Caviar

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “You’re so earnest!” she said.

  “Everybody’s all the time laughing at me,” I said sadly. “Well, how about it?”

  The smile faded away from her face and she sat for a long time saying nothing. I went and sat beside her and looked at her. I didn’t try to touch her at all. Suddenly she nodded and began to talk.

  “I might as well tell you. It’s tough to keep it to myself. Most people would laugh at me; the one doctor I went to eventually gave me up as a bad job. He said I was kidding myself. He said that what had happened just couldn’t happen—I imagined it all. But you—I think I can trust you. I don’t know why—

  “It started about two years ago. I had a slight crush on a fellow at a summer camp. He took me to a dance one night—one of those country square dances. It was a lot of fun and we danced ourselves tired. Then we went out onto the lake shore and he—well, the moon and all, you know—he put his arms around me. And just then a voice spoke to me. It said, ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep away from this fellow.’ I started back and asked the boy if he had said something. He hadn’t. I was scared and ran all the way home. He tried to catch me, but he couldn’t. I saw him the next day and tried to apologize but there wasn’t very much I could say. I tried to be nice to him, but as time went on he got more and more irritable. And he lost weight. He wound up in the hospital. Almost—died. You see, he couldn’t sleep. He was afraid to sleep. He had the most terrible dreams. I heard about one of them. It was awful.

  “I didn’t realize then that my seeing him had anything to do with his getting sick; but as soon as they had him in the hospital he began to get better, fast, as long as I didn’t visit him. Then he would have a relapse. I heard that after he left the camp for good and went back to his home in Chicago, he was quite all right.

  “Well, nothing happened for quite a while, and then I began to notice that a counterman at a sandwich bar where I ate every day had begun to act strangely. I saw him every day, but there was absolutely nothing between us. One afternoon while I was eating, he began dropping things. It was nothing at first, but it got very bad. It got so that he couldn’t lift so much as a spoon without dropping it. He spilled cup after cup of coffee. He would try to make a sandwich and he’d drop the makings all over the floor and his work table. He couldn’t set a place at the counter, he couldn’t wait on anybody—as long as I was there! At first he kidded about it and called me his jinx girl. But after a week or so of that, he came over to me just as I sat down and said:

  “Miss Harvester, I hope you don’t mind what I’m going to say, but something’s got to be done. I’ll lose my job if I don’t stop dropping things. But I never do that unless you’re here! I don’t know why it is, but there you have it. Would you be angry if I asked you not to eat here for a while?” I was astonished, but he was so worried and so polite about it that I never ate there again. And from what I’ve heard my friends say, he never dropped anything again.

  “And from then on it got worse and worse. A traffic cop, a nice old man, that I used to nod to each morning on my way to work, began to itch! I could see it, every time I passed him! I’d nod, and he’d nod, and then start to scratch as if he itched so badly he just couldn’t help himself. And an office boy who spent a lot of time near my desk began to miss doors! I mean, he just couldn’t get through a door without running into the jamb. The poor boy almost went crazy. He’d walk slowly toward a door, aim carefully, and try to go through, but he couldn’t do it unless he struck the jamb first. I got so heartsick watching him that I quit my job and got another—which took care of the nice policeman, too. Neither of them were ever troubled again.

  “But that’s the way it’s been ever since. Any man I see regularly starts suffering dreadfully from strange trouble. It’s bad enough for the ones who just see me in a routine way. But oh, the poor men who try to take me out to shows and things! When I go out, that strange voice speaks to me again, and tells me to keep away from the man. And if I don’t, he gets terribly sick, or he gets blind spells when he crosses any streets, or he does things that cause him to lose his job or his business. Do you see what I’m up against?”

  “Don’t cry, Miss Iola. Please don’t cry.”

  “I’m n-not crying, Mr. Gus!”

  “Just plain Gus!”

  “Well then, you call me just plain Iola. Or Miss Harvester. Not Miss Iola.”

  “I’d have to feel a certain way about you to call you Iola,” I said slowly. “And I’d have to feel a certain other way about you to call you Miss Harvester. I’m goin’ to call you Miss Iola.”

  “Oh, Gus,” she said, “you’re so cute!” She smiled and sipped some milk and then went on with her story.

  “I work now for a woman who owns a cosmetic business,” she said. “I have a woman boss and a woman manager and office force and mostly women customers. And I hate them! I hate all women!”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  She gave me an odd glance, and went on. “Once in a while I’m free of this thing. I can’t tell you exactly how I know, but I do. It’s a sort of lightening of the pressure. And then I’ll be walking along the street and I can feel it trying to catch up with me—just as if it had hunted me out and was following me. Sometimes I can hide and get away from it. Generally I can’t.”

  “Oh—that’s why you were running away that night I first saw you! But—why did you slap my face?”

  “Because I liked you.”

  “That’s a funny sort of way to show it, Miss Iola.”

  “Oh, no! The thing, whatever it is, had just caught up with me. It knew I liked you. It would have done some terrible thing to you if I hadn’t slapped you to make it think I disliked you. And after I had done it I was so ashamed I ran away.”

  “Why did you break the stem of the sunflower?”

  “Gus, I didn’t! The thing did that, to get you in trouble.”

  “He succeeded.”

  “Oh, Gus—I’m so sorry.”

  “What for? Not your fault.”

  “Not—Gus, you believe me, don’t you?”

  She kissed me. Just a little one, on the cheek, but it made my heart pop up into the back of my neck and slug me.

  “Well,” I said as soon as I could make my breathing operate my voice, “whatever this thing is, I’ll help you lick it. Ah—what is it, by the way? Got any ideas?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “I certainly have. When I told the doctor this, it convinced him that I was suffering from an overdose of old wives’ tales. Doesn’t it seem funny to you that after all I’ve told you about what happens to a man if I so much as talk to him, nothing is happening to you?”

  “Come to think of it, it is funny.”

  “Look, then,” she said, pointing. “There, and there, and there!”

  I looked. Over the tops of the three doors that opened into the room, and over the two big windows, were strands of—garlic.

  “I… heard of that,” I said. “A ghost, huh?”

  “A ghost,” said Iola. “A jealous ghost. A dirty, rotten dog-in-the-manger ghost! Why doesn’t he leave me alone?”

  “I’ll tear’m apart,” I growled.

  She smiled, the saddest, puckered-up little smile I ever did see. “No, Gus, no. You’re strong, all right, but that kind of strength won’t do me much good with my haunt.”

  “I’ll find some way, Miss Iola,” I said. “I will, so help me!”

  “You’ll try,” she said softly. “So help me!”

  She got my hat and opened the door for me, then closed it with a bang, whirled and stood with her back to it. “Gus!” She was pale, anyway, but now she looked bloodless. “Gus. He’s out there! The ghost—he knows you’re in here, and he’s waiting for you!”

  I looked at my hands. “Move on out of the way, then, Miss Iola,” I said quietly, “and let me at him.”

  “No, Gus—no!”

  “Now, looky here. It’s getting late—too late for you to have my kind in your digs. I’ll run
along.” I walked over to her, took her by the shoulders, and lifted her out of the way. Her forehead was near, so I kissed it before I put her down.

  “Good night,” I said. She didn’t answer. She was crying, so I guess she couldn’t. Awful scared. I was glad about that because I knew it wasn’t herself she was scared for.

  I woke up the next morning and thought I was still asleep, in the middle of a foul dream. I was cold—stone-cold, wet-cold. I felt as slimy as an eel in a barrel of oil. I opened my eyes and tried to shake the feeling off. It wouldn’t shake. My last night’s dinner rolled inside me as I realized that the sliminess was there, all right—my two sheets were coated with it. I could feel the wet, thick mass of it all over me. I could strip it off one arm with the other hand, and throw it—sclup—onto the floor.

  But I couldn’t see it.

  I ran, gasping and retching, into the bathroom. My feet seemed to slip on the stuff, and I had trouble turning the doorknob with my slimy fingers. I climbed under the hottest shower I had ever taken, soaped, rinsed, soaped again, rinsed again. And I got out of the tub feeling cold and clammy and slimy as ever.

  I tried to put some clothes on, but I couldn’t stand the pressure of them; they seemed to drive the thick mass of it into my pores. I threw them off, leaped into bed, and pulled the covers over me, and with a yelp I leaped out again. It was bad enough to have it, but I couldn’t bear to wallow in it. The phone rang. Iola.

  “Gus, I’m terribly worried about you. Has he … it … done anything to you?”

  I hesitated. It wouldn’t do any good to lie. “Yeah, he’s been skylarking around.”

  “Gus, what has he done?

  “Nothin’ worth talking about.”

  “Oh, you won’t tell me. It must be something really terrible!”

  “Why so?”

  “Because I … I … well, I—Gus, aren’t you going to say it first? Why is that he would you treat you worse than any other man?”

  I slowly began to get what she was driving at. “Miss Iola—you don’t lo … care for me or something?”

  “Darling!”

  I said, “Holy smoke!”

  I did some thinking after I hung up. I couldn’t let this thing get me down—not now, not after my hearing news like that. I clamped my jaw and got out some clean underwear and socks. I was remembering something my pop told me after my first street fight. “If ye git hurt, me bye, don’t let th’ other fellow know it. If he thinks he can’t hurt ye, ye’ve got ’im licked.”

  So I dressed. With my clothes I clasped the chill ooze to me, and when I walked out the door the slime dripped from the creases of my flesh as I moved. I stepped out onto the street with some misgivings, but it was invisible, thank the Powers.

  And when I woke the next day the sliminess was gone.

  I went to Henry Gade’s place and borrowed a pen and paper. I had told him what I’d heard from Iola about her trouble, but nothing else.

  “Who are you writing to?” he asked over his pipe, watching me scratching laboriously away at the letter.

  “I’m doin’ what anyone should do when he’s in trouble—consulting an expert,” I said, and kept on writing.

  “ ‘Miss Beatrice Dix, The Daily Mail,’ ” he read aloud, and roared with laughter. “So you’ve got trouble along those lines, too, have you? Ha? Beatrice Dix—Advice to the Lovelorn!”

  “You tell your little mouth to stop making those noises or it’ll get poked,” I growled. He went on reading what I had written:

  Dear Miss Dix:

  I got a problem about a girl I am very serious with. This girl has a fellow who likes her, but she don’t like him none at all. He keeps on bothering her and ordering her to keep away from other men, but he never comes to see her or gives her anything or takes her out and on top of that he keeps on doing things to any other man that is interested in her and especially to me because—

  “Good heavens, Gus, couldn’t you put a full stop in there somewhere?”

  —because I am at present her big moment. The things he does are not the kind of things you can get the law on him for. What I want to know is what right has this fellow to be so jealous when the girl has no use for him and what can we do to get rid of him.

  “Either you’re an extremely exacting student of literary styling,” said Henry, “or you actually are the kind of person who writes in to Beatrice Dix’s column. I’ve always wondered what one of those nitwits looked like,” he added thoughtfully, standing off and regarding me as if I were a museum piece. “Tell me—who’s the cutter-inner in your little romance?”

  “A ghost.”

  “A ghost? Iola’s jealous ghost? Gus, Gus, you improve by the hour. And do you really think you can exorcise him with the aid of a heart-throb column?”

  “He don’t need no exercise.”

  “Get out of here, Gus, you’re killing me.”

  “I will before I do,” I said.

  The following day Iola’s haunt created something new and different for me. But I couldn’t brave this one out. I stayed home all day after phoning the boss that I was very, very ill. Exactly what was done couldn’t be printed.

  The answer to my letter came far sooner than I had hoped. I hadn’t asked for a personal reply, and so it was printed, with my letter, thus:

  G.S.:

  You are up against a very difficult problem, if we understand the situation correctly. We have run up against such cases before. The young man who is persecuting the two of you will continue to do so just as long as he finds the girl attractive to his peculiar type of mind. And what can you do about it?

  You can ignore him completely.

  Or you can, together or singly, get the man to talk the whole thing out with you.

  Or you might try to find someone else who would interest him.

  But you must be patient. Please, for your own sakes, do not do anything rash.

  I read it over half a dozen times. I figured this Dix woman was a real expert at this racket, and she ought to know what to do. But how to go about it? “Ignore him completely.” How can you be married to a woman when you know you’re liable to turn slimy at a moment’s notice? “Appeal to his better nature—talk it out with him.” Catch him first. “Find someone else who would interest him.” Catch a lady ghost, huh? And persuade her to vamp him.

  I took the paper over to Henry Gade. He’s better at thinking things out than I am.

  He waved the paper aside as I came in. “I’ve seen it,” he said. “I was looking for it.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a lovely piece of say-nothing, except that she hit the nail on the head when she said that the guy will keep right on bothering you lovebirds just as long as he finds the girl attractive. I can’t get over it!” he exploded, and put his head on one side, watching me. “Good old Gus, in love after all these years!”

  “Maybe it hits harder for that,” I said, and he stopped his ape-grinning and laid a hand on my shoulder.

  “I guess it does. You do reach in and get the truth at times, old man.”

  The letter from Iola was waiting for me when I got back home.

  Dearest Gus,

  This is a rotten thing for me to do, but I’ve got to do it. I have a suspicion of what you’ve been going through so bravely; he talked to me last night and told me some of the things he’s done to you.

  So you mustn’t write, Gus darling, and you mustn’t phone, and above all you must never, never see me again. It’s the only way out for both of us, and if it’s a painful and a cruel way, then that’s the breaks.

  But, beloved—don’t try to get in touch with me. I have bought a little revolver, and if you do that I’ll kill myself. That’s not idle talk, Gus. I’m not afraid to do it. I’ve lived through enough pain.

  Sweet, sweet sweetheart, how my heart bleeds for you!

  I read it over once and tried to read it again because, somehow, I couldn’t see so well. Then I dove for the phone, and thought about the
revolver, and turned my back on it. Oh, she’d do it—I knew her.

  Then I went out.

  Henry found me. Maybe it was three weeks later, maybe four. I didn’t know because I didn’t give a damn. I was sitting on a bench with a couple of other gentlemen.

  “Go away. You’re Henry. I remember you. Go away, Henry.”

  “Gus! Get up out of that! You’re drunk! Come home with me, Gus.”

  One of the other gentlemen back-slid to the extent of taking some of Henry’s money for helping Henry get me home. Once there, I slept the clock around.

  Henry woke me, sponging my face with warm water. “Lost thirty pounds or more,” he was muttering. “Filthy rags—ten-day beard—”

  “You know what happened to me,” I said, as if that excused and explained everything.

  “Yes, I know what happened to you,” he roared. “You lost your cotton-headed filly. And did you stand up and take it? No! You lay down and let yourself get kicked like the jelly-bellied no-good you are!”

  “But she wouldn’t—”

  “I know, I know. She refused to see you any more. That’s got nothing to do with it. You’re wound up with her—finished. And you tried to run away. You tried to escape into filth and rotgut liquor. Don’t you realize that you do nothing that way but burn up what’s clean in you and leave all that’s rotten, with the original wound festering in the middle of it?”

  I turned my face to the wall, but I couldn’t stop his voice. “Get up and bathe and shave and eat a decent meal! Try to act like a human being until you can give as good an imitation as you used to.”

  “No,” I said thickly.

  Suddenly he was on his knees by the bed, an arm across my shoulders. “Stop your blubbering,” he said gently. “Gus—you’re a grown man now.” He sat back on his haunches, frowning and breathing too deeply. Suddenly he rolled me over on my back, began slapping my face with his right hand, back and front, back and front, over and over and over.