“Go away, sir! Go away!”
And he started across the dining room, which was already lit but empty.
The next time the host ate with us I borrowed my friend’s place near the head of the table, where the host sat: it was the area served by the butler, who would not be able to avoid me. In fact, when he was bringing in the first dish he felt my eyes on his, and his hands began to shake. While knives and forks made the silence throb, I kept up my pressure on him. Afterward I ran into him in the hall. He began:
“Please, sir, you’ll ruin me.”
“I certainly will if you don’t listen to me.”
“But what does the gentleman want of me?”
“Only that you let me see, and I mean only see—you can search me when I come out—the glass cases in the room next to the dining room.”
He gestured and grimaced wildly before he could get a word out. Finally he managed to say:
“Consider my years of service in this house, sir…”
I felt sorry for him, and disgusted at myself for being sorry. My craving to see made me regard him as a complicated obstacle. He was telling me the story of his life, explaining why he could not betray his master. I interrupted him to threaten:
“Save your breath—he’ll never find out. But I’ll scramble your brains if you don’t obey, and then you really might do something you’d regret. Wait for me at two o’clock tonight. I’ll be in that room until three.”
“Scramble my brains, sir, kill me…”
“It’ll be worse than death for you unless you do as I say.”
As I left I repeated:
“Tonight, at two. I’ll be at the door.”
On my way out, trying to find an excuse for my behavior, I said to myself, “When he sees that nothing bad happens he won’t suffer any more.” I wanted to be let in that same night because it was the night when I ate there and the food and the wine excited me and made my light brighter.
During dinner the butler was not as nervous as I expected, and I thought he would not open the door, but when I went back at two o’clock he did. Following him and his candelabrum across the dining room I had the sudden notion that he had caved in under the mental torture of my threat and told the host everything and they had set a trap for me. The minute we were in the room with the glass cases I looked at him. He was staring at his feet, expressionless. So I said:
“Bring me a mattress. I can see better from the floor and I want my body to be comfortable.”
He hesitated, hanging on to the candelabrum, but went out. Alone in the room, I started to look around me and it was like being in the center of a constellation. Then I remembered it might be a trap: the butler was taking his time. But he wouldn’t have needed long to trap me. Finally he came in dragging a mattress with one hand, holding the candelabrum up with the other. In a voice too loud for a room full of glass cases he said:
“I’ll be back at three.”
At first I was afraid to see myself reflected in the huge mirrors or in the glass cases, but lying on the floor I was outside their range. Why had the butler seemed so calm? My light wandered over the universe of things around me but I felt no pleasure. After daring so much, I had no courage left to calm down. I could look at an object and make it mine by holding it for a while in my light, but only if I was at ease and knew I had the right to look at it. I decided to focus on a small area near my eyes. There was a missal in a tortoise-shell binding with a streaked surface like burnt sugar, except for a filigree in one corner, on which a flower had been pressed. Next to it, like a coiled reptile, lay a rosary of precious stones. Spread above those two objects were fans that looked like dancing girls flaring out their skirts. My light wavered a bit when it went over several with sequins and stopped on one showing a Chinaman with his face made of mother-of-pearl, his robe of silk. Only that Chinaman could stand being there alone in endless space: his impassiveness was as mysterious as stupidity. Yet he was the one thing I was able to make mine that night. As I left I tried to give the butler a tip, but he refused it saying:
“I’m not doing this for money, sir. You’re obliging me to do it.”
During the second session I focused on some jasper miniatures, but when I was scanning a small bridge with elephants crossing over it I realized there was another light in the room besides mine. I turned my eyes before turning my head and saw a woman in white advancing toward me with a blazing candelabrum. She had come out of the depths of the wide avenue bordered with glass cases. I felt my temples quiver and the quivers run like sleepy streams down my cheeks, then wrap around my head like a turban, and finally creep down my thighs and knot at my knees. The woman advanced slowly, her head rigid. I expected her to scream when her mantle of light touched my mattress. Every now and then she stopped and, before she started up again, I thought of escaping, but I couldn’t move. In spite of the spots of shadow on her face I could tell she was beautiful: she seemed to have been made by hand after having been outlined on paper. She was coming too near, but I had decided to lie still to the end of time. She stopped by the edge of the mattress and then proceeded with one foot on the mattress and the other on the floor. I was like a dummy stretched out in a store window while she went by with one foot on the curb and the other in the street. I stayed there without blinking, although her light flickered strangely. On her way back she wove a winding path among the glass cases, the tail of her gown gently tangling in their legs. I had the feeling I had been asleep for a moment before she reached the door at the far end of the room. She had left it open when she came in and she went out without closing it. Her light had not completely faded when I became aware of another light behind me. Now I was able to get up. I grabbed the mattress by a corner and dragged it out after me. The butler was waiting, his whole body and his candelabrum shaking. I couldn’t understand what he said because his dentures were chattering.
At the next session I knew she would return and I couldn’t concentrate on anything, all I could do was wait for her. But when she appeared I calmed down. Everything happened just as before: she had the same trancelike stare in her hollow eyes; and yet, in some way I couldn’t fathom, each night had been different. At the same time, she was already a fond habit I cherished. When she reached the foot of the mattress I had a moment of anxiety. I realized she was not going to walk along the edge but pass over me. Again I was terrified thinking she would scream. She had stopped by my feet, and now her first step came down on the mattress, another on my knees—which shuddered and parted, making her foot slip—the next, with the other foot, on the mattress, another on the pit of my stomach, then one more on the mattress, followed by a bare foot that landed on my throat. And then I lost all sense of what was happening in the delicate rustling of her perfumed gown as its tail brushed over my face.
After that the nights blurred together. Although I had different feelings each time, the events were so much alike that in the end they fused in my mind, as if they had happened in just a few nights. The tail of her gown erased guilty memories, sweeping me into space on airs as gentle as the ones stirred long ago by childhood bedsheets. Sometimes the tail settled on my face for a moment and then I dreaded losing touch with her, under the threat of an unknown present, but when the airy feeling returned and I had cleared the abyss I thought of the interruption as an affectionate joke and breathed in as much of the tail as I could before it was whisked away.
Sometimes the butler would say:
“Haven’t you seen everything by now, sir?”
But I would head back to my room, slowly brush down my black suit at the knees and waist, and then go to bed to think of her. I had forgotten about my own light—and would have given every bit of it to remember her more clearly in her mantle of candlelight. I went over her steps and imagined that one night she would stop and kneel by me and then it would not be her gown I’d feel but her hair and lips. I rehearsed the scene in different ways. Sometimes I put words in her mouth: “My darling, I’ve been lying to you…” But the
words did not seem to fit her, and I would have to go back and start all over again. The rehearsals kept me awake and even found their way into my dreams. Once I dreamed she was going up the nave in church. There was the glow of candlelight against a background of red and gold. The brightest light fell on her wedding gown with the long train she slowly drew after her. She was about to get married but walked alone, with one hand clasped in the other. I was a woolly dog, shiny black, lying on her train. She dragged me along proudly, and I seemed to be asleep. At the same time I was being swept up in the crowd that followed the bride and the dog. In this version of myself I had feelings and ideas my mother could have had, and I tried to get as close to the dog as possible. He sailed along as calmly as if he were asleep on a beach, waking from time to time, wrapped in spray. I had transmitted an idea to him which he received with a smile. It was: “Let yourself go, but think of something else.”
Then, at dawn, I would hear the meat being sawed and hacked.
One night, with few tips coming my way, I left the theater and went down to the street that ran along the river. My legs were tired but my eyes were aching to see. When I paused at a stall that sold used books I saw a foreign couple go by. He was dressed in black with a French beret; she wore a Spanish mantilla and spoke German. We had been walking in the same direction, but they were in a hurry and they left me behind. When they reached the corner, however, they bumped into a child who was selling candy, and spilled his merchandise. She laughed and helped the boy pick up his goods and gave him some coins before moving on—and when she turned for a last look back at him I recognized my woman in white and felt myself sinking into a hole in the air. I followed the couple anxiously and also barged into someone—a fat woman who said:
“Watch where you’re going, you idiot!”
By then I was running and on the point of crying. They reached a seedy movie theater and while he bought the tickets she turned and looked at me with some insistence because of my frantic haste but did not recognize me. I was certain about her, though. I went in and sat a few rows ahead of them, and one of the times I looked back at her she must have seen my eyes in the dark because she whispered nervously in the man’s ear. After a while I turned back again and again they exchanged a few words, out loud this time, then immediately got up and left, and I ran out after them. I was chasing her without knowing what I would do. She had not recognized me—besides, she was running off with someone else. I had never been so excited and—though I suspected it would end badly—I couldn’t stop myself. I was convinced it was all a case of misplaced persons and lives, yet the man holding her arm had pulled his cap down over his ears and walked faster every minute. It was as if all three of us were plunging into the danger of a fire: I was catching up without a thought for what might happen. They stepped off the sidewalk and started to run across the street. I was going to do the same when another man in a beret stopped me from his car, honking and swearing at me. As soon as the car was gone I saw the couple approach a policeman. Without losing a beat I swung off in another direction. When I looked back after a few yards there was no one following me, so I started to slow down and return to the everyday world. I had to watch my step and do a lot of thinking. I realized I was going to be in a black mood and went into a dimly lit tavern where I could be alone with myself. I ordered wine and started to spend the tips I had been saving to pay for my room. The light shining on the street through the bars of an open window lit up the leaves of a tree that stood on the curb. I made an effort to concentrate on what had been happening to me. The floorboards were old planks full of holes. I was thinking the world in which she and I had met was inviolable, she could not just step out of it after all the times she had passed the tail of her gown over my face: it was a ritual governed by some fateful design. I would have to do something—or perhaps await some signal from her on one of our nights together. Meantime she seemed unaware of the danger of being awake and out in the street at night, in violation of the design guiding her steps when she walked in her sleep. I was proud to be nothing but a poor usher sitting in a dingy tavern and yet the only one to know—because even she did not know it—that my light had penetrated a world closed to everyone else. When I left the tavern I saw a man with a beret, then several others. I decided men with berets were everywhere but had nothing to do with me. I got on a trolley thinking I would carry a hidden beret with me the next time we met among the glass cases and suddenly show it to her. A fat man dropped his bulk into the seat next to me, and I couldn’t think any more.
I took the beret into the next session, not knowing whether I would use it. But the moment she appeared in the depths of the room I whipped it out and waved it as if I were signaling with a dark lantern. Suddenly she stopped and, instinctively, I put the cap away; but when she started up I took it out and signaled her again. When she paused by the edge of the mattress I was afraid and threw the cap at her. It hit her on the chest and landed at her feet. It took her another few seconds to let out a scream. She dropped the candelabrum, which fell with a clatter and went out. Then I heard her body fall with a soft thud, followed by the louder sound of what must have been her head. I stood and reached out as if feeling for one of the glass cases, but just then my light came on and focused on her. She had fallen as if ready to slip into a happy dream, with half-open arms, her head to one side and her face modestly hidden under her waves of hair. I ran my light up and down her body like a thief searching her with a flashlight. I was surprised to find what looked like a large rubber stamp by her feet: it turned out to be my beret. My light not only lit her up but stripped something from her. I was pleased at the thought that the cap lying next to her belonged to me and to no one else. But suddenly my eyes began to see her feet turn a greenish yellow, like my face the night I had seen it in my wardrobe mirror. The color brightened in some parts of the feet and darkened in others, and soon I noticed little white bony shapes that reminded me of the bones of toes. By then horror was spinning in my head like trapped smoke. I ran my light over her body again and it looked changed, completely fleshless. One of her hands had strayed and lay across her groin: it was nothing but bones. I didn’t want to go on looking and I tried to clamp my eyes shut, but they were like two worms turning and twisting in their holes until the light they projected reached her head. She had lost her hair and the bones of her face had the spectral glow of a far-off star seen through a telescope. And then suddenly I heard the butler’s heavy step: he was switching on the lights and babbling frantically. She had recovered her full shape, but I could not bear to look at her. The host burst through a door I hadn’t noticed before and ran to pick up his daughter. He was on his way out with her in his arms when another woman appeared. As they all left together the butler kept shouting:
“It was his fault, it’s that fiendish light in his eyes. I didn’t want to do it, he made me…”
Alone for a moment, I realized I was in serious trouble. I could have left, but I waited for the host to return. At his heel was the butler who said:
“You still here?”
I began to work on an answer, which would have gone something like this: “I’m not someone to just walk out of a house. Besides, I owe my host an explanation.” But it took me too long—and I considered it beneath my dignity to respond to the butler’s charges.
By then I was facing the host. He had been running his fingers through his hair, frowning as if in deep thought. Now he drew himself up to his full height and, narrowing his eyes, he asked:
“Did my daughter invite you into the room?”
His voice seemed to come out of a second person inside him. I was so startled that all I could say was:
“No, it’s just that … I’d be in here looking at these objects … and she’d walk over me…”
He had opened his mouth to speak but words failed him. Again he ran his fingers through his hair. He seemed to be thinking: “An unforeseen complication.”
The butler was carrying on again about my fiendish light and
all the rest of it. I felt nothing in my life would ever make sense to anyone else. I tried to recover my pride and said:
“You’ll never understand, my dear sir. If it makes you feel better, call the police.”
He also stood on his dignity:
“I won’t call the police because you have been my guest. But you have betrayed my trust. I leave it to your honor to make amends.”
At that point I began to think of insults. The first one that came to mind was “hypocrite.” I was looking for something else when one of the glass cases burst open and a mandolin fell out. We all listened attentively to the clang of the box and strings. Then the host turned and headed for his private door. The butler, meantime, had gone to pick up the mandolin. It was a moment before he could bring himself to touch it, as if he thought it might be haunted, although the poor thing looked as dried-out as a dead bird. I turned as well and started across the dining room with ringing steps: it was like walking inside a sound box.
The next several days I was very depressed and lost my job again. One night I tried to hang my glass objects on the wall, but they looked ridiculous. And I was losing my light: I could barely see the back of my hand when I held it up to my eyes.
THE WAITING ROOM
Robert Aickman
Against such interventions of fate as this, reflected Edward Pendlebury, there was truly nothing that the wisest and most farsighted could do; and the small derangement of his plans epitomised the larger derangement which was life. All the way from Grantham it had been uncertain whether the lateness of the train from King’s Cross would not result in Pendlebury missing the connection at York. The ticket inspector thought that “they might hold it”; but Pendlebury’s fellow passengers, all of them businessmen who knew the line well, were sceptical, and seemed to imply that it was among the inspector’s duties to soothe highly-strung passengers. “This is a Scarborough train,” said one of the businessmen several times. “It’s not meant for those who want to go further north.” Pendlebury knew perfectly well that it was a Scarborough train: it was the only departure he could possibly catch, and no one denied that the time table showed a perfectly good, though slow, connection. Nor could anyone say why the express was late.
The Uncanny Reader Page 19