Stories of the Strange and Sinister (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

by Frank Baker

  Locking his door he sank on his bed. Nobody came to him until, much later, his mother knocked; he begged her to leave him, and she reluctantly did so. All night he lay on his bed with his clothes on. He felt doomed; he could face no more English winters. The life of a Trappist, vowed to perpetual silence, was perhaps the only future in store for him.

  Towards dawn he ate ‘I love and respect you father above any man in the world as for mother she is an angel’. All these hours it had been waiting around a silver tankard on the dressing-table. He gulped it down in one great gulp, before any of it had time to thaw. It was, he presently wrote in his journal, the one utterance of his which he consumed entire.

  After that, life was never the same with his parents. Summer passed quite happily, but winter, he knew, could not be postponed. In October he announced his intention of travelling south. He was never again to return to England.

  He found the south of France greatly to his liking. There was rarely any frost and on those occasions when cold weather did come, he stayed quietly in his villa and saw nobody. He was waited upon by a deaf and dumb servant, called Jocelyn, who had been the blacksmith’s son in the village at home, a youth who had never received much kindness and was full of gratitude to his young master. They must have been a strange couple. It is said that they were more like friends than master and servant, and would often be seen setting off for the day in the car, in pursuit of rare birds, a study that engaged much of the time not given to writing. There were, certainly, occasions when Quintin had to eat his ice but Jocelyn seems to be ignorant of the circumstances and nothing definite is known. Indeed, those years are remarkable for their obscurity; Quintin seems to have had no close friends at all and, from what can be gathered, his life was remarkably discreet and pure.

  Meanwhile, his first, his second and his third books were published. They were exquisitely written and evoked praise from the exquisite quarters. His parents, who had sorrowfully abandoned him to his own devices, wrote kindly of these successes and suggested a visit to Hassocks. ‘The house is so dull without you. We never have any parties, nobody comes to see us.’ But their letter had the misfortune to arrive in midwinter, and Quintin, though he wrote back quite affectionately, was not to be enticed away.

  It was not, in fact, until his thirtieth year that any move was made. In that year, having just finished his fifth book, he accepted the offer of a furnished house in Switzerland which some friends had unexpectedly to leave. He knew perfectly well the dangers that lay ahead in a country where snow and ice are as common as grass in England. And he went there deliberately; for two reasons. ‘I am now,’ he wrote, ‘surely old enough to have complete control of my speech.’ (And, indeed, those who met him declared it was remarkable that a man who wrote such impeccable English should have so little to say.)

  His second reason; he was actually tempted to make experiments in a country colder than any he had so far visited. He felt that the time had come for him to face up to this accomplishment of his, for so long kept secret from the world. Intending to write a book upon the matter, it was desirable, even necessary, that he should test the power of his tongue to the uttermost. He never expected that he would be able deliberately to create glacial words; he had, alas! tried that too often – spending, sometimes, weary hours on bitter nights speaking his own poems aloud into the still frozen air, with no result whatever except a sore throat. But he decided that he would simply withdraw the guard he had placed upon his speech; he would even loosen his tongue with drink, mix freely with the types of people he detested, and observe the results. Was there not something attractive, too, in the idea of Quintin Claribel, the brilliant essayist, the remote man of letters, never seen by the press, never once interviewed – suddenly completely changing the manner of his life?

  So he went to Switzerland, having first taken the precaution of ordering three large refrigerators to place in the house. They might possibly come in useful. He had already, on one awful occasion, had to consume an ode, full of classical references, written by a dead friend of his which he had quoted before a select company as his own work; it had been an immense and unpleasant meal and he did not want a repetition of it. The refrigerators would, perhaps, serve as storing places for future phenomena; a line, a word, even a comma, could be taken a day as he felt inclined.

  Packing off his fifth manuscript to the publisher, Quintin set off with Jocelyn, joyfully looking forward to a new sort of life. He had, for too long, led a monastic life – and all because he was afraid of a few meals of ice. It was ridiculous. There should be a change to all this. Were he to die in the attempt, he would, at any rate, leave an amazing book behind him.

  He did die in the attempt and he did not leave an amazing book behind him. It was all very sad and totally unexpected. On his first night in Switzerland, he came down from his mountain home, intending to spend the evening at the inn where, he was told, a number of English tourists had arrived. He felt in need of company, particularly the company of English people. In this mood, ready for adventure, he entered the inn and joined the rowdy throng of young people, many with skis and snow-boots, back from a day’s sport.

  To his delight a party of young men and women, seated round a large table drinking beer, was discussing literature. For some moments he hovered near them, listening. They were talking of style, and one of them brought up the name of George Moore. ‘Surely,’ said the earnest speaker, ‘the greatest stylist in the English language?’

  Quintin said, slowly and quietly, ‘Can one think of Moore as anything but a laboured pedant? Pedestrian art, surely?’

  The remark, of course, made an impression. It was unusual in those days to criticize Moore and the stranger bore the mark of authority in his quiet pleasant voice. One of the young men, his name was Powell, invited him to sit with the company. Quintin willingly did so, calling for drinks for all with a graceful lack of ostentation. It was not long before he was discoursing at some length upon writers and writing. He talked with a sombre distinction, quoting smoothly from writers as far apart as Spenser and Rudyard Kipling. He made no attempt to guard his speech. It would have been obvious to any listener that, in him, a rare Parliamentarian had been lost to England. There was nothing in what he said which could have been interpreted as malicious, pompous or untrue. Certainly nothing indecorous. Quintin, since those unhealthy experiments of his youth, had always been pure of speech. He never even swore. His talking was remarkable for its almost unperceivable ironies.

  After the discussion had been going on for about an hour, there was a slight pause. Quintin sipped his beer happily, wondering why he had denied himself such pleasures as this for so long. Then Powell – wishing, as youth always does, to wind up the argument to some definite conclusion – said to him, ‘Who would you say, Sir, is the greatest living master of English prose?’

  Everybody waited on his answer. They did not, of course, know the identity of the charming stranger, and Quintin enjoyed their company all the more because of this. He was really a very modest man. As he revolved the answer to Powell’s question in his mind, a score of famous names passed under consideration. It was, therefore, with a truly terrible shock that, a moment afterwards, he heard himself saying, calmly and authoritatively –

  ‘Quintin Claribel.’

  From a few there was a murmur of doubtful agreement; others uncertainly shook their heads; one said, quite flatly, ‘Never heard of him’. Miserably, Quintin sought for some means to withdraw his statement. He knew at once that he had fallen very low. There were several writers, he knew, who wrote better than he could; wrote more firmly, more squarely, less fussily. An honest critic, he actually placed himself by no means at the top of the list. And yet he had declared that Quintin Claribel was the greatest living master. What did it mean? Could it mean that in the depths of his mind he believed it to be true?

  He began to stammer a few words. ‘No – no – I –
I didn’t mean that. Quintin Claribel is not – I mean – ’

  Suddenly he turned and left them abruptly, to their surprise and disappointment. An old gloom returned. He felt afraid, very friendless.

  Slowly he returned to his villa. So far nothing had happened. Perhaps, after all, his immediate penitence had saved him; or perhaps (he brightened exceedingly) Quintin Claribel was the greatest living master of English prose? In the still cold night he almost ran up the steep path, so anxious was he to refer to his four published works and deliver judgement upon himself.

  Jocelyn was waiting up for him and looked at him, as he came in, with a smile that meant ‘Do you want me for anything?’ Almost roughly Quintin pushed him aside, went straight to the bookshelves, and found his own austerely bound works. Piling cones on the fire he fell down on some cushions and started to read. It was very quiet, so quiet that he strained his ears expecting some sound which never came. He went on reading, page after page, essay after essay. Finishing one book he started sleepily to read the second as the clock struck two. The fire had almost died and he realized how intensely cold he was. He could read no more; and he did not want to. The work was mediocre; he knew, he had known from almost the first page, that it was mediocre. Wearily he reached for the most recent collection; opened a page at random and read. It was still mediocre; it was merely a more finished mediocrity. What he had said, he had certainly always said well; but the purity of the style could not hide the paucity of the matter. If these works had been by any other writer, he would have thrown them on the fire. Thrown them on the fire? Well, why not? It was the only honest gesture to make.

  Wearily, yet with a fine sense of the rightness of his action, he threw all four books on to the dying fire, struggled to his feet and mounted the stairs to his bedroom. Cynically he reviewed his life; what had it been but a mere waste of words? He realized now that words had enslaved him from the beginning. Even at the font, he must have sensed the loveliness of his own Christian name. He remembered how his parents had told him of his extraordinarily intelligent and attentive behaviour at his Baptism, as though he understood the mystery that was being enacted in him. But, the truth was, even then, a babe in long clothes, he had been entranced merely by the glorious music of his own name.

  ‘Quintin Claribel,’ he murmured, on his way up the stairs, ‘Quintin Claribel.’ Better, far better, than magic casements; indeed, these two words, he now saw, had always been for him the magic casements which opened to the perilous sea of words. He had called himself a man of letters. Of letters. Yes. Even the appearance of each letter thrilled him and always had. He remembered that ‘O’ on the ice when he had skated twenty years ago; he remembered his first creation on the bough of the walnut tree; the beauty of all his frozen creatures through the years. And, with all this in mind, he pushed open the bedroom door.

  It would not quite open; something stood in the way. Irritably – pleased now with his train of recollection and resenting any disturbance of it – he forced the door forward. It burst open with a strange tinkling crash; he found himself sprawling against the lintel to save himself from falling. He was standing, though he did not at once realize it, before his magnum opus.

  He switched on the light.

  ‘Good God!’ he said.

  He ought to have known it; he ought to have expected it. Larger than any letters he had ever seen, each one three feet in height, stretching right the way across the room from window to window like a great hurdle, he faced his own name in solid ice.

  ‘QUINTIN CLARIBEL’

  One letter, the ‘N,’ which had been near the door, had been broken by his carelessness and lay in shattered pieces at the end of the word. So what he read was ‘Quinti Claribel’. Quinti – Quinti! He rocked and roared with wild, ironic laughter. How absurd it immediately became! Why had nobody, in his childhood, given him that nickname, saving him perhaps, from the enslavement of words? Had he been called ‘Quintie’ (and even in his present mood he could see the added ridiculousness an ‘e’ on the end would give to it), he might have been a different person.

  Carefully he climbed through the space left by the ‘N’ and surveyed the whole work from the other side. He liked it just as well backwards. From all angles it was a perfect creation – even though disfigured. It would, he saw, take a very long time to eat.

  For an hour he sat there, looking at his creation. He knew that this was the final crisis; if he could bring himself to devour all this ice, he might be different, perhaps a better person. But could he do it? Could he swallow, piece by piece, the pigmy-high letters of his own dulcet name?

  Towards dawn, knowing that he must make the attempt, he wrote some notes in his journal. Then he stretched his half-frozen limbs, put some gloves on his stiffened hands and reaching out for a chunk of the ‘N’ which still lay in several pieces on the floor; brought it to his mouth and bit a little piece. He swallowed; he bit more; he swallowed again. He began to feel within himself a curiously shrinking sensation; not altogether unpleasant but certainly very watery. He took another piece of the ‘N’ with uncertain fingers and swallowed that too with a great gulp. For a moment he paused. Then a wild passion seized him, like the first incoherent passion of a young boy in love. With both hands he furiously attacked the ice, breaking it down and pouncing with eager, open mouth upon any piece nearest to him. All the precision which had marked every action of his life, left him. Almost immediately the thaw began. A delicious sensation flooded his vitals. Not only was the ice thawing; he himself was thawing.

  The dawn broke over the mountains and a ray of steely sunlight glanced through the half-drawn curtains. Jocelyn, sleeping in a room below Quintin’s, noticed a patch of dampness on the ceiling and wondered vaguely what it was. He turned over and went to sleep. Half an hour later he was awakened by a dripping of water upon his upturned face. He rose, puzzled; dressed, and went to the kitchen to make his master some tea. Going upstairs, he knocked on the door and went in.

  He was so shocked by what he saw that the cup of tea crashed from the tray to the floor. The bed was empty and had never been slept in. His master’s clothes, soaking wet, were lying in a heap in the middle of the room. Floods of water had soaked through the carpet to the boards, through the boards to his own room below. It was bitterly cold.

  From that day to this Quintin Claribel has never been seen. It was assumed that he must have gone up to the mountains early that morning in search of a Snow-breasted Eagle, a rare bird that he had mentioned in conversation at the Inn the night before. But we, who have access to his diaries, know better.

  VII

  In the Steam Room

  In the steam room the physical body is wrung out of you, and yet you become most painfully aware of it. As you open the door to the dank lobby which leads to the inner door and pause there a moment before approaching this forbidden threshold, you are aware of a sense of the ridiculous, standing there naked, already drenched in your own sweat, your skin flabby and salmon pink, yet asking for more. You wonder what made you pay your money for the ambiguous luxury of a Turkish Bath. You almost turn back from that second door. It is not exactly inviting; and the earlier part of the ceremonial debilitation of your winter-weakened body has been more of an undermining of your whole nervous system than anything else, only serving to emphasise the naked fact that this body which you so cherish is doomed to extinction, whatever manner of ending is to embrace it. No: it is not altogether a pleasant experience, wandering with a neutral linen cloth round your middle (or discarding it if you so wish) from room to room where other unclothed men, mostly middle-aged, sprawl inertly in steel deck chairs, lie out on benches, pad about like neurotic leopards on the hot stone floor, or go to the showers to wash away the grey sweat which has been sucked out of their pores. Not altogether pleasant, but oddly fascinating; and it is this fascination, this unholy masochism which finally drives you towards the second door, and
the steam room.

  Such thoughts passed in my mind as I faced that door. I was really rather weary of this body of mine by now. Outside, a superb morning of early spring was blooming; one ought to be walking high in the hills or lying in the sun, not stuck in a clammy town and going through this almost obscene performance of trying to restore a body which was well past its prime. About ready for the knacker’s yard, that’s what I am, I told myself. And then I pushed open the heavy door and entered the steam room. I was, so to speak, in the condemned cell.

  Ferocious whirling clouds of saturating steam made it impossible at first to see anything at all. For a few moments it seemed unbearable and I nearly gave it up. The steam coiled and eddied, lapping at the substance of the solid square room and at once snaking at me as though to macerate me deep in its own essence. The door closed behind me, and I was alone – or thought that I was alone. Because at first I did not see the one other inmate; and even when I did begin to see him lying belly down on the slatted bench along by one wall, I was still alone. In the steam room, even when there are others present, you are always strangely alone. It is quite impossible to imagine holding a conversation with anyone in there. Even Socrates would have dried up. The silence is unbreakable and any desire to break it is soon quelled by the very weight of the heat which presses down on you and by the sinuous vapours which churn your body and seem to choke out your entire personality.

  At first I stood near the door, wondering how I was able to breathe at all. Every breath became more of an effort. I bent forward, resting my hands on my knees, and opening my mouth felt the moisture dripping down my body. Then I touched the end of the bench nearest to me, and drew my fingers sharply away. Surely, not even a glutton for punishment could sit on this? The heat seemed intolerable, and yet, in fact, it was tolerable; and after a moment or two I did sit, leaning forward and staring into the vapourised mobility of the room.