The Great Wash

by Gerald Kersh

  Monty Cello, driving in, said again: “Chicken . . . I was in the business one time, only they was kosher chickens. With Jews, see, so their chickens gotta get their throats cut. It’s in their religion, and I respect it. With a Jew, if a chicken meets up with an accident, it’s no more kosher; it brings less than half the kosher price. We insured them Joosh chickens against accident. . . . It was the same with flowers, you know, like gladioli; perishable commodities—if your glads don’t hit north before the buds open, it’s a glad thrown away. Also they gotta be picked in time, and in the south them Dutchmen that plant glads have labour problems. And there again. . . . Chicken! Say, I wish this was Mross the Chickenman’s! He made you an individual chicken with soup in a pot; vegetables, noodles; ninety cents. . . . Boy! Chicken! Did you ever taste Furio’s chicken cacciatore? No, you never did. Say, that sauce was something! Only it stained: it was the red pepper and tomatoes that did it. Never will I forget a summer suit, kind of check like the Prince of Wales used to wear—set me back a hundred sixty bucks. Got Furio’s cacciatore sauce all over it—dame slung it at me—and I’ll tell you something: no cleaner in Chicago ever got out the stain of Furio’s cacciatore sauce. Boy, could that man fix a chicken! . . .”

  As we got out of the car and went into the Game Chicken, Monty Cello said: “I’m funny that way. A stained suit I’ll wear over my dead body! Over my dead body I’ll wear a stained suit!”

  When we asked the landlord what we could have to eat, he said, out of force of habit: “Anything you like, gentlemen, anything you like!”—adding, in a much smaller voice: “Cheese . . .” So we ordered bread and cheese, and beer.

  Monty Cello, winking at us, asked the way to the “powder room”. The landlord took him upstairs, and he came down again in a minute, laughing: it seems that the Game Chicken has, on the second floor, a powder closet—a kind of cupboard in which ladies and gentlemen dusted their wigs with flour two or three hundred years ago. The landlord redirected Monty Cello to a place out in the yard, and busied himself with a waxy slab of vividly yellow cheese, saying: “Oy’m sorry, gentlemen; this is the best Oy can do. Toime was when we kept a Cheshire cheese on this bar, and help yourself gratis. . . Haven’t laid eyes on a good cheese getting on for nine or ten years. . . . Cheddar, Cheshire, Wensleydale, Stilton—there’s cheese!—Where are they all? This muck is like soap, only it don’t lather. But a good pickled walnut, now that Oy can give you.”

  He laughed. “That’s a funny ’un, the other gentleman—Oy showed him the old powder closet, and he called me ‘Toots’. He’ll be a Yank, Oy dessay? Gets himself up to look like one, but nowadays you never can tell . . .”

  And I was saying to Oaks: “George, I’m all for having this little fellow around. To tell you the truth, in a kind of way I like him. But honestly, now: do you take him seriously? That gangster business! No, joking aside, what real mobsman talks like that—if he talks at all, George?”

  George Oaks said, with a certain disdain: “Albert, you have been reading too many tough gangster stories. You have been stuffing your fat head with too many romances. Come, come, now, you know better than that. For God’s sake—since you have taken to writing fiction you have got around to believing such nonsense as, for example, that gangsters never squeal, and that gentlemen never talk about their wives. Don’t be silly! There comes a time when any man talks, hardened gangster or gentleman of the blood. Mark my words, the more a man has to keep locked up inside himself, the more imperative must be his urge to unlock his heart and spill it, under the seal of confession or of professional confidence. So your Irish and Italian gangsters go to the priest, and the others to the psychiatrist—to ‘get themselves straightened out’—in other words, to talk shop out of school with confidence.

  “Idiot, there never yet was an admitted criminal who was not a talker. What have these wretches to live by, but their vanity? This being the case, how can they fulfil themselves, or justify themselves, except by saying something like: ‘I am the man who threw the pineapple into that car-load of Cohen’s kosher chickens’ . . . ? But generally they say it to a priest. When they start chattering outside, then their nerves are gone, and so are they: for example, Shotgun George Ziegler, who couldn’t stop talking about the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre. A man must talk to someone, sometime. And when he feels that compulsion overtaking him . . . better for him that he had put himself in a barrel of concrete and cast himself into the depths of the East River.”

  “All right, all right,” I said.

  “No . . . Monty Cello is genuine,” said Oaks. “He’ll talk, Albert: his nerves are chewed up, sucked out; pale white fibres! What interests me now, first and foremost, is this: why, all of a sudden, does he run out of the Savoy; and for what reason is he anxious to avoid, of all people, Major Chatterton? There’s no twopenny-halfpenny gangster business here. Here, Albert, here is dark stuff. . . . Peace, brother, say no more; and now I will unfold a secret book and to your quick-conceiving discontent I’ll read you matters deep and dangerous. . . . Eh?”

  “Hotspur in Henry IV, Part I,” I said.

  “That’s right. . . . Send danger from the east unto the west, so honour cross it from the north to the south, and let them grapple! . . . Eh?” said Oaks.

  “You’ll get no honour or danger out of this spiv, George,” I said.

  “Hold hard, Albert, hold hard! Ask yourself: ‘What does Chatterton want with Monty Cello? Why does the sight of Chatterton make Monty drip grey like a candle? Of what is Monty Cello so very much afraid, especially in connection with Chatterton?’ I say, hold hard!”

  “All right, all right,” I said, “there’s nothing to lose, and God knows the poor little fellow is welcome. He’s quite an engaging little spiv, although I don’t believe a word he says. There’s plenty of room.”

  George Oaks said: “And another thing; only don’t tell Monty—don’t breathe a word, or he’ll be gone like a shot. I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”

  “You wouldn’t miss what?” I asked.

  “Why, a Situation. . . . Who is your landlord?”

  I replied: “I haven’t got one. I bought my house and three acres freehold from Sir Peter Oversmith. You know I did, George—I told you all about it at the time. Why?”

  “Well, you know what I meant by landlord. You are on old Oversmith’s land. Oversmith and Chatterton are old pals, thick as thieves. I bet you five pounds to four, Major Chatterton will call on Monty Cello at your house by the week-end.”

  I said: “No bet. If Chatterton was looking for Cello, and wanted him that badly, he could easily find out that he’d left with you and me after having checked out. Knowing where I live—which, God knows, is easy enough to find out around Fleet Street—he’d simply come to visit Oversmith, and casually drop in on me. . . . I hope he doesn’t, George. George, I give you my word of honour, I dislike that man as . . . as it might be a spider.”

  “Yes, he’s a bad ’un,” said George Oaks. “Bad, bad! . . . But where the devil is Monty Cello?”

  I said: “No, but damn it all, George—I don’t feel well about this. It puts me in a false position. The man is my guest, George—your guest too, in a way, since my house is yours. I don’t know why this Monty Cello man is frightened to death at the sight of Chatterton. I don’t care. But it occurs to me now that if I take this little fellow home I’m simply delivering him to Chatterton, and I’ll see Chatterton in hell first!”

  “Calm, calm!” said George Oaks, as one who talks to soothe a nervous horse. “Take it easy, Albert. If Chatterton really wants to find Monty Cello, there isn’t a rat-hole in England deep enough and dark enough to hide him. Don’t you see, Albert, that the safest place for Monty Cello, in that case, is in the home of a famous man like yourself? I don’t know why Chatterton wants Cello, or why Cello doesn’t want Chatterton. But there’s no harm in trying to find out and, incidentally, in doin
g Monty a good turn at the same time, if you like. Because if he’s in trouble, Albert, where in the world could he be safer than in your hands and mine, eh?”

  “It’s probably something to do with some dirty deal in American dollars,” I said.

  “Something a good deal deeper than that, I’ll lay you thirteen to six,” said Oaks. “But where is he?”

  Just then a sturdy man in leggings came into the bar, armed with a shotgun. He said to the landlord: “ ’Evening, Tom; looks like rain.”

  “Don’t say that,” said the landlord, drawing a pint of old ale. “You’re out late, Ralph.”

  “The gyppos are camped in Ballantyne’s Hollow, d’ye see,” said the man with the shotgun. “I’ve got my duty to do, and Lord Jimmy’s pheasants to keep an eye on, if it takes me twenty-five hours a day. And even so, there’s not a man-jack of them gyppos that won’t be eating his ‘chicken’ for breakfast, damn ’em! A liddle bit o’ poaching is neither here nor there, in moderation. But gyppos—gyppos are beyond all reason.”

  “Oy won’t have ’em in my house,” said the landlord. “Oy mind when they used to go about poisoning pigs, in my father’s toime.”

  George Oaks said to me: “That was called drabbing the baulor. Poison the pig, and get the carcass for the price of the hide. A full-grown pig, of course: a young pig you simply steal—grab him by the snout and tuck him under your arm. It takes skill, because pigs bite; and when a pig bites, he bites for keeps. But tougher yet is an indignant goose. . . . Isn’t that so? You’re a gamekeeper, you should know.” He turned to the man called Ralph.

  “You’re as wise as I am, sir,” said he. “Would that be your car outside, by any chance?”

  “Well, we’re riding in it,” said Oaks. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well,” said the gamekeeper, “no offence, sir. . . . A kind of foreign-looking man, got up to represent a Yank—would he be with you, by any chance?”

  “Wearing a yellow choker?” asked the landlord.

  “That’s right. Foreign-looking man. As I come in, he nipped into the Ladies’ place. Being a foreigner, I dare say he can’t read right . . .”

  We caught Monty Cello in the act of starting his car. “Hold hard, Monty,” said Oaks.

  Monty stuttered again: “There’s a gigig—with a shishi——”

  “A guy with a shotgun? Calm, calm, and come and eat your cheese. He’s only a gamekeeper, Monty. A kind of warden. Come on in. No one will hurt you while we are around.”

  Monty Cello said: “One thing I can’t stand—a shotgun. I got a bibuckshot in my shishoulder . . .” (But I have not the heart to laugh at Monty Cello, funny as he was; for we all owe him some gratitude, as you will see.) “. . . I’m funny that way; when I saw that guy with that shotgun I got scared. A rod I don’t mind. But two things throw the fifear of Gig—into me: a shishotgun and a shishiv. And rats, too. Par’me, my nerves ain’t too good.”

  “Come and eat your bread and cheese, and let’s get along,” I said.

  When we returned to the bar I saw the landlord putting out of sight a newspaper parcel from which protruded a long, feathery tail. The gamekeeper said, presumably for our benefit: “Yes, Tom, the poor old cock broke his wing, so I wrung his neck to put him out of his misery . . .”

  There was a powdery smear of whitewash between Monty Cello’s shoulder-blades, where he had had his back to the lavatory wall. He begged Oaks to brush it off, saying: “I’d hate to get this coat dirtied up. This is my favourite coat. I never had anything but good luck in this coat.” And he felt under his handstitched shirt for the medal of Saint Christopher, who protects wanderers in the dark.

  “It’s a pretty coat,” I said. “Had it long?”

  “Two months. Handmade—over a hundred stitches to the inch—English fabric, guaranteed to last a lifetime. I got another one in blue. I’ll give it to George—it’ll be too small for you, Al; but I’ll give you a hand-tooled leather belt. Or say, wait a minute—I gotta snake-skin belt, if you like it, with a Mexican silver buckle. It’s a matter of opinion: some folks say a snake is lucky. Lucky Luciano always wore a gold snake-ring with big emerald eyes, with its tail in its mouth; and he had luck all right. On the other hand, some folks say a soipent is a symbol of sin. But you couldn’t get a belt like that for forty bucks. It’s yours, Al, soon as I unpack; and George gets the blue coat. I can’t tell you how I appreciate your hospitality. . . . But this coat? No sir!” He smoothed the breast of it. “This is a lucky coat. But lucky or unlucky, I hate filth. Lucky or unlucky, I won’t wear a messed-up coat. Over my dead body!”

  He laughed, almost at his ease again. “If you fellows had seen some sights I saw, you wouldn’t laugh at me because I don’t like shotguns,” he said. “. . . If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a mess. . . . A forty-five is bad enough, especially in the head, but a shotgun—hell, there’s nothing to show you used to be a human being any more . . . and you kind of see yourself as others see you, if you get what I mean . . .” He might have been talking on a psychiatrist’s couch.

  George Oaks nudged me gently, and asked: “Which kind of gun did you favour, Monty?”

  “Who, me? A thirty-two revolver on a thirty-eight frame,” said Monty Cello.

  “You went in for accuracy, I see, Monty.”

  “I read it in a magazine, George—how a gunmaker can mount a thirty-two-calibre revolver barrel and action on a thirty-eight-calibre frame. It was something I read about in a book, some man’s magazine. Forget it.”

  We were riding down the road that runs through Brimble Wood, not far from my house, when a grey-white ghostly thing with shining golden eyes rushed out of the night towards us. I distinctly felt a soft, unpleasant jolt as it struck the radiator of the light little car, and then there was a high screaming of tortured steel as Monty Cello threw on the brakes, so suddenly that our three heads came together like billiard balls in a cannon-shot on the cushion. Indeed, having in my eyes a vision of green turf, vivid under glaring headlights as we swerved towards the side of the road, I thought of the game of billiards at the moment of impact.

  George Oaks cried: “It’s only an owl, you fool!” But Monty Cello crouched, trembling, over the wheel. Oaks got out, took the corpse of the owl from the radiator, and held it up by the wings, saying: “An owl, man! Pull yourself together!”

  Half incoherent for stuttering, wiping his face with the yellow silk handkerchief that was still wet with the sweat of his earlier terrors, Monty Cello said: “Throw it away, I don’t wantta see it—throw it away—an owl is a sign of death.”

  “For mice,” said Oaks, “not for men.”

  “Throw it away, for God’s sake,” said Monty Cello. “And one of you guys drive, willya? Like I told you, I hate to drive at night. . . . I can’t stand owls. Or bats. They’re a bad sign.”

  I took the wheel then, and so we got home.

  My old house was very beautiful in the moonlight.

  When we were comfortably seated, with full glasses in our hands, I laughed and said: “You and your owls! It’s lucky for you your name isn’t Jack.”

  He chewed his lips before replying: “Now I wonder what makes you say that!”

  “Well, the landlord of my local, the Piebald Horse, has a pet raven that talks. He comes up to you and croaks ‘Hello, Jack,’ and if your name happens to be Jack it’s quite startling, first time.”

  “A raven, that’s a black bird like a crow. And he says ‘Hello, Jack,’ does he?”

  “Only that and nothing more . . .” I said.

  “Oh, hell!” said Monty Cello. “A black crow—crows are unlucky. You know something? A crow is a sign of death. When they found Potatoes Hoffmann’s body in the marshes near Hoboken it was the crows that led them to it; they’d pecked out Potatoes’ eyes and eaten most of his face . . . I read about it.”

 
George Oaks said: “Monty, you keep telling us things you’ve read about. A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, but why not tell us something about yourself?”

  “I wouldn’t have a crow around the place,” said Monty Cello. “But I used to keep pigeons, once, when I was a kid.”

  “Monty,” said Oaks, “you know as well as I do that you’re alone and in trouble——”

  “—Who said I was in trouble?”

  “Alone and in trouble, Monty. In plenty of trouble, as I guess, if you run for your life in fear of Major Chatterton.”

  Monty Cello chewed his lips, and then, having got a firm grip on them, became deathly still. Feeling that it was my turn to say something, I said: “You know, George Oaks and I are not bad friends to have if you’re alone and in trouble—especially in trouble with Chatterton.”

  Still Monty Cello said nothing. George Oaks went on: “Nobody will hurt you while I am around, Monty, especially under Albert’s roof. Better be frank with us. You know, if Chatterton wants you, he has the means of finding you anywhere in the world. By ‘he’ I mean, of course, his employer, Lord Kadmeel. He could, for example, get at you through official sources, simply by informing the proper authorities that a man who calls himself Monty Cello is in England on a faked passport——”

  “—Faked passport? You’re crazy!”

  “Faked passport,” said Oaks firmly. “It stands to reason; it couldn’t be otherwise. Under your true identity you could never have got beyond Southampton. It must be years since you signed your real name, old fellow.”

  Monty Cello said, evenly: “You’re drunk. I got a genuine passport and I can prove it.”

  “Genuine, maybe, for Monty Cello—wherever he may be—but not genuine for you, whoever you may be, Monty. Want to bet? I lay a hundred to six in fivers—Albert, lend me thirty pounds—that you wouldn’t, of your own free will, give me one clear thumb-print to take to Scotland Yard. Bet?”