The Complete Short Stories

by Muriel Spark

  The floor of the bedroom was covered with a carpet of red which was probably crimson but which, against the scarlet of the bed, looked purple. On the walls on either side of the bed hung Turkish carpets whose background was an opulently dull, more ancient red — almost black where the canopy cast its shade.

  I was moved by the sight. The girl called Mitzi was watching me as I stood in the kitchen doorway. ‘Coffee?’ she said.

  ‘Whose room is that?’

  ‘It’s Frau Chef’s room. She sleeps there.’

  Now another girl, tall, lanky Gertha, with her humorous face and slightly comic answer to everything, skipped over to the bedroom door and said, ‘We are instructed to keep the door closed,’ and for a moment before closing it she drew open the door quite wide for me to see some more of the room. I caught sight of a tiled stove constructed of mosaic tiles that were not a local type; they were lustrous — ochre and green —resembling the tiles on the floors of Byzantine ruins. The stove looked like a temple. I saw a black lacquered cabinet inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and just before Gertha closed the door I noticed, standing upon the cabinet, a large ornamental clock, its case enamelled rosily with miniature inset pastel paintings; each curve and twirl in the case of this clock was overlaid with that gilded-bronze alloy which is known as ormolu. The clock twinkled in the early sunlight which slanted between the window hangings.

  I went into the polished dining-room, and Mitzi brought my coffee there. From the window I could see Frau Lublonitsch in her dark dress, her black boots and wool stockings. She was plucking a chicken over a bucketful of feathers. Beyond her I could see the sulky figure of Herr Stroh standing collarless, fat and unshaven, in the open door of his hotel across the path. He seemed to be meditating upon Frau Lublonitsch.

  It was that very day that the nuisance occurred. The double windows of my bedroom were directly opposite the bedroom windows of the Hotel Stroh, with no more than twenty feet between — the width of the narrow path that led up to the frontier.

  It was a cold day. I sat in my room writing letters. I glanced out of the window. In the window directly opposite me stood Herr Stroh, gazing blatantly upon me. I was annoyed at his interest. I pulled down the blind and switched on the light to continue my writing. I wondered if Herr Stroh had seen me doing anything peculiar before I had noticed him, such as tapping my head with the end of my pen or scratching my nose or puffing at my chin, or one of the things one might do while writing a letter. The drawn blind and the artificial light irritated me, and suddenly I didn’t see why I shouldn’t write my letters by daylight without being stared at. I switched off the light and released the blind. Herr Stroh had gone. I concluded that he had taken my action as a signal of disapproval, and I settled back to write.

  I looked up a few moments later, and this time Herr Stroh was seated on a chair a little way back from the window. He was facing me squarely and holding to his eyes a pair of field-glasses.

  I left my room and went down to complain to Frau Lublonitsch.

  ‘She’s gone to the market,’ Gertha said. ‘She’ll be back in half an hour.’

  So I lodged my complaint with Gertha.

  ‘I shall tell Frau Chef,’ she said.

  Something in her manner made me ask, ‘Has this ever happened before?’

  ‘Once or twice this year,’ she said. ‘I’ll speak to Frau Chef.’ And she added, with her music-hall grimace, ‘He was probably counting your eyelashes.’

  I returned to my room. Herr Stroh still sat in position, the field-glasses in his hands resting on his knees. As soon as I came within view, he raised the glasses to his eyes. I decided to stare him out until such time as Frau Lublonitsch should return and take the matter in hand.

  For nearly an hour I sat patiently at the window. Herr Stroh rested his arms now and again, but he did not leave his seat. I could see him clearly, although I think I imagined the grin on his face as, from time to time, he raised the glasses to his eyes. There was no doubt that he could see, as if it were within an inch of his face, the fury on mine. It was too late now for one of us to give in, and I kept glancing down at the entrances to the Hotel Stroh, expecting to see Frau Lublonitsch or perhaps one of her sons or the yard hands going across to deliver a protest. But no one from our side approached the Stroh premises, from either the front or the back of the house. I continued to stare, and Herr Stroh continued to goggle through his glasses.

  Then he dropped them. It was as if they had been jerked out of his hands by an invisible nudge. He approached close to the window and gazed, but now he was gazing at a point above and slightly to the left of my room. After about two minutes, he turned and disappeared.

  Just then Gertha knocked at my door. ‘Frau Chef has protested, and you won’t have any more trouble,’ she said.

  ‘Did she telephone to his house?’

  ‘No, Frau Chef doesn’t use the phone; it mixes her up.

  ‘Who protested, then?’

  ‘Frau Chef.’

  ‘But she hasn’t been across to see him. I’ve been watching the house.’

  ‘No, Frau Chef doesn’t visit with him. But don’t worry, he knows all right that he mustn’t annoy our guests.

  When I looked out of the window again, I saw that the blind of Herr Stroh’s room had been pulled down, and so it remained for the rest of my stay.

  Meantime, I went out to post my letters in the box opposite our hotel, across the path. The sun had come out more strongly, and Herr Stroh stood in his doorway blinking up at the roof of the Guesthouse Lublonitsch. He was engrossed, he did not notice me at all.

  I didn’t want to draw his attention by following the line of his gaze but I was curious as to what held him staring so trancelike up at our roof. On my way back from the post-box I saw what it was.

  Like most of the roofs in that province, the Lublonitsch roof had a railed ledge running several inches above the eaves, for the purpose of preventing the snow from falling in heavy thumps during the winter. On this ledge, just below an attic window, stood the gold-and-rose ormolu clock that I had seen in Frau Lublonitsch’s splendid bedroom.

  I turned the corner just as Herr Stroh gave up his gazing; he went indoors, sullen and bent. Two car-loads of people who had moved into the hotel that morning were now moving out, shifting their baggage with speed and the signs of a glad departure. I knew that his house was nearly empty.

  Before supper, I walked past the Hotel Stroh and down across the bridge to the café. There were no other customers in the place. The proprietor brought the harsh gin that was the local speciality over to my usual table and I sipped it while I waited for someone to come. I did not have to wait long, for two local women came in and ordered ices, as many of them did on their way home from work in the village shops. They held the long spoons in their rough, knobbly hands and talked, while the owner of the café came and sat with them to exchange the news of the day.

  ‘Herr Stroh has been defying Frau Lublonitsch,’ one of the women said.

  ‘Not again?’

  ‘He’s been offending her tourists.’

  ‘Dirty old Peeping Tom.’

  ‘He only does it to annoy Frau Lublonitsch.’

  ‘I saw the clock on the roof. I saw —’

  ‘Stroh is finished, he —’

  ‘Which clock?’

  ‘What she bought from him last winter when he was hard up. All red and gold, like an altarpiece. A beautiful clock — it was his grandfather’s when things were different.’

  ‘Stroh is finished. She’ll have his hotel. She’ll have —’

  ‘She’ll have the pants off him.’

  ‘He’ll have to go. She’ll get the place at her price. Then she’ll build down to the bridge. Just wait and see. Next winter she’ll have the Hotel Stroh. Last winter she had the clock. It’s two years since she gave him the mortgage.

  ‘It’s only Stroh’s place that’s standing in her way. She’ll pull it down.

  The faces of the two women and the man near
ly met across the café table, hypnotized by the central idea of their talk. The women’s spoons rose to their mouths and returned to their ices while the man clasped his hands on the table in front of him. Their voices went on like a litany.

  ‘She’ll expand down to the bridge.’

  ‘Perhaps beyond the bridge.’

  ‘No, no, the bridge will be enough. She’s not so young. ‘Poor old Stroh!’

  ‘Why doesn’t she expand in the other direction?’

  ‘Because there isn’t so much trade in the other direction.’

  ‘The business is down here, this side of the river.’

  ‘Old Stroh is upset.’

  ‘She’ll build down to the bridge. She’ll pull down his place and build.’

  ‘Beyond the bridge.’

  ‘Old Stroh. His clock stuck up there for everyone to see.

  ‘What does he expect, the lazy old pig?’

  ‘What does he expect to see with his field-glasses?’

  ‘The tourists.’

  ‘I wish him joy of the tourists.’

  They giggled, then noticed me sitting within earshot, and came out of their trance.

  How delicately Frau Lublonitsch had sent her deadly message! The ormolu clock was still there on the roof ledge when I returned. It was thus she had told him that time was passing and the end of summer was near, and that his hotel, like his clock, would soon be hers. As I passed, Herr Stroh shuffled out to his front door, rather drunk. He did not see me. He was looking at the clock where it hung in the sunset, he looked up at it as did the quaking enemies of the Lord upon the head of Holofernes. I wondered if the poor man would even live another winter; certainly he had taken his last feeble stand against Frau Lublonitsch.

  As for her, she would probably live till she was ninety or more. The general estimate of her age was fifty-three, fifty-four, -five, -six: a healthy woman.

  Next day, the clock was gone. Enough was enough. It had gone back to that glamorous room behind the kitchen to which Frau Lublonitsch retired in the early hours of the morning to think up her high conceptions, not lying supine like a defeated creature but propped up on the white pillows, surrounded by her crimson, her scarlet, her gold-and-rosy tints, which, like a religious discipline, disturbed her spirit out of its sloth. It was from here she planted the palm tree and built the shops.

  When, next morning, I saw her scouring the pots in the yard and plodding about in her boots among the vegetables, I was somewhat terrified. She could have adorned her own person in scarlet and gold, she could have lived in a turreted mansion rivalling that of the apothecary in the village. But like one averting the evil eye or like one practising a pure disinterested art, she had stuck to her brown apron and her boots. And she would, without a doubt, have her reward. She would take the Hotel Stroh. She would march on the bridge, and beyond it. The café would be hers, the swimming-pool, the cinema. All the market place would be hers before she died in the scarlet bed under the gold-fringed canopy, facing her ormolu clock, her deed-boxes, and her ineffectual bottle of medicine.

  Almost as if they knew it, the three tourists remaining in the Hotel Stroh came over to inquire of Frau Lublonitsch if there were any rooms available and what her terms were. Her terms were modest, and she found room for two of them. The third left on his motorcycle that night.

  Everyone likes to be on the winning side. I saw the two new arrivals from the Hotel Stroh sitting secure under the Lublonitsch chestnut tree, taking breakfast, next morning. Herr Stroh, more sober than before, stood watching the scene from his doorway. I thought, Why doesn’t he spit on us, he’s got nothing to lose? I saw again, in my mind’s eye, the ormolu clock set high in the sunset splendour. But I had not yet got over my fury with him for spying into my room, and was moved, all in one stroke, with high contempt and deep pity, feverish triumph and chilly fear.

  The Portobello Road

  One day in my young youth at high summer, lolling with my lovely companions upon a haystack, I found a needle. Already and privately for some years I had been guessing that I was set apart from the common run, but this of the needle attested the fact to my whole public: George, Kathleen and Skinny. I sucked my thumb, for when I had thrust my idle hand deep into the hay, the thumb was where the needle had stuck.

  When everyone had recovered George said, ‘She put in her thumb and pulled out a plum.’ Then away we were into our merciless hacking-hecking laughter again.

  The needle had gone fairly deep into the thumby cushion and a small red river flowed and spread from this tiny puncture. So that nothing of our joy should lag, George put in quickly,

  ‘Mind your bloody thumb on my shirt.’

  Then hac-hec-hoo, we shrieked into the hot Borderland afternoon. Really I should not care to be so young of heart again. That is my thought every time I turn over my old papers and come across the photograph. Skinny, Kathleen and myself are in the photo atop the haystack. Skinny had just finished analysing the inwards of my find.

  ‘It couldn’t have been done by brains. You haven’t much brains but you’re a lucky wee thing.’

  Everyone agreed that the needle betokened extraordinary luck. As it was becoming a serious conversation, George said,

  ‘I’ll take a photo.’

  I wrapped my hanky round my thumb and got myself organized. George pointed up from his camera and shouted,

  ‘Look; there’s a mouse!’

  Kathleen screamed and I screamed although I think we knew there was no mouse. But this gave us an extra session of squalling hee-hoo’s. Finally we three composed ourselves for George’s picture. We look lovely and it was a great day at the time, but I would not care for it all over again. From that day I was known as Needle.

  One Saturday in recent years I was mooching down the Portobello Road, threading among the crowds of marketers on the narrow pavement when I saw a woman. She had a haggard, careworn, wealthy look, thin but for the breasts forced-up high like a pigeon’s. I had not seen her for nearly five years. How changed she was! But I recognized Kathleen, my friend; her features had already begun to sink and protrude in the way that mouths and noses do in people destined always to be old for their years. When I had last seen her, nearly five years ago, Kathleen, barely thirty, had said,

  ‘I’ve lost all my looks, it’s in the family. All the women are handsome as girls, but we go off early, we go brown and nosey.’

  I stood silently among the people, watching. As you will see, I wasn’t in a position to speak to Kathleen. I saw her shoving in her avid manner from stall to stall. She was always fond of antique jewellery and of bargains. I wondered that I had not seen her before in the Portobello Road on my Saturday-morning ambles. Her long stiff-crooked fingers pounced to select a jade ring from among the jumble of brooches and pendants, onyx, moonstone and gold, set out on the stall.

  ‘What do you think of this?’ she said.

  I saw then who was with her. I had been half-conscious of the huge man following several paces behind her, and now I noticed him.

  ‘It looks all right,’ he said. ‘How much is it?’

  ‘How much is it?’ Kathleen asked the vendor.

  I took a good look at this man accompanying Kathleen. It was her husband. The beard was unfamiliar, but I recognized beneath it his enormous mouth, the bright sensuous lips, the large brown eyes forever brimming with pathos.

  It was not for me to speak to Kathleen, but I had a sudden inspiration which caused me to say quietly,

  ‘Halo, George.

  The giant of a man turned round to face the direction of my face. There were so many people — but at length he saw me.

  ‘Halo, George,’ I said again.

  Kathleen had started to haggle with the stall-owner, in her old way, over the price of the jade ring. George continued to stare at me, his big mouth slightly parted so that I could see a wide slit of red lips and white teeth between the fair grassy growths of beard and moustache.

  ‘My God!’ he said.

  ‘W
hat’s the matter?’ said Kathleen.

  ‘Halo, George!’ I said again, quite loud this time, and cheerfully.

  ‘Look!’ said George. ‘Look who’s there, over beside the fruit stall.’

  Kathleen looked but didn’t see.

  ‘Who is it?’ she said impatiently.

  ‘It’s Needle,’ he said. ‘She said “Halo, George”.’

  ‘Needle,’ said Kathleen. ‘Who do you mean? You don’t mean our old friend Needle who —’

  ‘Yes. There she is. My God!’

  He looked very ill, although when I had said ‘Halo, George’ I had spoken friendly enough.

  ‘I don’t see anyone faintly resembling poor Needle,’ said Kathleen looking at him. She was worried.

  George pointed straight at me. ‘Look there. I tell you that is Needle.’

  ‘You’re ill, George. Heavens, you must be seeing things. Come on home. Needle isn’t there. You know as well as I do, Needle is dead.’

  I must explain that I departed this life nearly five years ago. But I did not altogether depart this world. There were those odd things still to be done which one’s executors can never do properly. Papers to be looked over, even after the executors have torn them up. Lots of business except, of course, on Sundays and Holidays of Obligation, plenty to take an interest in for the time being. I take my recreation on Saturday mornings. If it is a wet Saturday I wander up and down the substantial lanes of Woolworth’s as I did when I was young and visible. There is a pleasurable spread of objects on the counters which I now perceive and exploit with a certain detachment, since it suits with my condition of life. Creams, toothpastes, combs and hankies, cotton gloves, flimsy flowering scarves, writing-paper and crayons, ice-cream cones and orangeade, screwdrivers, boxes of tacks, tins of paint, of glue, of marmalade; I always liked them but far more now that I have no need of any. When Saturdays are fine I go instead to the Portobello Road where formerly I would jaunt with Kathleen in our grown-up days. The barrow-loads do not change much, of apples and rayon vests in common blues and low-taste mauve, of silver plate, trays and teapots long since changed hands from the bygone citizens to dealers, from shops to the new flats and breakable homes, and then over to the barrow-stalls and the dealers again: Georgian spoons, rings, earrings of turquoise and opal set in the butterfly pattern of true-lovers’ knot, patch-boxes with miniature paintings of ladies on ivory, snuff-boxes of silver with Scotch pebbles inset.