, but they have never come. Then I have been ill.”

  “I see,” said the Inspector. “But you are not ill now.”

  “But I’m not a builder. Parish ought to make a complaint to the Town Council, and get help from the Emergency Service.”

  “They are busy with worse damage than any up here,” said the Inspector. “There has been a flood in the valley, and many families are homeless. You should have helped your neighbour to make temporary repairs and prevent the damage from getting more costly to mend than necessary. That is the law. There is plenty of material here: canvas, wood, waterproof paint.”