Blood and Water and Other Tales

by McGrath, Patrick

  Caesar ignored him. William grew excited. Caesar at last rose to his feet, and turned toward his persecutor. It was at this moment that Camille, who had heard William’s cries from upstairs, entered from the hallway. She saw her son pointing the shotgun at Caesar; and she saw Caesar standing by the broken pillar, a big man, physically strong, and unintimidated.

  “Caesar!” she cried.

  This is decisive. This is of crucial importance. For you see, Camille had not cried out to William to desist, to put aside the weapon; she had, instead, seen Caesar as the dangerous man, the dominant man; she had cried out to Caesar to back down, not William— and to that weak, contemptible creature this was the deepest cut of all: that even as he apparently held all the power in the situation, standing under his own roof with a shotgun pointing at a slave, his mother called upon the other to back down.

  They both, Camille and Caesar, must have realized her mistake. Caesar stepped forward to take the gun from William; Camille darted between the two men; William, with his eyes closed, fired at his black nemesis—and his mother fell dead at his feet.

  Oh, there is irony here, tragic irony; but what happened next? This is a mystery, for William, like his father, like Caesar and Emily, disappeared. They found bloodstains by the fireplace, and a discharged shotgun leaned against the wall. But they never found William.

  Randolph Belvedere, in the opinion of Oscar de Trot, was killed in a duel. But what happened to William? I will tell you my conjecture. Consider: Caesar was a black nemesis, an agent of retributive justice; and he saw before him a vicious, despicable wretch, a wretch who stood for all the misery and oppression suffered by his race. That vile creature had just killed his, Caesar’s, only friend and ally; and with her had died his dream of restoring Marmilion to its former glory—with himself as master! Oh, Caesar punished William, of this I have not the slightest doubt, for I’ve had a son of my own. And he made him suffer terribly, I have no doubt of that, either. And he made certain that no one would find him, that the bloodhounds and Klansmen that took up the chase would find no trace of William Belvedere. And William’s spirit would know no rest, this was Caesar’s intention; never would he lie in the soil with his sister, never would his spirit find peace. No, William’s spirit would be trapped, it would be bricked up, to howl in endless torture in some prison of Caesar’s construction—and there, close at hand, lay the tools to do it with! This was my conjecture—that Caesar bricked him up in that pillar by the fireplace, buried him alive, upright and conscious!

  Maybe he chained him up in the pillar first, so that William could watch every single brick being fitted into its allotted place. God knows, there were enough chains, and shackles, and manacles, all the grim hardware of slavery, in Marmilion to enchain an army. Or possibly he drugged him first, so that when William emerged from an opiated daze he found himself sealed up tight in his tomb. I am certain he did not kill him first. William died slowly. He deserved to.

  And it took three days for the plaster to dry. I am not a superstitious woman, but this was my conjecture. I’d heard him in there, you see.

  XII

  The last time I saw Marmilion I came in broad daylight; and as I emerged from the dappled shade of the oak alley, what a quiet glory the old house offered to my eye! The walls were of faded lemon-yellow, and where the plaster had crumbled the exposed brickwork was a beautiful soft red into which, in places, had seeped the grayness of moss. The window shutters and the railings of the galleries were a pale, weathered green; but loveliest of all was the woodwork of the entablature atop the pillars, which had been painted first sky-blue, then pink, then given a final wash of lavender such that it flushed in the sunshine with a delicate, roseate glow. No stone or metal, I now noticed, had been used in the construction of the house; entirely built of brick and timber, and lately touched by the encroaching vegetation, it rose from the soil, so it seemed, organically; and I was awed that despite the heat and damp of the semitropical climate, despite the ravages of neglect, and looting, and war, it yet retained in its decadence such dignity and strength.

  I entered. The years had been less kind to Marmilion’s interior. No line was straight; everything sagged and crumbled, and the walls were scabrous with mold, for the rainfall had loosened both plaster and woodwork. I realized, as I picked my way through the ruined rooms, that only the brickwork had resisted the damp. The two great chimneys rose through the structure like a pair of stanchions, or spines.

  There were twenty-eight pillars girdling Marmilion, Corinthian pillars with fluted columns of plastered brick and elaborate, leafy capitals. The interior pillars echoed the design, even to the acanthus-leaf motif on the capitals. They were beautiful objects; it was a shame to destroy even one of them.

  It was a day’s work with crowbar and hammer to hack and claw that pillar by the fireplace to pieces. But finally I did it, and I found my skeleton. It was beautifully preserved, with not a bone out of place; it was delicate, fragile, white as china; but it was not the skeleton of William Belvedere. Perhaps, once again, I’d exercised too much sympathetic imagination. You see, what I’d found was the tiny, perfect skeleton—of a spider monkey.

  Hand of a Wanker

  Babylonia

  Entanked in the ill-lit mood lounge of an East Village nightclub called Babylonia, a sleek green lizard with a crest of fine spines and a bright ruff under its throat gazed unblinking into the glassy eyes of Lily de Villiers. Lily peered back and tapped the tank with a talonlike fingernail. On the couch beneath the video screen Dicky Dee languidly eyed young Gunther, who wore only purple lederhosen and had a magnificent physique. Dicky himself was in plastic sandals, khaki shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and white pith helmet.

  “Lily,” he murmured.

  The lizard didn’t move, and nor did Lily.

  “Lily.”

  “Oh, what?”

  “Fix me a drink, sweetie.”

  It was late afternoon, the club was empty, and the bar was open. Lily straightened up and wobbled over on heels like needles. As she reached for the vodka, Dicky’s eyes wandered back to young Gunther’s pectorals. Upstairs a telephone rang. The air conditioner was humming. It was summer, and no one was in town. Then Lily screamed.

  “Oh, good God, what is it?” exclaimed Dicky.

  Lily was staring at something in the sink. She picked it up gingerly, then screamed again and flung it on the bar.

  “It’s real!” she cried.

  “What is?” said Dicky, gazing at the ceiling.

  “It’s a—hand!”

  A faint gleam appeared in Dicky Dee’s eyes. “A hand?” he murmured, rising from the couch.

  The mood lounge was a long room with a low ceiling and no windows. The bar occupied one end and there was a stuffed ostrich at the other. A few tables and chairs were scattered about the floor. In the permanent gloom one did not notice that the paint was peeling and the linoleum cracking; for usually the place was full of decadent types gossiping in blase tones about drugs, love, and disease. But this was the afternoon; it was summertime; and they were the only ones in there.

  Dicky peered at the thing on the bar. It was indeed a hand. The skin was pale, with fine black hairs on the back and, oddly enough, the palm. The blood on the stump was black, and congealed, though the fingernails were nicely trimmed. Dicky looked from Lily to Gunther and back to the hand. Tittering slightly, he took the cigarette from his mouth and put it between the fingers.

  “Oh, Dicky!” cried Lily, turning away. “How could you? It might be someone we know.”

  “True,” said Dicky, taking back his cigarette. “Anyway, you need a lung to smoke. Let’s go and tell Yvonne. Maybe it’s Yvonne’s hand.”

  Yvonne was in charge of bookings, and could be found in the office at this time of day. When Lily and Dicky came in, he was peering anxiously at a calendar covered with illegible scrawls and mumbling into a phone squashed between ear and shoulder. They could see immediately that both his hands were firmly attached to their wrists.
He raised his eyes toward the ceiling, pressed his lips together, and pulled his mouth into a long sagging line of weary resignation. With his off-white mohawk tumbling in disarray about his ears, he looked, thought Dicky, rather like a sheep.

  “I’m going to put you on hold, Tony,” he said. “Something’s come up.” He hung up.

  “Come downstairs, darling,” said Dicky Dee. “You need a drink.” Yvonne glanced at Lily’s face. Why was the girl so pale? It was rather becoming. He rose from his desk like a man in pain and ran a thin bejeweled hand through his hair. “I think I do,” he said. Down they went then, Yvonne and Dicky in front, and Lily tottering behind them.

  * * *

  But when they got to the lounge, the hand was gone.

  “It’s gone!” cried Dicky.

  “What?” said Yvonne.

  “There was a severed hand on the bar!”

  Yvonne sighed, and began to make himself a drink. Dicky Dee turned to young Gunther, who was still sitting on the couch and still flexing his pecs.

  “Gunther, what happened to the hand?” Dicky appeared rattled. He generated emotion.

  Gunther shrugged.

  “Hands don’t just—disappear!” whispered Dicky, blanching.

  Yvonne shrugged. Gunther shrugged again. Lily was looking under the bar, joggling the bottles. “Maybe it slipped down,” she said. Then she screamed—for out of the darkness leaped the hand itself!

  It scampered across the bar, hurled itself onto the floor, then scuttled down the room and out the door at the end. There was a moment of stunned silence, and then Yvonne dropped his drink. It shattered messily on the floor.

  “Mein Gott,” breathed Gunther. “The dead hand lives.”

  Dicky strode manfully toward the door. “I’m going after it,” he said. Then he stopped, turned, and came back to the bar. “I think I need a little drink first,” he said. “This is extremely fucking weird.”

  None of them mentioned what they’d seen. They sensed, rightly, that others would be skeptical; the staff of Babylonia had never been known for rigor in perceptual matters. Three nights later, Saint Mark and his Evangelists were playing the upstairs room. Toward the end of their late set, Saint Mark paused to catch his breath and introduce the next “song.”

  “This one’s called ‘Witch-Bitch,’” he grunted, fingering his iron cross. “Dedicated to my mother—”

  Then he screamed.

  The audience thought the scream was all part of it. The band knew it wasn’t, and so did Dicky Dee. He’d seen the hand dropping from the ceiling, and he rushed for the stage as Saint Mark staggered backwards into the drums, clawing at the thing clamped to his neck. The kids applauded with gusto as the skinny singer overturned a cymbal, and by the time Dicky got onstage the rest of the band was desperately attempting to pry the hand off Saint Mark’s neck. But the diabolical fingers could not be moved. Saint Mark’s face, meanwhile, had turned scarlet, his eyes were bulging grotesquely, and his tongue protruded thickly from his throat. The applause had by this time turned to a hubbub of confusion and horror, but through it all Dicky could hear one clear voice:

  “Burn it off! Burn it off!”

  Of course! Dicky Dee lit a cigarette with trembling fingers and ground it into the back of the hand. It was a dramatically effective move. The hand immediately loosed its grip and scuttled under an upset drum—and not a moment too soon, as far as Saint Mark was concerned. They helped him offstage, and by a stroke of good fortune there were stimulants on hand to help revive the half-choked performer. He was soon his old “self” again, apparently none the worse for his encounter with the hand.

  “But where did it come from?” he said, gently fingering his long white stringy neck. No one could answer him. “What a grip,” he said, in a tone of some respect. “Look at those bruises!” They looked at the bruises; and within an hour, a number of leading Babylonians were sporting on their necks cosmetic stranglemarks in exquisitely brutal shades of red, purple, and black.

  Three days later Lily was tending bar upstairs when she noticed a rather unusual character enter the club. He stood close to the door, grinning wildly at nothing in particular as his eyes darted suspiciously from side to side. But what struck Lily as odd was this: when he paid for his Guinness, and she caught a glimpse of his palm—there were hairs growing on it! She was about to strike up a conversation on the topic when the tranquility of Babylonia was yet again shattered by a hideous scream. It came from the ladies’ washroom—and a moment later a young woman came crashing through the door, still pulling up her fishnet tights.

  “Fucking men!” she shouted. “You can’t take a piss without being molested!” She collapsed onto a barstool, and to the small crowd of anxious drinkers that quickly gathered round she pointed with trembling finger into the washroom. “In there!” she cried.

  “What, a man?” said Lily. It had happened before.

  “No!” wailed the distressed girl. “A man’s hand!”

  Lily looked at Dicky, who had just emerged from the office, and Dicky dashed into the washroom. A moment later he came out again. “It’s gone,” he said.

  “Back where it came from, I hope!” said the girl, with a shudder of deep distaste.

  The story, as Dicky and Lily told it to Yvonne in the office a few minutes later, was that the hand had been lurking in the U-bend of the toilet upon which the unfortunate girl had seated herself, and the temptation, clearly, had been irresistible. When the girl had fled, shrieking, the hand had in all probability returned to the safety of the U-bend.

  “So at least we know it’s amphibious,” murmured Yvonne.

  “It’s amphibious, cunning, murderous—and horny,” said Dicky, pacing back and forth. “The question is—” At that moment there was a loud rap at the door. “Go away!” shouted Yvonne.

  There was a moment’s silence; then the rap came again.

  “Go away!” shouted Yvonne and Lily. But the door opened, and there stood the black-clad stranger whom Lily had noticed earlier—the one with hair on the palm of his hand!

  “Excuse me,” he said in deep, hollow tones.

  Yvonne rose irritably to his feet. “We’re in a meeting,” he grumbled. “Can’t you—”

  “The hand,” said the stranger. “I can help you.” Yvonne stopped in his tracks. “You can?” he said. “What do you know?”

  “May I come in?” said the stranger.

  “Come in, come in,” said Yvonne, pushing a chair forward. “Tell us what you know.”

  “Very well,” said the stranger, seating himself and pulling a cigarette from his pocket. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Smoke, smoke,” said Yvonne. “Just tell us about the hand.”

  So the stranger told them about the hand.

  The Curse of Human Desire

  The stranger accepted a light from Yvonne, drew heavily on his cigarette, and stared at the floor. At last he lifted his eyes—tormented, bloodshot eyes, filmed with despair—and Lily felt a small gush of pity for the man. There were deep bags under his eyes, and his skin was unnaturally pale. “You see before you,” he said at last, in those hollow tones of his, “a victim of human desire. Not a pretty sight, is it?” There was another pause. Yvonne cleared his voice and said: “Who—”

  “Oh, my name doesn’t matter,” said the stranger. “I am just one of many, a ruined man, ruined by...” Here he was unable to finish his sentence; a sob racked his frame.

  “Human desire?” said Dicky.

  “Exactly!” said the stranger. “Everywhere I look I see lips, breasts, bottoms, legs—and I’ve had enough!

  I can’t stand it anymore—this constant itch—this compulsion! I’m a sick man!” he cried—and then his voice dropped an octave, or more. “I’m a compulsive masturbator, you see,” he whispered. “I have to wank. And this”—he slowly opened his hand—“is the result.” It was then that Dicky and Yvonne saw what Lily had seen earlier: dead in the center of his palm sprouted a small clump of fine black hairs.
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br />   “Just like an armpit,” murmured Yvonne. “Go on.”

  “It all began,” continued the stranger, “with the onset of puberty. Slowly it took over my life. I couldn’t escape; it was like a machine, constantly filling my head with these—images!” He shuddered. “I lost my job. Dishonorable discharge. Ha! Story of my life....” There was a long silence. Then, lifting his eyes, the stranger said quietly: “How long can a man live with shame?”

  Dicky looked at Yvonne. Yvonne shrugged. “We don’t know,” he said. “How long?”

  “Only so long!” the stranger cried, and suddenly rising to his feet, he pulled from his pocket, where it had been tucked since the beginning of the interview, his right hand—only there was no right hand! He hauled up his sleeve to show how the wrist ended in a smooth, round, dimpled stump. Wordlessly the three Babylonians gazed at the stranger’s stump. They’d not met a story like this one before, and Lily slipped out to get them all a drink.

  “You can still do it with your left one, I suppose?” said Yvonne.

  “Masturbation guilt drove me to it,” said the stranger, resuming his seat. “Yes, masturbation guilt! I hacked it off myself, and I should have drowned it, I suppose, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it... There was a pregnant silence. “I come from a sentimental race, you see,” he went on. “I put it in a shoe box and kept it under the sink instead.”

  “A shoe box,” said Lily, who had returned with drinks. “Cute.”

  “Oh, there were holes in it,” said the stranger, taking a long swallow of his Guinness. “But anyway, for a week I wasn’t troubled by the curse of human desire—yes, for the first time since puberty I didn’t feel the itch! Can you imagine it—a world without breasts, without skin, without bums and lips and legs... a world free of desire, where everything is what it seems and your brain isn’t polluted with longing and your loins aren’t constantly stirring with a life of their own... can you imagine what it is to be free of human desire?”