by Gerald Kersh
‘Can I give you a hand?’
‘No, no, no, thank you so very much.’
We walked back to the house.
*
‘First afloor fronta vacant, thirteen bob. Very nice aroom. Top floor back aten bob, electric light include. Spotless. No bug,’ lied Busto.
‘Ten shillings. Is there a table in that room?’
‘Corluvaduck! Bess table ina da world. You come up. I soon show you, mister.’
‘As long as there is a table.’
We went upstairs. Straining at his suitcase the stranger climbed slowly. It took us a long time to reach the top of the house, where there was a vacant bedroom next to mine. ‘Ecco!’ said Busto, proudly indicating the misbegotten divan, the rickety old round table and the cracked skylight, half blind with soot. ‘Hokay?’
‘It will do. Ten shillings a week; here is a fortnight’s rent in advance. If I leave within a week, the residue is in lieu of notice. I have no references.’
‘Hokay. What name, in case of letters?’
‘There will be no letters. My name is Shakmatko.’
‘Good.’
Shakmatko leaned against the door. He had an air of a man dying of fatigue. His trembling hand fumbled for a cigarette. Again he recoiled from the light of the match, and glanced over his shoulder.
Pity took possession of me. I put an arm about his shoulders, and led him to the divan. He sat down, gasping. Then I went back to pick up his suitcase. I stooped, clutched the handle; tensed myself in anticipation of a fifty-six-pound lift; heaved, and nearly fell backwards down the stairs.
The suitcase weighed next to nothing. It was empty except for something that gave out a dry rattling noise. I did not like that.
*
Shakmatko sat perfectly still. I watched him through the holes in the wallboard partition. Time passed. The autumn afternoon began to fade. Absorbed by the opacity of the skylight, the light of day gradually disappeared. The room filled with shadow. All that was left of the light seemed to be focused upon the naked top of Shakmatko’s skull, as he sat with his head hanging down. His face was invisible. He looked like the featureless larva of some elephantine insect. At last when night had fallen, he began to move. His right hand became gradually visible; it emerged from his sleeve like something squeezed out of a tube. He did not switch the light on, but, standing a little night-light in a saucer, he lit it cautiously. In this vague and sickly circle of orange-coloured light he took off his spectacles, and began to look about him. He turned his back to me. Snick-snick! He opened the suitcase. My heart beat faster. He returned to the table, carrying an oblong box and a large board. I held my breath.
He drew a chair up to the table, upon which he carefully placed the board. For a second he hugged the box to his breast, while he looked over his shoulder; then he slid the lid off the box, and, with a sudden clatter, shot out on to the board a set of small ivory chessmen. He arranged these, with indescribable haste, sat for a while with his chin on his clenched hands, then began to move the pieces.
I wish I could convey to you the unearthly atmosphere of that room where, half buried in the shadows, with the back of his head illuminated by a ray of moonlight, and his enormous forehead shining yellow in the feeble radiance of the night-light, Shakmatko sat and played chess with himself.
After a while he began to slide forward in his chair, shake his head, and shrug his shoulders. Sometimes in the middle of a move the hand would waver and his head would nod; then he would force himself to sit upright, rub his eyes violently, look wildly round the room, or listen intently with a hand at his ear.
It occurred to me that he was tired – desperately tired – and afraid of going to sleep.
Before getting into bed I locked my door.
*
It seemed to me that I had not been asleep for more than a minute or so when I was awakened by a loud noise. There was a heavy crash – this, actually, awoke me – followed by the noise of a shower of small hard objects scattered over a floor. Then Shakmatko’s voice, raised in a cry of anguish and terror:
‘You again! Have you found me so soon? Go away! Go away!’
His door opened. I opened my door, looked out, and saw him, standing at the top of the stairs, brandishing a small silver crucifix at the black shadows which filled the staircase.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
He swung round instantly, holding out the crucifix. When he saw me, he caught his breath in relief.
‘Ah, you. Did I disturb you? Forgive me. I – I——May I come into your room?’
‘Do,’ I said.
‘Please close the door quickly,’ he whispered as he came in.
‘Sit down and pull yourself together. Tell me, what’s troubling you?’
‘I must leave here in the morning,’ said Shakmatko, trembling in every limb; ‘it has found me again. So soon! It must have followed on my very heels. Then what is the use? I can no longer escape it, even for a day. What can I do? Where can I go? My God, my God, I am surrounded!’
‘What has found you? What are you trying to run away from?’ I asked.
He replied: ‘An evil spirit.’
I shivered. There are occasions when the entire fabric of dialectical materialism seems to go phut before the forces of nightmarish possibilities.
‘What sort of evil spirit?’ I asked.
‘I think they call them Poltergeists.’
‘Things that throw – that are supposed to throw furniture about?’
‘Yes.’
‘And does it throw your furniture about?’
‘Not all my furniture. Only certain things.’
‘Such as——’
‘Chess-pieces and things connected with the game of chess. Nothing else. I am a chess-player. It hates chess. It follows me from place to place. It waits until I am asleep, and then it tries to destroy my chess-pieces. It has already torn up all my books and papers. There is nothing left but the board and pieces: they are too strong for it, and so it grows increasingly violent.’
‘Good heavens!’
‘Perhaps you think that I am mad?’
‘No, no. If you had told me that you had merely been seeing things I might have thought so. But if one’s chessboard flies off the table, that is another matter.’
‘Thank you. I know I am not mad. My name may be unfamiliar to you. Are you interested in chess?’
‘Not very. I hardly know the moves.’
‘Ah. If you were you would have heard of me. I beat Paolino, in the tournament at Pressburg. My game on that occasion has gone down in history. I should certainly have been world champion but for that Thing.’
‘Has it been troubling you for long?’
‘My dear sir, it has given me no peace for twenty years. Conceive; twenty years! It visited me, first of all, when I was in Paris training with Ljubljana. I had been working very hard. I think I had been working nearly all night. I took a hasty lunch, and then lay down and went to sleep. When I woke up I had a feeling that something was wrong: a malaise. I went quickly into my study. What did I see? Chaos!
‘All my books on chess had been taken out of the bookcase and dashed to the floor so violently that the bindings were broken. A photograph of myself in a group of chess-players had been hurled across the room, torn out of the frame, and crumpled into a ball. My chess-pieces were scattered over the carpet. The board had disappeared: I found it later, stuffed up the chimney.
‘I rushed downstairs and complained to the concierge. He swore that nobody had come up. I thought no more of it; but two days later it happened again.’
‘And didn’t you ever see it?’
‘Never. It is a coward. It waits until nobody is looking.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I ran away. I packed my things, and left that place. I took another flat, in another quarter of Paris. I thought that the house, perhaps, was haunted. I did not believe in such things; but how is it possible to be sure? From the Rue Blanche, I move
d to the Boulevard du Temple. There I found that I had shaken it off. I sighed with relief, and settled down once again to my game.
‘And then, when I was once again absorbed, happy, working day and night, it came again.
‘My poor books! Torn to pieces! My beautiful notes – savagely torn to shreds! My beloved ivory pieces – scattered and trampled. Ah, but they were too strong for it. It could destroy books and papers; it could destroy thought; it could destroy the calm detachment and peace of mind necessary to my chess – but my ivory pieces and my inlaid ebony board; those, it has never been able to destroy!’
‘But what happened then?’
‘I ran away again. I found that by moving quickly and suddenly, I could avoid it. I took to living in streets which were difficult to find; complicated turnings, remote back-alleys. And so I often managed to lose it for a while. But in the end, it always found me out. Always, when I thought I had shaken it off for ever; when I settled down to calm work and concentration; there would come a time when I would awake, in horror, and find my papers fluttering in tiny fragments; my pieces in chaos.
‘For years and years I have had no permanent home. I have been driven from place to place like a leaf on the wind. It has driven me all over the world. It has become attached to me. It has learned my scent. The time has come when it does not have to look long for my track. Two days, three days, then it is with me. My God, what am I to do?’
‘Couldn’t you, perhaps consult the Psychical Research people?’
‘I have done so. They are interested. They watch. Needless to say, when they watch, it will not come. I, myself, have sat up for nights and nights, waiting for it. It hides itself. And then – the moment comes when I must sleep – and in that moment——
‘Coward! Devil! Why won’t it show its face? How can I ask anybody for help? How can I dare? Nobody would believe. They would lock me up in an asylum. No no, there is no help for me.
‘No help. Look, I ran away from it last night. I came here today. Yet it found me, this evening. There is no escape. It has caught up with me. It is on my heels. Even at this moment, it is sitting behind me. I am tired of running away. I must stay awake, but I long for sleep. Yet I dare not go to sleep. If I do, it will creep in. And I am tired out.
‘Oh, my God, what can I do? It is with me now. This very night. If you don’t believe me, come and see.’
Shakmatko led me out, to the door of his room. There, clinging to my arm, he pointed.
The chessboard lay in the fireplace. The pieces were scattered about the room, together with hundreds of pieces of paper, torn as fine as confetti.
‘What can I do,’ asked Shakmatko.
I picked up the chessmen, and, replacing the board on the table, arranged them in their correct positions. Then, turning to Shakmatko, I said:
‘Listen. You’re tired. You’ve got to get some sleep. You come and sleep in my bed. I’ll watch.’
‘You are a man of high courage,’ said Shakmatko. ‘God will bless you. And you, damned spirit of anarchy——’ He shook his fist at the empty room.
I took him back, and covered him with my blanket. Poor old man, he must have been nearly dead for want of rest! He gave a deep sigh, and was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.
I tiptoed to his room and sat down. I did not really believe in ghosts; but for all that, I kept my eye on the chessboard, and turned up the collar of my coat so as to protect my ears in the event of flying bishops.
An hour must have passed.
Then I heard a sound.
It was unmistakably a footstep. I clenched my fists and fixed my eyes on the door. My heart was drumming like rain on a tin roof. A floorboard creaked. The handle of the door turned and the door opened.
I had already steeled myself to the expectation of something white, something shadowy, or some awful invisibility. What I actually saw proved to be far more horrible.
It was Shakmatko. His eyes were wide open, but rolled up so that only the bloodshot white parts were visible. His face was set in a calm expression. His hands were held out in front of him: he was walking in his sleep.
I leapt up. I meant to cry out: ‘Shakmatko!’ but my tongue refused to function. I saw him walk steadily over to the table sweep the pieces off the board with a terrific gesture, and fling the board itself against the opposite wall.
The crash awoke him. He gave a start which shook him from head to foot. His eyes snapped back to their normal positions, and blinked, in utter terror, while his voice broke out:
‘Damn you! Have you found me out again? Have you hunted me down again so soon? Accursed——’
‘Shakmatko,’ I cried, ‘you’ve been walking in your sleep.’
He looked at me. His large, whitish eyes dilated. He brandished a skinny fist.
‘You!’ he said to me, ‘you! Are you going to say that, too?’
‘But you were,’ I said. ‘I saw you.’
‘They all say that‚’ said Shakmatko, in a tone of abject hopelessness. ‘They all say that. Oh, God, what am I to do? What am I to do?’
I returned to my room. For the rest of the night there was complete quiet, but it was nearly dawn before I managed to fall asleep.
*
I awoke at seven. I was drawn, as by a magnet, to Shakmatko’s room. I dressed, went to his door, and tapped very gently. There was no answer. It occurred to me that he had run away. I opened the door and looked in. Shakmatko was lying in bed. His head and one arm hung down.
He looked too peaceful to be alive.
I observed, among the chessmen on the floor, a little square bottle labelled Luminal.
In that last sleep Shakmatko did not walk.
‘Busto is a Ghost, Too Mean to Give us a Fright!’
THERE was no such man as Shakmatko, but there really was Busto’s lodging-house. It was just as I described it: a rickety, rotting melancholy old house not far from New Oxford Street. The day came when Busto was kicked out: his lease had expired five years before, anyway. He fought like a trapped lynx to retain possession of the place, but the Borough Surveyor and the Sanitary Inspector had it in iron pincers. It was condemned and executed, torn to pieces, taken away in carts. And a good riddance, I say! Yet in retrospect one half regrets such demolitions. ‘Where is the house in which I lived?’ one asks; and, walking past, looks up at the housebreakers, and sighs … ‘Ahhhhh….’
Pah!
Time is more than a healer. It is a painter and decorator; a gilder and a glorifier. It converts the gritty particles of half-forgotten miseries into what sentimental old gentlemen call Pearls of Memory. Memory! Memory; Fooey on Memory! What a smooth liar it is, this Memory! I have heard a shrapnel-tattered veteran recalling, with something suspiciously like sentimental regret, the mud of Passchendaele. I could feel twinges of pleasurable emotion about Busto’s, if I let myself go. Yet I endured several miseries there. The place was chock-full of my pet aversions. Bed-bugs, of which I have always had a nameless horror, came out at night and walked over me. For some reason unknown to science they never bit me. But other insects did. I used to lie in bed, too hungry and tired to sleep, and look out of the window over the black roofs, and listen to the faint, sad noises of the sleeping house; and marvel at the fearsome strength of vermin. Sandow, Hackenschmidt, gorillas, whales; they are nothing. For truly awful physical force watch insects. Compare the heart-bursting sprints of Olympic runners with the effortless speed of the spider; the bloody and ferocious gluttony of the wolf with that of the louse; the leap of the panther with the jump of the flea!
Busto’s ghoulish presence filled the house. One worried about the rent. Sometimes I wrote verse at night, in true poetic style, by the light of a halfpenny candle – oh, most execrable verse, full of inspissated, treacly, heavy blue-black gloom….
In whose dim caves God and the ghosts of hope
Hold panic orgy and forget the earth
– that kind of thing. What green caves? I forget. I think they were to be found in a
‘sea to sink in’. What sea? Sink what? I don’t remember. I also wrote a novel called The Blonde and Oscar. It was so sordid that it made publishers’ readers scratch themselves. Compared with it, L’Assommoir was like something by Mrs Humphry Ward, and Jude the Obscure a kind of Winnie the Pooh. Prostitutes? Millions of ’em. Degenerates? On every page. I left no stone unthrown; explored every drainpipe; took three deep breaths, attached a stone to my feet, exhaled, and sank to the bottom of the cesspit with a hideous gurgle. I tell you, publishers dropped it with muffled cries, and afterwards scrubbed their hands, like men who reach for pebbles on a beach and accidentally pick up something disgusting.
I was always having fights with other lodgers. My nerves were on edge. I was, in any case, a bit of an idiot, foolish with an uninspired foolishness – hell is full of such. I was unbelievably bumptious, arrogant, loud-mouthed, moody, quarrelsome, bull-headed, touchy, gloomy, and proud in a silly kind of way. At the prospect of a rough-house I boiled over with murderous joy. Only one man on earth inspired me with fear, and that was Busto.
*
Pio Busto used to cross himself before a lithograph of the Mona Lisa. He thought it represented the Virgin Mary. But in any case it was generally believed that Busto had no soul to save.
How small, how bent, and how virulent was Pio Busto, with his bulldog jaws, and his spine curved like a horseshoe! How diabolical were the little eyes, hard and black as basalt, that squinted out of his pale, crunched-up face! Ragged, dirty, and lopsided, he had the appearance of a handful of spoiled human material, crumpled and thrown aside, accidentally dropped out of the cosmic dustbin. It was said of him: ‘Busto is not human. Busto is not alive. Busto is a ghost, too mean to give us a fright.’
He really seemed to have no thought beyond wringing out the rents of his abominable little furnished rooms. As soon as the money was due, up popped Busto like the Devil in a legend: ‘My landlorda gimme time to pay? Hah? Hooh!’ If you asked him for a match he would say: ‘Buy a box.’ There was a quality of doom about his avarice. Professional bilkers took one look at Busto and ran for their lives. Unemployed waiters – always habitual grumblers and irrepressible mutterers-under-the-breath – remained silent in his presence. He uttered few words, but his thin lips, corrugated like the edges of scallop-shells, sawed off a whole repertoire of formidable noises. His Hooh! expressed all the scorn in the world: his Hah? was alive with malice.