The Best of Gerald Kersh

by Gerald Kersh

  Yet account for this, if you like, gentlemen – William, the drunkard, and the smoker, was a harmless kind of fellow, while his brother John, the total abstainer, the non-smoker, showed every symptom of chronic alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver, and a certain fluttering of the heart that comes of nicotine poisoning!

  I do not suppose that any doctor has had the good luck to have such a case on his hands. There was William, breathing brandy and puffing cigar smoke like a steam engine, in the pink of condition; blissfully semicomatose; happy. And there was John, with a strawberry nose, a face like a strawberry soufflé, eyes like poached egs in pools of blood, fingers playing mysterious arpeggios all over the place – a clear case of alcoholic polyneurotic psychosis – but John had never touched a drop.

  It was John who did most of the talking – the one with the strawberry nose. He said: ‘Dr Almuna, for God’s sake, stop him! He’s killing me. He’s killing himself, and he’s killing me.’

  William said: ‘Pay no attention, Doc. John’s the man of nerves. Me, I take things easy.’

  At this John cried: ‘Nerves! Damn you, William, you’ve torn mine to shreds!’

  William said, quite placidly: ‘Give me some brandy, Doctor.’

  And then you would have been amazed to see the play of expression on the face of John, the plaintive one. He folded his hands and gripped them tight to stop the tremor; and I have never seen a more remarkable combination of desire and revulsion in a human countenance.

  ‘Don’t!’ he said; and then: ‘… Well, Doctor, if you think it’s okay …’

  Alas, that I should say it – to an inquiring mind, however well-disposed, all men are guinea-pigs. Besides, it might be argued, who was John to say what the suave and comfortable William might, or might not, have? Experimentally, if you like, I gave William three ounces of brandy in a measured glass. It went down like a thimbleful, and he smiled at me – a smile that was pleasant to see.

  And believe me or believe me not, his brother John began to retch and hiccup and blink at me with eyes out of focus, while William, having lit a strong cigar, folded his hands on his stomach and puffed smoke!

  Sympathy, what? Wow, but with a vengeance!

  At last, after a fit of deep coughing, and something like nausea, brother John said: ‘You see, Doctor? Do you see? This is what I have to put up with. William won’t let me work. Do you appreciate that? He won’t let me work!’

  Both John and William were evidently men of substance. They had arrived in a custom-built Mercedes-Benz, were tailored by Stolz, and carried expensive jewellery. It is true that William was covered with cigar-ash, and that his platinum watch had stopped in the afternoon of the previous day; but it was impossible not to detect a certain air of financial independence.

  John, the strawberry-faced, the tremulous one, he was neat as a pin, prim, dapper. I wish I knew the laundress who got up his linen. He wore a watch-chain of gold and platinum and, on the little finger of his left hand, a gold ring set with a large diamond. There was about two carats of diamond, also, stuck in his black satin tie….

  How shall I describe to you this weird mixture of dandyism and unkemptness in John? It was as if someone had disturbed him in the middle of a careful toilet. His clothes were beautifully cut and carefully pressed. You might have seen your face in the mirrors of his shoes. But his hair needed trimming – it came up to the neck in little feathers – and his finger-nails were not very tidy. William was flagrantly, cheerfully – I may even say atavistically – dirty, so as to be an offence to the eye and to the nostrils. Still, he too wore well-cut clothes and jewellery: not diamonds; emeralds. Only rich men can afford to be so elegant or so slovenly.

  So I asked: ‘Work, Mr John? Come now, what do you mean by “work”?’

  William, rosy and contented, was smiling and nodding in a half-sleep – the picture of health and well-being. And his brother John, who had not touched a drop, was in a state of that feverish animation which comes before the sodden sleep that leads to the black hangover.

  He said: ‘Oh, I don’t need to work – I mean, not in point of economy. Mother left us enough, and much more than enough. Don’t you worry about your fee, Doctor——’

  ‘You leave Mother out of this,’ said William. ‘Little rat. Always picking on Mother, poor old girl. Give us another bit of brandy, Doctor: this is a bore.’

  Before I could stop him, William got hold of the bottle and swallowed a quarter of a pint. He was very strong in the hands, and I had to exert myself to take the bottle away from him. After I had locked it up, it was – believe me! – it was poor John who said, in a halting voice: ‘I think I am going to be sick.’ What time William, blissfully chewing the nauseous stump of a dead cigar, was humming ‘O Doña Clara’, or some such trash.

  And upon my soul, gentlemen, John joined in, in spite of himself, making what is politely called ‘harmony’:

  O Doña Clara,

  Ich hab’ dich tanzen gesehn,

  Und deine Schoenheit

  Hat mich toll gemacht …

  Then John stopped, and began to cry.

  He said: ‘That’s all he knows, you see? You see what he is? A pig, a vulgar beast. My tastes are purely classical. I adore Bach, I love Mozart, I worship Beethoven. William won’t let me play them. He breaks my records. I can’t stop him. He’s stronger in the hands than I am – exercised them more. Day and night he likes to bang hot jazz out of the piano; and he won’t let me think, he won’t let me work – Doctor, he’s killing me! What am I to do?’

  William lit another green cigar and said: ‘Ah, cut it out, will you? … Why, Doc, the other day this one ordered in a record by a guy called Stravinsky, or something.’ He chuckled. ‘It said on the label, Unbreakable. But I bust it over his head; didn’t I, Johnny? Me, I like something with a bit of life in it … rhythm. You know?’

  John sobbed. ‘My hobby is painting miniatures on ivory. William won’t let me. He mixes up my paints——’

  ‘Can’t stand the smell of ’em,’ said William.

  ‘– Jogs my arm and, if I protest, he hits me. When I want to play music, he wants to go to sleep. Oh, but if I want to sleep and he wants to make a noise, try and stop him!’

  ‘Let’s have a little more brandy,’ said William.

  But I said to him, solemnly: ‘The stuff is deadly poison to you, Mr William. I strongly urge that you spend about three months in my sanatorium.’

  ‘I won’t go,’ he said. ‘Nothing the matter with me. I’m okay.’

  ‘Make him go, make him go!’ his brother screamed. ‘Oh, William, William, for God’s sake – for my sake – go to the sanatorium!’

  ‘I’m okay,’ said William, cheerfully. ‘You’re the one that needs the sanatorium. I’m not going. I’d rather stay at home and enjoy myself. A short life and a merry one. Ha?’

  And the extraordinary fact of the matter was, William was, as he said, okay – liver impalpable, kidneys sound, heart in excellent condition – he, who drank two quarts of brandy every day of his life! A tongue like a baby’s, eyes like stars, steady as a rock. It was John who showed the stigmata of the alcoholic and the cigar-fiend – he who had never tasted liquor or tobacco.

  How do you like that for sympathy?

  John whispered brokenly: ‘I might have tried to bear it all; only last week this sot proposed marriage to our housekeeper! Marriage! To our housekeeper! I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it!’

  William said: ‘Why not? Nice woman. Johnny hates her, Doc, but she understands me. Past her prime, maybe, but comfortable to be with. Shares my tastes. Likes cheerful music. Don’t say no to a highball. Cooks the way I like it – plenty of pepper, rich stuff with a lot of spice. This Johnny-boy, here, all he can take is milk and boiled weakfish. Yes, so help me, I’m going to marry Clara…. Sure you can’t let me have another little bit of brandy, Doc? An itsy-boo?’

  I said: ‘No. For the last time, are you sure that you won’t come to my sanatorium?’

  ‘Sure a
s you’re sitting there,’ said William, while John sobbed helplessly on the sofa.

  So, to conclude: The brothers John and William went out to where their great limousine was waiting in the dusk, and drove away.

  Shortly afterwards, John died in delirium of cirrhosis, nephritis, dropsy, and ‘the whole works’ – as you put it. His brother William died soon after, and they were buried together in the Sacred Heart cemetery.

  Curious, what?

  *

  The good Dr Almuna rubbed his hands and chuckled.

  A listening psychiatrist said: ‘Most extraordinary,’ and began an explanation that promised to be interminable.

  But Dr Almuna cut him short. He said: ‘The explanation, my dear Doctor, is an exceedingly simple one. Perhaps I failed to mention that John and William were Siamese twins, and had only one liver between them. And poor John had the thin end of it, which cirrhosed in advance of William’s.’

  He added: ‘Intriguing, what? Perhaps the only case on record of a man drinking his teetotal brother to death.’

  The White-washed Room

  SHE was one of those hearty, healthy young women whom you may see every day in towns like Guildford. You see them and you hear them. They wear good tweed execrably cut and, more often than not, are accompanied by pink-faced men in yellow turtle-necked sweaters and big flannel trousers, who wear – as it were with an air of astonishment – brushed-up gingerish moustaches. The men with the moustaches stand condescendingly filling foul old briar pipes, or lighting cigarettes, while conversing at the tops of their voices – usually with one big, booted foot on the running-board of a small, fast, yet dilapidated little car.

  She came of an excellent family. She could out-ride, out-smoke, out-drink and out-think any other well-bred girl in the little town. She could ride and take care of a horse, and knew exactly what to look for in a dog. As her father said, Athene was a good girl with no damn nonsense about her. She was his only child, and after his wife died she was mother, daughter and son to him.

  She had only one secret. This was the only thing of which she had ever been ashamed, or afraid. It was a dream. Normally, Athene didn’t dream; she went to bed and pulled down a big, thick black curtain which rolled up at daybreak, when she awoke, bright like a struck match, and went storming and roaring about her daily business – which was the strenuous business of organised pleasure. It would have humiliated her to admit that she had dreams that troubled her.

  From time to time – especially after a hard day’s hunting – she would drop into a deeper sleep than usual, and, although this sleep was terribly deep, she felt until the last, that she was somehow standing aside from herself and watching herself. The dream took this form:

  She dreamt that she had been asleep. Something at the back of her mind told her that she had been travelling, and was a long way from her home. As, in the dream, she came out of a deep blackness, with something like the gasp of relief of a swimmer who comes up to the surface from somewhere below his depth, she knew that she was in a remote and strange place, and that she was in danger.

  In her dream she lay still and waited. Athene was an intelligent girl, accustomed to the frenzied patience of the hunter and the fisherman: she knew how to keep still.

  She knew that she was dreaming, but she wanted to know what was to come.

  Her eyes were open. She could see the foot-rail of a black iron bed. Beyond it stood a blank white-washed wall. She could not move her eyes, yet something informed her that, on the north side of the room, directly opposite the window, there stood a lectern with a small vase containing four dying chrysanthemums.

  As she reached this stage of the dream the horror of the grave and the fear of death took hold of her, and she wanted to scream. But she couldn’t scream.

  She was paralysed. Athene was well aware that outside the sun blazed, and that there she would be free and happy. Here there was no sun. This place was dead. One white-hot bar of light had poked itself between the bars of the window and made a little puddle somewhere behind her. She couldn’t see it but she knew it was there; she couldn’t move her eyes.

  But she could hear.

  She could hear little quiet feet approaching. Their scuffling began as a whisper, turned into a flapping, and at last became footsteps which stopped outside the door.

  She heard the door-knob turn.

  Slippered feet slapped the clean floor. Then she saw two little old ladies dressed in washed-out pale blue, who walked to the foot of the bed.

  As this point she awoke, always wet with cold, biting off the beginning of a scream, because it would have been improper for such a woman to express terror, let alone scream.

  Athene married. She bore her husband three children, two girls and a boy. Only one of her children went wrong – the girl, who went to live in sin with a politician who afterwards made a fortune out of advertising and thereby vindicated himself. Athene had never said anything about her hideous dream. The time had passed. She was desperately lonely. Her children were strangers to her and she could find no means of loving her husband. She went away.

  She did not know where she was going; she knew simply, that she wanted to go away, anywhere away from her world.

  She took the train. It was filled with soldiers. Athene had taken a ticket to the end of the line and was prepared to get out anywhere at all. The train was hot and stuffy; they had been crossing a great white desert-white because it was of fine sand under a white-hot sun.

  It seemed to her that she read BERGVILLE on the sign in the station and she got out and drank ice-cold beer until the groan of coaches and the screeching of the wheels told her that the train had left without her, so she sent a telegram ahead, dealing with her luggage, found a hotel and went to sleep.

  Athene slept heavily, and, as it always happened in her heavy sleeps, she had her dream.

  She dreamt that she was in a strange town. She knew that she had missed her train. Athene had not the slightest doubt concerning what was to come; she had dreamt this dream too often before. She knew that she was going to have her nightmare of the white-washed room and the iron bed.

  Surely enough, the dream came…. There she lay, rigid on the iron bed in the white-washed room, unable to move. Athene knew – having dreamed this dream a hundred times before – that she was going to hear footsteps in the passage.

  She heard them. They were the old familiar shuffling footsteps that she had associated with the quiet old women in blue.

  Athene was aware that she was dreaming, and that in a second or two she would be properly awake, laughing at herself and preparing to go out with the Chesterfield Hunt. So, in spite of the nightmare, she stayed calm.

  She heard the footsteps approaching, heard the door open and heard the door close, strained her fixed eyes until the two old ladies in blue came into her field of vision, and then expected to wake up with a terrified shriek, as usual.

  But she didn’t wake up.

  The dream continued:

  The two old ladies in blue did not stop. Looking at each other and sadly shaking their heads, they advanced. One of them, with a dry and tremulous forefinger, closed Athene’s eyes, and she heard one of the old women say to the other:

  ‘What a lovely corpse she makes. I wonder where she comes from.’

  And Athene knew that, when she awoke this time, no one would ever hear her scream.

  The Ape and the Mystery

  WHILE the young Duke had been talking, the aged Leonardo had been drawing diagrams with a silver point on a yellow tablet. At last the Duke said: ‘You have not been listening to me.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Magnificence. There was no need. Everything is clear. Your water down there near Abruzzi is turbid and full of bad things, evil humours. Cleanse it, and this flux will pass.’

  ‘What,’ said the Duke, ‘I must wash my water?’

  ‘You must wash your water,’ said Leonardo.

  The young Duke stared at him, but he continued still drawing on his tablet:
‘You must wash your water. Tell your coopers to make a barrel, a vast barrel, as large as this hall, and as high. Now in this barrel you must lay first, clean sand to the height of a man. Then charcoal to the height of a man. Above this, to the height of a man, gravel. Then, to the top, small stones. Now down here, where the sand is, there must be a pipe. The bottom of this great cask will incline at a certain angle. The pipe will be about as large as a man’s arm, but a plate of copper, or brass, suitably perforated, will cover the end embedded in the sand and will be further protected by a perforated case so that it may be withdrawn, if choked with sand, and replaced without considerable loss of pure water.’

  ‘What pure water?’ asked the young Duke.

  ‘The pure water of Abruzzi, Magnificence. It will pour in foul at the top and come out clean at the bottom. These fluxes are born of the turbidity of the water.’

  ‘It is true that our water is far from clear.’

  ‘The purer the water, the smaller the flux. Now your water poured in at the top will purify itself in its downward descent. The greater pebbles will catch the larger particles floating in it. The smaller pebbles will take, in their closer cohesion, the lesser particles. The gravel will retain what the little pebbles let pass. The charcoal will arrest still tinier pollutions, so that at last the water – having completely purged itself in the lowest layer of sand – will come out pure and sweet. Oxen, or men (whichever you have most of) may pump the water by day and by night into my filter. Even your black pond water, poured in here, would come out clear as crystal.’

  ‘I will do that,’ said the young Duke, with enthusiasm. ‘The coopers shall go to work, the rogues. This moment!’

  ‘Not so fast, Magnificence. Let us consider. Where is the cooper that could make such a cask? Where is the tree that could yield such a stave for such a cask? Big pebbles, little pebbles, gravel, charcoal, sand … Yes, reinforce it at the bottom and construct it in the form of a truncated cone. Still, it crushes itself and bursts itself asunder by its own weight. No, Magnificence. Stone is the word. This must be made of stone. And –’ said Leonardo, smearing away a design on his tablet and replacing it with another – ‘between every layer, a grill. To every grill, certain doors. Bronze doors. The grills, also, should be of bronze. As for the pipes – they had better be bronze. A valve to control the flow of the water, a brass valve. Below, a tank. Yes, I have it! We erect this upon … let me see … fourteen stone columns twenty feet high, so that, since water must always run down to level itself, it would be necessary for your servants only to turn a screw, to open a spring of pure water, gushing out of a bronze pipe in twenty places at once in your palace, as long as the tank were full. I have also an excellent idea for a screw, designed to shut off the water entirely or let it in as you will, wherever you will, either in a torrent or in a jet no thicker than a hair’s breadth. In this case, of course, your Magnificence will need a more powerful pumping engine….’