The Dark Fantastic

by Stanley Ellin

  “But I see you didn’t.”

  “So far, no.”

  Milano started to motion at the couch, then thought better of it and motioned at an armchair. “Want to sit down while we clear the air?”

  Moving wide of him, she walked to the chair, sat down well forward on it, and tugged the dressing gown over her knees.

  “Drink?” said Milano.

  “No. I’ve got that stomach again.”

  “Looks like you’ve got company this time,” Milano said. “To tell the truth, I’m scared.”

  “To tell the truth, so am I.”

  Milano’s heart rose a little. “She just got her own place, so we had kind of a housewarming breakfast set for this morning. I forgot all about it. Anyhow, what we had going for a few months was all low gear. Lately, there wasn’t anything at all.”

  “She didn’t think so. Until right now maybe.”

  “I gave her every signal I could think of,” Milano protested.

  “Except tell it to her right out.”

  “Well,” said Milano, “I guess men have a problem that way. And she was getting into the orange blossom and bridal gown mood which makes it even harder. You get the feeling you’re breaking an engagement.”

  “There could be worse engagements,” said Chris. “That is a very pretty lady.”

  “So my family kept telling me. Trouble was, they went for her a lot bigger than I did.”

  There was one of those patented Bailey silences. Then Chris rested her elbows on her knees and bent far over, head down and forehead supported by her fingertips. She finally looked up and asked, “Any other pretty ladies you’re forgetting you had dates with?”

  “None.”

  “Because there’s something I never said to any man before. It has to be one-to-one between us. It is you and me and nobody else. At least that is how it has to be for me. If it’s different for you, do not send out signals, just tell me right now. Is it different for you?”

  “No signals,” said Milano. “Nothing to tell.”

  “Good,” said Chris. “There better not be.”

  “Maybe I ought to try to get her on the phone now,” Milano said. “Clear up things once and for all.”

  “No. They’re cleared up enough. What you can do now is take me out and buy me lunch.”

  “Those sandwiches never came?”

  “They came. First I was going to heave them in the garbage on top of that see-through stuff, but I saw what they cost when I signed for them, so I couldn’t. They’re in the refrigerator. Do you have any idea what they cost?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Milano.

  Charles Witter Kirwan

  YOU.

  You out there.

  What do you know of reality?

  What do you want to know of it?

  Sensation-seekers, that’s all. Polluters of the gift. One revelation in print as good as the next as long as both gratify your need to be lied to.

  You can read and yet you are blind.

  Oh yes.

  And the truth-teller you scorn for your chosen liars is tormented and betrayed and would be kept from offering living witness to the testimony of his truth.

  I am your truth-teller.

  But I will not be kept from providing you with the grand event of your lifetime. The grand truth of your lifetime.

  Today

  No.

  Today is Monday. Then Tuesday Wednesday Thursday. So today is doomsday minus four. Minus three.

  But there must be a chronology. First the events of Sunday. Yesterday.

  The task yesterday. The setting of the explosive charge on the third floor, west wing. Then tomorrow’s task. Then Thursday’s, the final one. Followed instantly by the grand event itself. Alternate days. A day of work, a day of rest. A schedule enforced by my condition. Powerful in spirit, increasingly weak of body. Endless pain.

  Malnutrition a factor? The mind warns me to eat, I must supply myself with energy to reach the goal. But the body warns that any mouthful of food I swallow will send this serpent of pain under my breastbone writhing through me, spewing acid on every raw nerve. So I force myself to eat the way one would put a gun to his head preparing for suicide. Infant foods now. Like infant vomit. Sweetened gobbets of it in small glass jars. Nourishment, such as it is.

  Mr. Saeed, my East Indian West Indian grocer on Bedford Avenue, bewildered by my purchases. Mr. Saeed purveys this stuff by the ton to food stamp Bulanga mothers. He can count their litters by the dozens of jars they cart away. But what litter does this ancient whitey Meestair Keer-wahn lay claim to?

  A sudden thought. Tomorrow is Tuesday, Mrs. Bailey’s house-cleaning day. I can’t leave these empty jars for her to dispose of. Bulanga sly, falsely concerned, she could wonder why I am on this strange diet. Could try to become an intruder in my life as she was in my wife’s life in her final days.

  My wife, poor soul. Terrified to walk the streets outside her own home in the face of the glowering Bulanga, tended in her dying by their Aunt Jemima emissary. Dying of terror. The cancer of it poisoning every drop of that lymphatic fluid. Dead. Jemima provided tears and lamentations for my benefit. Away from the house, she rejoiced as she passed the word to the tribe. Another whitey dead. Good.

  So. I had to

  I have to dispose of these small empty jars tonight before Mrs. Bailey time. The full ones I must hide away out of her range.

  Now.

  Sunday’s task. The job a nightmare, the getting to it another nightmare. Waking from broken sleep to paralyzing inertia. Like waking in limbo. Knowing the day’s work must be done, but unable to rouse myself to it. All thoughts and feelings seemed to have nothing to do with the Charles Witter Kirwan lying there in his bed staring at wallpaper rosebuds.

  Understand. This in no way meant any unbalance of the mind. The mind as ever functioned precisely. It is functioning precisely and powerfully now. But the being was gripped by inertia. A physiological factor at work. Consequences of malnutrition possibly. Grotesque as it may sound, I am answering malnutrition by eating prepared infant food. Small jars of it which I

  No. I’m sure I’ve already explained that.

  Then what I must tell about is the job done yesterday against all obstacles. Overcoming the inertia. Improvising a tool to replace a damaged one. Running – crawling – the gauntlet of my tenants taking the Sunday morning air outside the building. Complaints. Demands. As monkeys are to a fine watch, so the Bulanga are to stoves, refrigerators, lighting fixtures, anything that might come apart in their paws. Let the rent-controlled landlord undo the damage. The whitey landlord, helpless instrument of all those soulful liberals faraway in their high-rise havens.

  Oh yes.

  And another gift from the soulful ones yesterday, by way of the Bulanga youth they adore. Fresh graffiti on the facade of the building, and inside its doorway, and over the courtyard wall. Spray-can art, so esteemed by our liberal art-lovers that they sometimes address rapturous paeans to it in their press. Cherish it as the purest expression of the Bulanga soul. Which knows that if you can’t find the skill and patience to weave a carpet, the next best thing is to shit on your neighbor’s.

  I once closely examined this art on my walls. It did teach something about the Bulanga soul. The graffiti appeared to be a dashing script. Words and phrases. It is not. A letter emerges by chance here and there, but it is all an idiot’s attempt to simulate writing. An attempt by the illiterate hand to imitate those strange lines and loops that the effete call words. A message of envy and hate from soul people to mind people.

  That building. Dapper Dan Kirwan’s folly. That courtyard. It was

  Yes.

  Right there on what is now that courtyard were cherry trees. Our little orchard. Eight trees, four on each side, making an aisle between them. Sourish cherries. No good for eating off the trees. Tart.

  But

  Jars and jars of them bubbling on the kitchen stove. Spadefuls of sugar. Some spices. My mother, sleeves rolled up, hug
e wooden paddle in hand. The girl – age fifteen or twenty or forty, but always the girl – always Irish fresh off the boat – lilting brogue – yes.

  The girl fetching and carrying and pouring and sealing.

  All those jars of cherries.

  Chekhov. Was it? Yes, of course. The sound of an axe.

  Eight cherry trees came down. Then other trees. The lawns gouged up.

  Five frame houses and one trio of fine brownstones our side of the block. Mason. Witter. Diehl. Osterhout. Woodridge. Stevenson. James. Hooton. Six frame houses the other side. Lawson. Andrews. Vanderwink. Rutledge. Whitney. Woodridge, Junior.

  Garages too. No more stables. But the garages were still like stables. No disgrace for me to be given shovel, when the occasional horsecart went by, so I could bring to the compost heap next to the garage those precious turds. Brave father at war, we would grow vegetables on those back lawns and help win the war.

  Five years old. Six.

  Witter Street. All gardens and lawns and trees. Serene people. Serene world. Omnipotent, all-seeing, all-serene grandfather.

  And then. And then

  I’ll huff and I’ll puff, said Dapper Dan, and I’ll build you a brick house. A multiple dwelling, large and profitable.

  Until then, a lovely world. Clean and quiet and mannerly.

  And now our beefy Caliban with his blueprints all over the table. My grandfather’s troubled face as he leaned over them.

  The neighbors prescient.

  Oh yes.

  The gathering in the parlor. Coffee and slices of cake. The demonstration of Caliban’s new radio set. Station KDKA from far away. Good evening, radio audience. Squeak, squawk.

  The roomful of people, all with troubled faces.

  But Mister Caliban, do you know what a multiple dwelling will do to the block?

  Mister Caliban, we always thought that at least on Witter street here

  Oh, Mister Caliban

  Who bellows and laughs and sweats and unrolls blueprints on the floor and produces mysterious drinks for all from mysterious bottles.

  The geese cackling their warning as Daniel Caliban opens the gates to the invader.

  No one said to the old man in the corner, Oh, Mister Witter.

  No one.

  The king was dead. Long live the king.

  And

  In the distance, the Bulanga around their campfires scent the wind and rise to their feet and turn in the direction of King Caliban.

  There will never

  Courtyard. Graffiti. Trees. Those trees

  Oh yes. Yes. Sunday. Yesterday. The dumbwaiter shaft, west wing, third floor. For some reason, the planting of the charge there became the most miserable and difficult of all I had undertaken till then. Airless and filthy. Dreadfully verminous. A host of roaches scurrying away from the flashlight beam. Across my hands. I had to work with them searching up my sleeves. And

  A nasty little confidence for your pleasure. That old serpent of pain prodding its muzzle into my bladder. Prodding, jabbing, no escape. So for the first time since my army service – drunk and mindless in a back alley of Rome – I pissed as the male Bulanga pisses when he concludes his Saturday night festivities in front of my home. Freely, where he happens to be. Opened my fly and hosed down the wall of the shaft.

  The simple pleasures of the dying.

  Yesterday.

  That was yesterday.

  That was yesterday.

  Now for today.

  This Monday morning. Ten o’clock.

  An obscene event. The human mind can be like the dumbwaiter shaft I toiled in. A beam of light exposes it, and you are nauseated by what you see there. The Caligula mind exposed.

  Come to think of it, Caligula was the ancestral Italian.

  Not to digress.

  At ten o’clock this morning, a mysterious phone call.

  A woman’s voice. Breathless. No. Breathy. Hard-breathing. “Mr. Charles Kirwan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Professor Charles Kirwan?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  Verbatim. That was verbatim. Now, what follows may not be the exact wording, but it will be close.

  The woman: “Just listen, please. You are being secretly investigated by a private detective named John Milano. His agency is Watrous Associates on East Sixtieth Street in Manhattan. He is investigating you now. All your records, everything.”

  That was it.

  A click, a silence, that was it.

  I think that such a

  No, I will make it a categorical statement.

  You must go through this experience to know its shock effect. Disbelief and shock. Like resting your hands on a familiar surface and finding them caught and held there by an engulfing slime.

  No pulling away. The slime is a reality. You cannot pull away from reality.

  Naked and exposed – caught masturbating by a stranger staring through your keyhole.

  Here, a stranger hired for the purpose.

  Our Mister John Milano.

  Mister John A. Milano. Alleged properties consultant. Of Sunderland Towers, Central Park South.

  As I speak this now, I find the sense of shock returning. Physically. An uneven action of the heart, a sick stomach.

  Unsteady hands

  There must be chronology.

  So

  Denial at first.

  A practical joke? A cruel and witless practical joke? But that could be tested.

  I looked up Watrous Associates in the phone book, and the number was there. Bad news, but still not altogether defeating. I dialed the number, and a woman’s voice said, “Watrous Associates.”

  Not the same voice. Not the same woman.

  I said, “Private detective agency?” and the woman said, “Investigative agency. Who do you want, please?”

  I said, “Mr. John Milano,” and the woman said, “Sorry, not in. I can connect you with Mr. Greenwald, his assistant.”

  I hung up. Not a practical joke. A terrifying reality.

  Oh yes.

  Don’t try to imagine yourself brave in my place.

  A terrifying reality. Lorena Bailey. She had confessed her sins. Had confessed mine. Any instant there would be a banging at that door downstairs. The police.

  The grand event unfulfilled. Grandeur reduced to gross comedy.

  Aeschylus become Plautus.

  Above all

  Above all, the end of hope for the Witter Foundation. The grand event recorded here was to provide its huge assets. Without it – without the fulfillment of the event – there could be no assets.

  Nothing.

  But logic will prevail.

  I made it prevail.

  No banging on the door? No police? But if Lorena had entered charges against me, wouldn’t they be here as soon as she had spoken her piece? Uniformed police? New York’s Finest? For what they’re worth?

  A private detective. But how and why would the Bulanga Baileys come up with a private detective in this matter? And, judging from the look of him, a highly expensive one.

  Do you begin to see?

  No sense at all to that.

  But then, what is this Milano’s business with me?

  Why this investigation? And, since he is only the hired hand, who is he serving? Obviously, someone who suspects me of something and now wants evidence of it. Suspects me of what?

  Logic. Step by step logic. The historian’s logic as opposed to the psycho-quack’s. Making sure of solid ground underfoot before each step is taken.

  Consider. My phone number is unlisted, but my mysterious caller knew it. Unlisted as my first line of defense against my tenantry, not altogether successfully. But strangers certainly did not have access to it. Probably someone in Milano’s dirty business could obtain it, but the call was not from Milano.

  A stranger.

  Had I been careless enough in the recent past to give that number to some stranger? Someone who – for a logical reason – might bring about a secret investigation
of me?

  Yes.

  Inescapably and dreadfully, yes.

  A man named Swanson. Night watchman for that Passarini Demolition Company upstate. The thief and swindler who provided me with my explosives from his company’s supplies. Dynamite, blasting caps, wire, detonator. Dynamite and blasting caps especially. Enough missing to panic the employer when the loss was discovered.

  Oh yes.

  Under fire, Swanson must have named his client, but would that name make sense to the employer when he looked it up? Doctor Charles Witter Kirwan, harmless gentle old soul? Retired scholar? Model of virtue and propriety?

  So

  Italian to Italian. Passarini to Milano. Private detective Milano who, if any evidence could be turned up against me, would turn it up. John A. Milano, himself such a smoothly finished model of virtue and propriety.

  Awesome.

  A bunkmate saying to me with awe about our commanding officer: “I never knew shit could be piled so high.”

  He never met our Mister Milano.

  And awesomely dangerous, too. Italianate dangerous. The smiler with the knife. More of a threat to the grand event than any perverse little Bulanga slut.

  One final question.

  When that Passarini Company discovered the loss of its explosives why didn’t it go straight to the authorities?

  One obvious answer.

  That company is responsible for both Swanson and the explosives. Why would it expose its mistake to the authorities at once? Why not first try to locate those explosives and get them back?

  Then

  With the buyer identified – caught with the goods – turn him in to the authorities as a sacrificial offering.

  In this, Milano is the company’s instrument.

  An invisible presence in my life now.

  The only threat to the grand event.

  Not in view outside, but somewhere near.

  Only three days left, but enough time for him to create disaster. To smell out my intentions and bring about that banging at the door.

  Not as clever as he thinks. He doesn’t know that out of someone else’s kindness I have been given his secret. That I hold the advantage in this game. Ironically, he, the born Bulanga-hater, would approve the plans I must conceal from him. He and his people. Meanwhile, he makes every instant dangerous to me up to the very last instant.