by Gerald Kersh
Uncle Kuzma, roaring like a lion, drove these people before him like sheep. I seem to recollect a woman there whose face made me think of a witch in a fairy tale . . . she had a beard on her chin and a man’s billycock hat, dreadfully battered, on her head.
As soon as they were in sight, Uncle Kuzma stopped shouting. He conducted them to the table under the marquee. And then he told the waiters to sit down, and called out the cook and made him sit at the head of the table.
The table was nearly full. He made the major-domo take his place. And he himself served the meal, with my help. And at the end of it—I saw him counting on his fingers and nodding—he placed a bottle of brandy before each person sitting there, and made a speech.
I don’t exactly remember what he said; but while most of his words have run through my mind, some have stuck there. He said:
“Ladies and Gentlemen! Servants of God! Honoured friends! You have honoured my humble table with your presence and I am deeply grateful . . .”
At this word, I remember distinctly seeing a man with a carbuncle on his neck putting a fork in his pocket.
“. . . I have not for a very long time had the honour of your acquaintance. But brief as our friendship is, it is I who am flattered by it . . .”
The woman with the beard carefully folded ten serviettes, counted them, re-counted them, and thrust them into the mysterious interior of her blouse.
At this point, just as Uncle Kuzma was saying: “You and I are all sons of men and women and children of God——” I burst into tears. I don’t know why—probably because I felt that the kindness of Uncle Kuzma was meeting with such a scurvy return . . . that his generous hand was being bitten by the wretches it was feeding. I felt sorry for everybody, especially Uncle Kuzma.
I rushed to his side, leaving a superb fruit-ice, and wept. I could not have known that he had picked up gipsies, tramps and beggars from an encampment in the woods to fill the table: I only knew that something was wrong and he was hurt.
He laid an immense red hand on my head and finished his speech. I never heard any more, except the words fellows on earth, brothers in exile, and creatures not forgotten of God crying for human comfort in the dark.
I only knew that at the end of it everybody banged the table. And then Uncle Kuzma went into the house and came back with a pale, flabby leather bag of money. He opened it and emptied it into one of his great hands.
He went round the table, giving one golden pound to everybody there. Then he threw the empty purse over his shoulder—I picked it up later and kept it for years—and then he said: “Go.” And everybody went away.
And he put his hands on my shoulder and said: “Was that nice ice? . . . Fool! Why cry?” And I cried again. I was sorry because I knew that this beautiful banquet, of which I had eaten so heartily, had gone wrong for him.
My most treasured possession at that time was a live stag-beetle in a box. I gave it to Uncle Kuzma.
He was a great man—he took it and gave me a little dagger, the hilt of which was a cloven chamois foot.
But he insisted that I must give him a coin. I gave him a farthing. “We must not break our friendship,” he said.
I left on the Friday—I cannot be certain—and did not see him again until just before his death. He was lying very still. His face was no longer scarlet, but dead grey. There were folds in it.
He looked thin and small. “How big you have grown,” he said to me. I was only thirteen then. “You are going to grow into a strong man, with a fine chest and a great back. But run, run! Run a long way every day, because if you don’t your legs will be short . . .”
It seems to me that everything he ever said was right. If Uncle Kuzma could have been my comrade-in-arms! What pleasure we could have found, fighting and surviving together!
In a Room Without Walls
“If it could only be like this for ever!” said the quiet girl called Linda, looking over Jimmy’s shoulder at the dim grey face of the clock. “Oh, Jimmy, this is heaven! How happy I am! What can I have done, to deserve such happiness?”
She felt Jimmy smiling. “Are you happy too?” she asked Jimmy. He nodded, observing the reflection of the clock face in the long mirror on the wardrobe door. He had been grimacing.
Last year, he thought chafing and trying not to fidget, I made a hundred and four thousand five hundred pounds. All that money in three hundred and sixty-five days. It works out at . . . what? . . . Twelve-pound-ten an hour. I have given this girl twenty-five pounds’ worth of my time, at that rate. Four shillings and twopence a minute—nearly a penny a second. I’ve thrown away twenty-five pounds, being gracious to Linda for two hours. And she talks of this going on for ever—for ever, at a penny a second! There isn’t that much money in the world!
Linda, with a luminous glory behind her somewhat faded face, closed her eyes and, resting her chin upon his shoulder and caressing his cheek with her forehead, said: “How sweet, Jimmy! How sweet! How can I ever tell you how grateful I am to you for making me so happy? Ah, my dear darling—now, just now, do you know what? I’m so full of love and happiness that another tiny bit would be too much . . . I’d die. But this is Heaven: I’ll never want any Heaven but this—to be here, with you, exactly like this, loving you as I do and knowing that you love me. You do love me?”
Jimmy was inclined to say: “Oh, nonsense! Love? Ha! You? Bah! What, me? Love you? Who are you? A laundress. I am Jimmy—you know who I am—Jimmy the Star. I could have world-famous actresses, take my choice of the beauties of five continents. The world is mine, and all the women in it. Titled women, even. Because a whim takes hold of me, and I beckon to a poor pale creature in a clutching crowd of infatuated fans—because I, like a god, confer upon you the glory of my intimacy for a moment you talk of love? Love? My love? For you? At four-and-twopence a second, do you realise what a lingering look is worth?”
But he said: “Of course I love you,” and he looked at the reversed reflection of the clock that told the time.
“All my life,” said Linda, “all my life I’ve dreamt of such a moment. Don’t laugh—I felt somehow that it might happen to me. I never dared to say to anybody that I had a dream of love. They would have laughed; I’m so plain and ordinary. Oh, dear God, but I love you, Jimmy! You’re too good for me!”
In spite of his seething distaste, Jimmy muttered: “Nothing of the sort. Charming girl!”
“Ah, my own dear love! My dream-come-true! Do you know what? I believe you if you say so. I believe! I believe! I believe in you. This morning I was washing sheets, and you were only a picture, a splendid vision. And now I’m here, with you, in your arms, hearing you telling me you love me. There is a God! Where is yesterday? Where is the grey when the sunlight bleaches it away? Why do you love me?”
“Sweet,” said Jimmy, with his eye on the time. The movement of the big hand was worth thirty-four shillings an inch.
He was in an ecstasy of boredom and visitation. Oh, to be rid of this ridiculously happy woman! he thought. Why did I do it? Why? Why?
“Tell me why you love me,” she said. “No, never mind. Just say it again.”
What was Jimmy to say? If he could have said: “I only said so to please you. It tickled my vanity to beckon you out of the mob around the stage door. You helped me to condescend, you made me feel greater”—then he would have been talking like an honest man. If he had had the courage to say: “You were such a whole-hearted worshipper that I wanted to be a god,” then he would not have been where he was at that moment. If he could have told the truth he would have been an honest man—not a man in anguish, caressing a woman with his hand while he gritted his teeth and watched the clock.
But he said: “Of course I love you!”
There was a silence: it seemed to cling to his ears for a lifetime. Then it came away with a sort of thick sucking noise, and he heard the sharp tick of the round white clock. His face looked drawn in the darkening mirror. He had a desperate yearning to speak a little truth.
&nb
sp; “And you promise to stay with me always?” Linda asked.
He had meant to say “No,” but heard himself muttering: “Mm.”
“Jimmy! Hold me!”
Although he had intended to get up and go away, Jimmy found himself embracing Linda and looking into her eyes.
“Always?” she whispered.
He answered: “Always.” Candour stuck in his throat.
“Oh, Jimmy, if this could go on and on for ever!”
Unutterably weary, he muttered: “Uh-uh; sure!” He was sick, sick to the heart, of pent-up truth.
“Did you say ‘sure’? Do you mean it?”
“Yes.”
“If you say you mean it, I know you mean it,” said Linda. “Dearest, there is a God. There is a Heaven!”
“Oh yes, yes. Sure, sure,” said Jimmy, with a half-laugh. “This is Heaven, isn’t it?”
He shifted, meaning to pull himself away from her. Something happened; he moved in the wrong direction. Linda was in his arms.
“It is! It is!” she whispered.
He sneered. “And hell? Where’s hell?”
Something comparable to a bladder, a grey strained veinous membrane, seemed to burst in a splash of pure, cold light. Out of the indefinable centre of this light a grave, clear voice said: “Think!”
Jimmy looked at the clock. Its hands still marked seven minutes to four of a drizzling February afternoon.
He remembered that there had been a judgment, a hundred thousand years ago. Linda, on his shoulder, had achieved paradise; and he was damned. And for all eternity the clock had stopped.
The Last Battle
Ali was preparing for the fight. Ali was fat, fantastically fat. When he was naked, one could see how malevolently time had dealt with him; blowing him up like a balloon, and dragging him down like a bursting sack. His pectorals hung flabbily, like the breasts of an old woman. His belly sagged!
He brushed his moustache, pinched out a length of Hungarian Pomade, and moulded the ends to needle-points with a dexterous twirl.
“Kration’ll try and grab that,” said Adam, “just to give the lads a laugh.”
“Let him try!”
“Ali, why not trim it down?”
Ali swore that he would as soon trim down another essentially masculine attribute. He put on a curious belt, nearly a foot wide, made of canvas and rubber. “Pull this tight, please; as tight as you can,” he said; and muttered with an apologetic look: “I do not want the people to be under an impression that I have been getting a leetle bit fat . . .”
Adam pulled at the straps, and, like toothpaste in a tube, soft fat oozed up above Ali’s waistline.
“Ali, is this wise? This belt squeezes your guts together. If Kration hits you, or kicks you there——”
“Let him try.” Ali writhed into a set of long black tights, and pulled over them a pair of red silk shorts. “Now, help me with this sash.” He held up a long band of frayed red satin, embroidered with Arabic characters. “This was a present from Abdul Hamid . . .”
“Ali, you’re crazy to press your belly in like that!”
“Ptah!” Ali drew himself up, and stood with folded arms. “Tell me, do I look good?”
Adam felt an impulse to shed tears.
“Listen, Ali; be cautious, for heaven’s sake.”
“My little friend, you forget that I have won hundreds of fights—that I never have been beaten!”
“I know. But I should hate like hell to see you hurt.”
Ali laughed. “Professor Frochner tore one of my ribs right out of the skin, but I beat him; and I fought again next day. In all my life, nobody ever heard me cry out! Nobody ever saw me tap the mat. Leblond had me by the foot in a ju-jitsu hold. ‘Give in or I break your ankle,’ he said. I said: ‘Break on, Leblond: Ali never gives in.’ And he broke my ankle, and I got up on one foot, and pinned him. I said: ‘You cannot hurt Ali. But he whom Ali grips, God forgets!’ That is me!”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll win. I’ve betted on you.”
“Good boy! What odds did they lay against me?”
“Very small.”
“You’re lying. They think I’m an old man. They laugh. Good, let them. And in the end, when they laugh on the other side of the face, I shall laugh, too—I shall laugh right into their eyes, and say: ‘The old wolf still has teeth.’ Do I look good?”
“You look like a champion, Ali, you really do.”
Ali laughed, until the fat on his stomach bounced like a cat in a sack. “Ha-ha-ha! I surprised you, eh? . . . They think I’m going to fool about with this Greek, this Cypriot. No. I shall walk in—one, two, three; up with the legs, back with the head—dash him down, pick him up like a child, shake him like a kitten; then over my head, bim-bam, and pin him. Back again—forward with his head, under my arm with it, and khaaa my old stranglehold, until his eyes pop out. Then I shall pick him up like a dumb-bell, and hold him above my head, and say to the crowd: ‘This is the man who thought he could beat Ali the Turk!’ Then——”
An open door let in the shouting of a crowd. An attendant came in, and said:
“Ali!”
Ali put on a dressing-gown of quilted red silk, thirty years old, and eroded by moths. “Smart, eh? A woman gave me this in Vienna, in . . . I forget the date . . .”
Adam whispered: “Give me your glass eye: it’s madness to wrestle in one of those things.”
“Rubbish! And let him see I have a blind side?”
“Give it to me, I tell you!”
“If you insist, then, take it.” Ali slid out his left eye, and gave it to Adam, who put it in his waistcoat pocket. Then he strode, with slow dignity, out to the ringside, while through his head ran the cheerful rhythm of the March of the Gladiators, the tune to which the old wrestlers at the International Tournament had strutted in glory round the arenas.
There was a roar of applause. Ali raised his hands to acknowledge it, when he saw Kration, already in the ring, bowing and smiling. Ali grasped the ropes and swung himself up. There was a pause. A little trickle of clapping broke out; then laughter, which rose and swelled, pierced by high cat-calls and shrill whistles. . . .
“Hoooi! Laurel and ’Ardy!”
“Where did you get them trousis?”
“Take yer whiskers orf! We can’t see yer!”
Somebody began to sing, in a good tenor voice: “It happened on the beach at Belly-Belly!”
Figler’s friend, Lew, rose and shouted, in a voice trained in the market-places of the earth: “Good old Ali! We remember you!”
Ali tore off his dressing-gown and threw it to Adam.
“Go on, laugh!” he cried.
They laughed.
Fabian shrieked into a megaphone: “Ladies and gentlemen! On my right, two hundred and forty pounds of bone, muscle, brain and nerve, Kration of Cyprus, contender for championship honours! . . . On my left——”
“Father Christmas!” said a voice; and there was another shout of laughter——
“Ali the Terrible Turk, ex-heavyweight champion of the world, now making a sensational come-back——”
“Champion of wot world?” yelled a thin, Cockney voice.
“Ladeez and gentlemen! The name of Ali the Terrible Turk was a household word at the beginning of the century——”
“Wot century?”
(“That’s what you get, if you get old without any money,” said Lew to Figler.)
Fabian stepped back. Kration and Ali went to their corners. Kration still smiled. It was best, he decided, to let it seem that this affair was an elaborate joke. Ali was as grim as death.
“Now don’t forget—take it easy!” whispered Adam.
Ali replied: “I shall have pinned him within twenty seconds. Count twenty, slowly——”
The gong clanged.
The wrestlers went out into the ring.
Kration advanced with the grace of a dancer. Ali moved slowly, jaws clamped, chin down. They circled about each other, feinting. Then there was a
sound like the crack of a whip. Before Ali’s fat-clogged, time-laden muscles could co-ordinate in a counter-attack, Kration had slapped him on the buttocks.
“Get him by the ’orns!” somebody shouted.
“Right,” said Kration, and grabbed at Ali’s moustache. But next moment, a grip like pincers closed on his wrist, a force like an earthquake twirled him round, and his hand went back over his head towards his shoulder-blades.
Kration broke out into a sweat. It occurred to him that Ali was in savage earnest. He had not sufficient skill to break the hold. Resisting Ali’s pressure with all his strength, he butted backwards with his head. The hard, round skull, padded with kinky black hair, jolted against Ali’s jaw. The Turk snarled, and tried to knock Kration’s feet from under him; but between himself and his opponent, his vast abdomen stood like a wall. Kration’s head jerked back again. In Ali’s nose something like a lever in a pump, and bright red blood began to run on to his moustache.
Kration broke away, whirled round, and, in turning, struck Ali on the jaw with his forearm. It seemed to Ali that the Cypriot was swimming in a sea of red water reticulated with a network of dazzling light; and that the voice of this sea was laughter. But even as his brain wavered, his ancient instincts were sending him lumbering after Kration, while his consciousness automatically juggled with the logic of a hundred different forms of attack. . . .
“He’s too fast! Waste no strength chasing! Get close and crush!” His huge right hand hooked Kration’s neck. Kration’s fingers, forked like a snake’s tongue, flickered towards his eyes. Ali ducked. Kration’s nails scratched his forehead. Then Ali had his right hand in an irresistible grip. Adam saw his back quiver.
“Flying mare!” screamed a woman’s voice.
Ali heaved Kration off his feet by his right arm; stooped to throw him over his shoulder; then stopped. The edge of his belt had cut him short. They stayed, for a moment, in this ignominious posture. Then Kration, wriggling like a python, caught Ali’s throat between his biceps and forearm, twisted a leg between Ali’s thighs, grunted, tugged; then writhed away as they fell. The Turk’s body struck the mat with the dead thud of a falling tree. Something snapped; his belt had burst. Kration uttered a triumphant yell, and pulled it away; leapt back, and held it over his head.