Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly

by John Franklin Bardin

  She had felt like arguing. Last night – yes, last night had been bad. She would be one of the first to admit that. But today – no, today she had played well. She had heard Bach in her mind, and she had played Bach as she heard it. She could not doubt it. It had to be.

  But even as she thought this, even as she insisted to herself that Madame was wrong, she had known that Madame was not wrong. She had failed, as she had many times before, but this failure was final. This time she had not known that she had failed – it had sounded right to her. Only through Madame’s honesty, at which she railed, had she known.

  Madame came over to where she sat by the harpsichord. She carefully closed the covers on the manuals and turned the key in the lock. ‘There are many who do not do as well,’ she said. ‘And they have fame … money … recognition.’

  This was true. She could not even say that her career was over. Jeffry had given her a good notice, Mrs Smythe had approved, her popularity was assured. She could go on playing competently to filled halls, could become a great success and only a few would know there was a difference. But she would not.

  ‘Madame, I do not understand,’ she had said. ‘It sounded right to me.’ She looked up at her old friend hopefully, waited for her to say something more that would make it possible for her to go on. Tell me to practise twenty-four hours a day and I will do it, she thought. Tell me to memorize all of Couperin, go back and study fingering, play Czerny – anything at all if it leaves me a chance to regain what I have lost – and I will do it.

  But Madame had only smiled and had shaken her head, had said nothing more. They had talked of other things, inconsequentials, for another quarter of an hour. And then she had left. She had left and come to the park, had bought nuts and sat on the bench, had fed the squirrel until he ran away, until her nuts were gone, and now she was walking again, walking … walking.

  She was no longer alone. She was walking in a thick crowd of people, mostly women and children, a noisy crowd made up of calls and cries and childish questions, of balloons above and empty boxes of Cracker Jack underfoot. She stopped and looked around her, seeing the people for the first time. This was the zoo, and she was in front of the pony track, obstructing the pushing, pulling file of anxious children who were waiting to ride in the pony-cart. A fat, perspiring, red-faced mother – a captive dirigible of flesh held down by two tugging brats – shouted at her, ‘Why don’t you move on, lady? You’re too old to go on this anyway, and you’re only blocking traffic!’

  Embarrassed, she did move on, past the man with the tank of helium, who sold balloons, past the snorting seals in their barricaded swimming-pool and up the hill that led to the bear-pits. She did not know where she was going, and she did not care, just so it was to a spot where the crowd was less dense. When, at last, she found herself on a rocky promontory that overhung a den of bears, she decided to stop, to remain there for a while and watch the behaviour of the bears as she had that of the squirrel.

  There were two of them out in the warm October sun, big, clumsy, brown bears that lumbered like badly articulated toys as they passed their grotto. She saw that each time they came to the blank cliff face, that formed one wall of their enclosure and above which she was standing, they raised their heads, sometimes sitting upon their haunches, and sniffed her. Then, each time, they resumed their pacing, made the complete circuit of their den, before returning to re-enact this ritual.

  The brute power of their huge, mountainous bodies interested her as much as their compulsive actions. Each time they padded towards her, the weight of their strides, the hammer-blows of their feet, shook the rock she stood on, made her own body tremble. They stalked back and forth, around and around the grotto, always together, the larger, darker bear slightly in front of the smaller, rangier one. Each bear’s movements were perfectly synchronized with his mate’s, except for an occasional corner where the lead bear would be taking shorter, pivotal strides while his companion was still lunging straight ahead. They did not seem to tire, nor did they change their course or in any way modify their actions. And every time they stopped beneath her, looked upwards, sniffing, then sat up, she felt a strange pleasure.

  The squirrel had been intelligent, canny, aware of causality and wise in the ways of men; the bears were rigidly conditioned, powerful but unintelligent, automatons. Yet they affected her sensibilities in a manner that the squirrel never could – although she could neither name nor express this reaction, she felt it strongly enough to turn her back upon the enclosure and its two restless occupants, to look the other way towards the city and the sentinel apartment buildings that guarded the periphery of the park.

  It seemed to her that she was alienated from her life, that since her talk with Madame Tedescu she existed outside of all her previous desires and activities, alone and directionless. Even the bears, who still plodded in their pit although she had turned her back on them, were housed; in fact, their quarters determined their lives, condemned them to patrol the unscalable walls of their den, to keep casting their eyes upward at the cliff face and the down-curving, pointed bars that would impale them if they leaped. She was not caged, she was free.

  Or so it seemed to her. Basil loved her. Basil did not love her. He was being unfaithful to her with the beautiful girl he had kissed the night before, or he was not being unfaithful to her. Either way it did not seem to matter now.

  A great mass of dark clouds were forming behind the high towers of the apartment buildings, making their lineaments stand out in stark relief against the leaden opacity of the approaching storm. In a few minutes the clouds would be over the park and it would begin to rain. She knew that she should begin to walk towards the nearest entrance, if she wanted to avoid a drenching. The atmosphere, which had been warm and damp, had grown cold as she watched the clouds; the breeze had quickened, had blown gusty, and all about her bright red and yellow leaves were flying.

  She did not move. A strange calmness had overcome her with her realization that she no longer cared. A tension inside her had been released, an enigmatic, ticking mechanism had ceased to operate, and she now floated in the pool of circumstances that had drowned her desires, was held fast in it, like scum on the surface of a pond. Slowly, lackadaisically, she turned around until she faced the bearpit again. The two brown monsters were coming towards her padding heavily and rhythmically, as if this time they would reach her surely. The larger bear still walked a pace ahead of his mate, still led him, and as she watched, fascinated, she understood just where the resemblance between herself and them lay. But before she could think it through, before the bears could get to the foot of the cliff, the music she had not heard in many months began behind her. A queer, broken humming, an unresonant sound that she could never imitate, a sequence of chords that always seemed about to resolve but never did, this music was the greatest evil she had ever known. Once she had heard it, she could not escape it – she had no control over it – but could only endure it until it lapsed into silence of itself. Yet its evil did not lie in its sound alone, or the terror, the elemental horror, it communicated; the true baseness was who accompanied the music. ‘I still have time,’ she thought, ‘to climb that barrier, to throw myself down into the den.’ Even as she was thinking this, the discordant humming grew louder and she felt a restraining pressure on her shoulder. She did not have to look to see what it was, she had looked and seen it too many times before; but she did look and saw the hand, the long, white, spatulate fingers, the ring with its deeply-coloured stone that when she gazed into it revealed the night, the swirling blackness, the emptiness of the abyss.

  ‘They are a little like us, aren’t they, Ellen?’ the sweet voice asked. ‘The bears, of course. Look how the old fellow – isn’t he tremendous and powerful! – is always in the lead. Now he is sitting up, and in a moment his friend will sit up, too. See, what did I tell you? The second one does exactly what the first one does! Just like you and me, Ellen…’

  It was Nelle. She did not wan
t to face her. She had hoped she would never see her again. The morning that she had gone up to Dr Danzer’s office in the hospital for her last ‘treatment’ she had said good-bye to Nelle, had told her that she would not recognize her if she came again. And she had thought that Nelle had understood at last. There had been an instant when she lay on the table, while Dr Danzer held her hand and told her that there was no reason to be afraid, that it would all be over in a twinkling, that it was nothing but a shock, an electric shock, that would pass through her frontal lobes, that in some way it would adjust the balance, would make things fit into place again, all things, little and big – there had been this instant, a moment when she first sensed the coldness of the electrodes at her temples, when she had been most terribly afraid despite the warm strength of the doctor’s hand, when, ever so faintly, she had heard the humming music, had seen dimly the long, curving fingers, the dark, horrible ring, had known that Nelle was there, too, that she was just lying low, as she always had when Ellen got into trouble, that even after the ‘treatment’ was over Nelle would not have gone. But this impression had existed for only a moment. Hell had taken its place, white, jumping, searing hell, a blinding, scorching universe of pain. Hours later, when she had recovered consciousness, Nelle was gone. And she had not returned until now.

  It would be best to face her, she reasoned – to turn around and look her in the eye and show her that she could not command any more, that she refused to do her bidding. Swiftly, she did turn around, did look Nelle in the face. Nelle had not changed. Nelle still was her twin, her mirror-image. Not that they were the same – they were two different people. Nelle was evil, all evil.

  Oh, she could be nice, she could cajole – just look at how she was smiling now, how her eyes were dancing, how her long fingers rested lightly, almost gaily on her own. But she would not stay that way. As soon as she was sure that Ellen would go with her, would do as she told her to, her face would change. Those smiling lips would lengthen into a hag’s mouth, those sparkling eyes would begin to glitter with the brightness of malice, those long fingers would bend themselves into claws, and that soft brown hair would coarsen, would grow matted and lack-lustre. And Ellen would have to watch her constantly, would not be able to lose sight of her at any time, would have to fight her when she wanted her to go wrong.

  Nelle could not stay. She would not let her. Even if she would have liked to have known where she had been all these months, what she had been doing, she did not dare waste time to talk with her. At once, without considering her for even another minute, she must do the two things Dr Danzer had told her to do if Nelle ever came again. She must tell her what the doctor had said to tell her, and then she must go to the doctor at once. It did not matter what time of the day or night it was, or whether she had an appointment or not, she must go immediately to the doctor. If he were not at his office, she was to tell the nurse to get in touch with him, to get her – or whoever answered the bell – to take her to him or to the nearest hospital. She was to say that it was a matter of life and death. But first, before she went to the doctor, she must do the other thing he had said to do: she must say what he had told her to say to Nelle.

  Nelle was still smiling. When she smiled, she was beautiful in a way that Ellen had always wanted to be beautiful. The first time Nelle had come to her – the first time that she could remember; Dr Danzer had said that there must have been other, earlier times, although she did not remember them – she had been looking into the old, cracked mirror above the chiffonier in her father’s room. She had run away from the store that afternoon to go with some other girls to a show, and when she got home her father had not let her have any dinner, but had sent her up to his room and told her to lock herself in. This had meant that he was going to come up after dinner and make her take her bloomers off, that he would beat her with his trouser belt until she would not be able to sit down or even lie comfortably – hit her again and again with the long, flailing, snake-like strap, his teeth set in a grimace, his eyes afire. She had hated him, she had wanted to kill him, but she had known that all she could do was what he told her to do. So she had gone upstairs and shut herself, hungry and alone, in his big room with the mahogany bedstead, the picture of Blake’s ‘Jehovah wrestling with Satan and Adam’, the tall chiffonier with the cracked mirror. It had been impossible to sleep, and she had soon grown tired of looking out of the window, so she had gone over to the mirror and she had gazed into it and tried to imagine how her face would be if she were beautiful. That had been the first time she had heard the queer, humming music, too, though then it had not frightened her because she had not known what it meant. She had heard the broken chords and she had felt the hand on her shoulder, had seen Nelle’s face in the mirror beside her own. She had thought it was her own face, that it was herself who was humming; but as she had continued to look, as she had heard her father’s key turning in the lock of the door, she had realized in panic that it was not her own, that it was altogether different, that it was beautiful. Nelle’s voice had sounded in her ear, quiet and sweet, persuading her, ‘I’m your friend, Ellen. You can call me Nelle, if you like. I’m here to help you. I know how you can keep your father from hurting you – but you must act quickly! Take your lipstick – yes, your lipstick! Yes, I know he doesn’t approve of it, that you always wipe it off before he sees you – but hurry, do as I say before he comes in. I’ll explain later. That’s it. Rub it all over your mouth, make it red, red and beautiful like mine. Ah, that’s fine. Now smile. He has come in the door now, he is standing behind you. Smile, smile dreamily and half close your eyes. Now turn around and put your arms around him. That’s it! Hold him to you, harder, harder. Now kiss him. No, not there! On his mouth – his mouth! Ah, that’s better.

  Her father had tom her arms away from himself, had stared at her, and then had struck her face with the back of his hand. ‘You little harlot,’ he had whispered. He had picked her up and thrown her on the bed, had whipped her worse than he ever had before. And Nelle had stood there and laughed.

  Well, this time she would not get away with it. This time she would not listen to her. She would do just as Dr Danzer had told her to do. Although it was difficult to regard her calmly. Her face was so beautiful, so like, and unlike, her own. It was all she could do to say the words.

  ‘Nelle, you do not exist. I imagine you. You have no life of your own. You cannot make me do anything I do not want to do.’ But she had said them, and she had said them loudly and clearly.

  Nelle had not gone away, as Dr Danzer had predicted she would. If anything, she had smiled more derisively. ‘But haven’t you always wanted to do what I told you to do, Ellen? And how can you doubt my existence when you, yourself, see me? It’s not as if Dr Danzer had seen me. Of course, he doesn’t believe I exist – wouldn’t I be foolish to show myself to him?’

  ‘I don’t believe you!’ Ellen said. And, as she spoke, a raindrop splashed her cheek. It had become darker and darker, until it was all but night in midday. In another few minutes the storm would break. The thing to do was to run. If she ran fast enough she would escape the storm and Nelle. But she must not let her know what she was about to do; she must get as much of a start as possible.

  Without looking where she was going, she turned about and began to run. A man and a small boy were coming up the path from the pool of seals, and she blundered into them. The man clutched at her, tried to stop her, cried after her angrily. But she was running in full stride now, her legs striking against the confining hem of her dress. The rain had begun to fall – great wet streaks appeared on the path as she veered past the seals and raced towards the balloon-vendor’s stand and the pony-track. Was Nelle behind her? If she turned to see, would she be running after her, gaining on her? It was not worth the chance – she must go faster. Already she was nearly out of breath, and she still had quite a long stretch to go before she reached the entrance to the park. It was raining heavily now, and she could feel the wetness spread along her b
ack, feel the water strike her face. Her legs had begun to ache and each breath she took was painful, but she must go faster yet if she was to be sure to lose Nelle. In another moment or two – three or four at the most – she would reach the exit. A blob of yellow caught her eye, a taxi. It was just pulling up at the traffic light. If she could get there before the light changed, get inside and shut the door – she could tell the taxi-driver to drive off without Nelle. But no matter how much she tried, she did not seem to be able to make her legs move faster. It was like trying to run with two weighty pendulums in place of legs. Each step forward she took she seemed to be lifting a great weight by the tip of her toe. But she was almost there. Another stride…

  She flung open the door of the taxi, jumped inside and slammed it shut. As she looked forward at the cabby, she saw the light change. ‘Get away as fast as you can!’ she cried. He glanced at her, nodded his head, and shifted gears. The cab catapulted forward, was half-way down the block before the car that had been beside it was moving. ‘Keep on going,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you where in a moment.’

  She had succeeded. But she had not yet gained her breath. It was all she could do to sit back on the seat, to hold on to the strap and look out of the window. The blocks went past, Fifty-ninth, Fifty-eighth, Fifty-seventh, Fifty-sixth. The cab had to stop for another light, but by now she should be safe. She opened her bag and began to look for Dr Danzer’s address.

  ‘What are you looking for? May I help you?’ The sound of Nelle’s sweet voice made her hands go limp. She dropped the bag, let it roll on the floor of the taxi. It was as if she had been dealt a vicious blow in the stomach.