The Best of Gerald Kersh

by Gerald Kersh

  A priest came out to greet me. He radiated benevolence when he saw that I was wearing a complete suit of clothes, a watch-chain, and boots, however down at heel. In reply to his polite inquiry as to what he could do for me, I said: ‘Why, padre, you can direct me out of this charming village of yours, if you will.’ Knowing that nothing is to be got without ready cash, I gave him half a dollar, saying: ‘For the poor of your parish – if there are any poor in so delightful a place. If not, burn a few candles for those who have recently died of want. Meanwhile, if you will be so good as to direct me to some place where I can find something to eat and drink, I shall be infinitely obliged.’

  ‘Diego’s widow is clean and obliging,’ said he, looking at my coin. Then: ‘You are an American?’

  ‘I have that honour.’

  ‘Then you will, indeed, be well advised to move away from here as soon as you have refreshed yourself, because there is a rumour that Zapata is coming – or it may be Villa – what do I know?’

  ‘Presumably, the secrets of the Infinite, padre, judging by your cassock. Certainly,’ I said, ‘the secrets of Oxoxoco. Now, may I eat and drink and go on my way?’

  ‘I will take you to Diego’s widow,’ said he, with a sigh. ‘Up there,’ said he, pointing to the mountain slope, ‘you will certainly be safe from Villa, Zapata, and any other men in these parts. No one will go where I am pointing, señor – not the bravest of the brave. They are a superstitious people, my people.’

  ‘Not being superstitious yourself, padre, no doubt you have travelled that path yourself?’

  Crossing himself, he said: ‘Heaven forbid!’ and hastily added: ‘But you cannot go on foot, señor?’

  ‘I’d rather not, padre. But how else should I go?’

  His eyes grew bright as he replied: ‘As luck will have it, Diego’s widow has a burro to sell, and he knows the way anywhere. Come with me and I will take you to Diego’s widow. She is a virtuous woman, and lives two paces from here.’

  The sun seemed to flare like oil, and at every step we were beset by clouds of flies which appeared not to bother the good priest who seemed inordinately concerned with my welfare. His ‘two paces’ were more like a thousand, and all the way he catechized me, only partly inspired (I believe) by personal curiosity.

  ‘Señor, why do you want to go up there? True, you will be safe from bad men. But there are other dangers, of which Man is the least.’

  ‘If you mean snakes, or what not——’ I began.

  ‘– Oh no,’ said he, ‘up there is too high for the reptiles and the cats. I see, in any case, that you carry a pistol and a gun. Oh, you will see enough snakes and cats when you pass through the Oxoxoco jungle on your way. That, too, is dangerous; it is unfit for human habitation.’

  ‘Padre,’ said I, ‘I have lived in London.’

  Without getting the gist or the point of this, he persisted: ‘It is my duty to warn you, señor – it is very bad jungle.’

  ‘Padre, I come from San Francisco.’

  ‘But señor! It is not so much the wild beasts as the insects that creep into the eyes, señor, into the ears. They suck blood, they breed fever, they drive men mad——’

  ‘– Padre, padre, I have been connected with contributors to the popular press!’

  ‘Beyond the second bend in the river there are still surviving, unbaptized, certain Indians. They murder strangers slowly, over a slow fire, inch by inch——’

  ‘– Enough, padre; I have been married and have had a family.’

  His pace lagged as we approached the house of Diego’s widow, and he asked me: ‘Do you understand the nature of a burro, a donkey?’

  ‘Padre, I attended the Kentucky Military Institute.’

  ‘I do not grasp your meaning, but they are perverse animals, bless them. Tell them to advance, and they halt. Urge them forward, they go sideways.’

  ‘Padre, I was drummer-boy with the Ninth Indiana Infantry.’

  ‘Ah well, you will have your way. Here is Diego’s widow’s house. She is a good woman.’ And so he led me into a most malodorous darkness, redolent of pigs with an undertone of goat.

  The widow of Diego, as the padre had said, was unquestionably a good woman, and a virtuous one. With her looks, how could she have been other than virtuous? She had only three teeth, and was prematurely aged, like all the women hereabout. As for her cleanliness, no doubt she was as clean as it is possible to be in Oxoxoco. A little pig ran between us as we entered. The padre dismissed it with a blessing, and a hard kick, and said: ‘Here is a gentleman, my daughter, who requires refreshment and wants a burro. He is, of course, willing to pay.’

  ‘There is no need of that,’ said the widow of Diego, holding out a cupped hand. When I put a few small pieces of money into her palm she made them disappear like a prestidigitator, all the while protesting: ‘I could not possibly accept,’ etcetera, and led me to a pallet of rawhide strips where I sat, nursing my aching head.

  Soon she brought me a dish of enchiladas and a little bottle of some spirits these people distil, at a certain season, from the cactus. I ate – although I knew that the hot, red pepper could not agree with my asthma; and drank a little, although I was aware that this stuff might be the worst thing in the world for my rheumatism. The flies were so numerous and the air so dense and hot that I felt as one might feel who has been baked in an immense currant bun, without the spice. She gave me a gourd of goat’s milk and, as I drank it, asked me: ‘The señor wants a burro? I have a burro.’

  ‘So the reverend father told me,’ said I, ‘and I hear no good of him.’

  ‘I have never seen such a burro,’ said she. ‘He is big and beautiful – you will see for yourself – almost as big as a mule, and all white. You can have him for next to nothing. Five silver dollars.’

  ‘Come now,’ said I, ‘what’s wrong with this animal that has all the virtues in the world and goes for next to nothing? I have lived a very long time in all parts of the world, señora, and one thing I have learned – never trust a bargain. Speak up, what’s the matter with the beast? Is he vicious?’

  ‘No, señor, he is not vicious, but the good people in Oxoxoco are afraid of him, and nobody will buy him. They called him a ghost burro, because his hair is white and his eyes and nose are red.’

  ‘In other words, an albino donkey,’ I remarked.

  At the unfamiliar word, she crossed herself and continued: ‘… And what need have I for a burro, señor? A few goats, a pig or two, a little corn – what more do I want? Come, caballero, you may have him for four dollars, with a halter and a blanket thrown in.’

  ‘Well, let me see this famous burro, widow. I have ridden many a ghost in my time, and have been ridden by them in my turn.’

  So she led me to a shady place near-by where stood a large white donkey, or burro as they call them, haltered, still, and seemingly contemplative. ‘Where did you get him?’ I asked.

  The question seemed to embarrass her, but she replied: ‘He strayed from up there–’ pointing to the mountain ‘– and since no one has claimed him in three years I have the right to call him mine.’

  ‘Well,’ said I, ‘I am going up there. No doubt someone will recognise him and claim him, and I’ll be short one donkey. But give me the blanket and the halter, and I will give you three dollars for the lot.’

  Diego’s widow agreed readily. I could see what was passing in her mind: the burro was economically valueless, and if Villa broke through, which seemed likely, his commissariat would take the donkey away to carry ammunition or, perhaps, to eat. She could not hide a donkey, but she could hide three dollars. Hence, she produced an old Indian blanket and a rawhide halter. Also, she filled my canteen with water and offered me a stirrup-cup of mescal, and pressed into my pockets some cakes wrapped in leaves. ‘Vaya con Dios, stranger,’ she said, ‘go with God. When you pass the bend in the river and find yourself in the jungle, look to your rifle. But where the path forks, where the trees get thin, turn left, not right.’ Then she
threw over my head a little silver chain, attached to which was a small silver crucifix. I felt somewhat like the man in young Bram Stoker’s Dracula (which might have been an excellent novel if he could have kept up to the quality of the first three or four chapters), but I thanked her, and offered her another dollar which she refused. Perhaps, after all, she really was a good woman, as the priest had said?

  The inhabitants of Oxoxoco came out of their divers lethargies to cross themselves as I passed, mounted on the white burro. But soon I was in the jungle, following a barely perceptible path up the mountain.

  I detest the indiscriminately growing, perpetually breeding, constantly rotting, useless and diseased life of the jungle. It reminds me too much of life in the poorer quarters of such great cities as London and New York. Jungles – whether vegetable or of brick-and-mortar – are to hide in, not to live in. Where there is too much life there is too much death and decay. The Oxoxoco jungle was full of useless forms of life. The trees grew to an immense height, racing neck for neck to the sunlight; meeting overhead and grappling with one another branch to branch, locked in a stranglehold, careless of the murderous vines that were twining themselves about their trunks and sucking their life-sap while they struggled. There was no light, but there was no shade; only a kind of evil steam. In places I thought I would have to cut my way with my machete, but the donkey seemed to know his way through what, to me, seemed hopelessly impenetrable places. He paused, sometimes, to drink out of some little pool or puddle that had dripped from the foliage above. But he went on very bravely. I never spent three dollars on a better bargain, and wished now that I had not haggled with Diego’s widow who, I was by now convinced, was not merely a virtuous woman but a generous one. Or a fool. And I had reason to bless her forethought in filling my canteen with water and my pocket with cakes, because three laborious days passed before the air became sweeter and the vegetation more sparse.

  But long before we got out of the jungle I heard myself talking to myself, saying: ‘So, you old fool, you have got what you deserve. Live alone, die alone …’ There being no unlicked journalists to puncture with my tongue, I turned it against myself; and I believe that at last I met my match in piercing acrimony, because I was tongue-tied against my own onslaughts.

  Then, having drunk the last drop of my water (which immediately sprang out again through the pores of my skin) I gave myself up for lost and started to become delirious. I thought that I was back in the log cabin in which I was horn in Meigs County, Ohio, with my poor crazy father and my eight brothers and sisters … and I had made up my mind to run away …

  Then, miraculously, there were no more trees, and the air was clean and cold. The white burro broke into a gallop, then a trot, then a walk, and so came to a halt. I raised my drooping head and saw, standing in our path, a tall, lean man dressed all in white, holding up a hand in an imperious gesture. He said, in a sonorous voice: ‘So, you bad burro, you have come home? Well, I will forgive your going astray since you have brought us a guest.’ Then, to me, in pure Castilian: ‘Allow me to help you to dismount, señor. I fear you are exhausted, and your face is badly scratched by the thorns.’

  I managed to croak, in English: ‘For God’s sake, water!’

  Mine was the semi-imbecile astonishment of the helplessly played-out man when I heard him reply in perfect English: ‘Of course, sir. I am extremely thoughtless.’ I suppose he made some gesture, because two men lifted me, very gently, and put me in a shady place, while the gentleman in white held to my lips a vessel – not a gourd, but a metal vessel – of pure ice-cold water, admonishing me to drink it slowly.

  It revived me wonderfully, and I said: ‘Sir, you have saved my life, and I am grateful to you – not for that, but for the most delicious drink I have ever tasted.’ Then my eyes fell upon the cup from which I had drunk. The outside was frosted, like a julep-cup, but the inside was not. Then I noticed the colour and the weight of it. It was solid gold.

  A servant refilled it from a golden ewer and I drained it again. The gentleman in the white suit said: ‘Yes, it is very good water. It comes unadulterated from the snows, which are unpolluted. But your voice is familiar to me.’

  I was travelling incognito, but in courtesy I had to give my host some name to call me by, so I said: ‘My name is Mark Harte——’ borrowing from two of my con temporaries the Christian name of one and the surname of the other. Then I fainted, but before I quite lost consciousness I heard the gentleman in the white suit utter some words in a strange language and felt myself, as it were, floating away. I know that somebody put to my lips a cup of some bitter-tasting effervescent liquid. Then, curiously happy, I fell into oblivion as lightly as a snowflake falls upon black velvet.

  *

  It was one of those sleeps that might last an hour or ten thousand years. When I awoke I was lying on a bed of the most exquisite softness, in a cool and spacious chamber simply but luxuriously furnished in a style with which I was unacquainted. My only covering was a white wrapper, or dressing-gown of some soft fabric like cashmere. There was a kind of dressing-table near the window upon which stood a row of crystal bottles with gold stoppers containing what I presumed to be perfumes and lotions. Above the dressing-table hung a large bevelled mirror in a golden frame, wonderfully wrought in designs which seemed at once strange and familiar. My face, in the mirror, was miserably familiar. But my month-old beard was gone. Only my moustache remained; and my hair had been trimmed and dressed exactly as it was before I left San Francisco and came to Mexico to die. There were bookshelves, also, well filled with a variety of volumes. With a shock of surprise – almost of dismay – I recognised some works of my own. Upon a low table near the bed stood a golden ewer and cup, and a little golden bell. This last named I picked up and rang. The door opened and two servants came in carrying between them a table covered with a damask cloth and laid with a variety of dishes, every dish of gold with a gold cover. One of them placed a chair. Another unfolded a snowy napkin which he laid across my knees as I sat. Then he proceeded to lift the covers, while the other brought in a wine-cooler of some rich dark wood curiously inlaid in gold with designs similar to those in the frame of the mirror. Everything but the wine-glasses was of massive gold; and these were of crystal, that beautiful Mexican rock crystal. I picked up a champagne glass and observed that it had been carved out of one piece, as had the hock glass, claret glass, port-wine glass, and liqueur glass, etcetera. Many months of patient, untiring, and wonderfully skilful craftsmanship must have gone into the making of every piece. Gold never meant much to me, except when I needed it; and such a profusion of it tended even more to debase that metal in my currency. But those wine-glasses, carved and ground out of the living crystal – they fascinated me.

  While I was admiring them, I touched a goblet with a tentative fingernail and was enjoying its melodious vibrations when the sommelier, the wine waiter, went out on tiptoe and returned, wheeling a three-tiered wagon, upon every shelf of which was ranged a number of rare wines of the choicest vintages. It seems that I had touched a sherry glass; in any case he filled the glass I had touched from an old squat bottle. ‘Hold hard, my friend,’ I said, in Spanish. But he only bowed low and made a graceful gesture towards the glass. I believe that that sherry was in the hogshead before Napoleon came to hand-grips with the Duke of Wellington at Badajoz. Sherry is the worst thing in the world for rheumatism, and I meant to take no more than one sip. But that one sip filled me so full of sunlight that I felt myself responding to it as if to Spanish music, and my appetite came roaring back. I ate as I had never eaten before. With each course came an appropriate wine. At last I was served with coffee and brandy. The table was removed. In its place they brought in a low round table, inlaid like the wine-cooler, and upon a great gold tray, crystal glasses, a decanter, and all that goes with a Sèvres coffee-pot.

  Now my host came in, and I had an opportunity to observe him more closely. ‘I trust that you have refreshed yourself, Mr Harte,’ said he.


  I replied: ‘My dear sir, it is you who have refreshed me. Never have I, in my wildest dreams, imagined such heliogabalian hospitality. I do not know how to thank you.’

  He replied: ‘You thank me by your presence. You reward me, Mr Mark Harte. Let us take coffee and cognac together. I hope you slept well. I thought that it might please you, when you awoke, to find yourself looking a little more like the gentleman whose conversation I – inadvertently but with vast pleasure – happened to over hear in the Imperial Café in London, in the spring of 1873; and later at the Ambassador, not many years ago. But do taste this brandy. It was distilled, I think, about the time when Napoleon was a cadet –

  Napoleon with his stockings half down

  Is in love with Giannaconnetta …

  – You heard the jingle? Yes, Mr Harte, the wine merchants speak of “Napoleon Brandy”, but I possess the last few dozen authentic bottles in the world.’

  ‘You have been so kind to me,’ said I, ‘that I feel bound to tell you: my name is not Mark Harte.’

  ‘Oh, but I knew that two days ago – yes, you slept forty-eight hours – and I was quite aware that you were neither Mark Twain, nor Bret Harte, nor any imaginable combination of the two. You are Mr Ambrose Bierce and, to be frank with you, I would rather have you under my roof than the other two put together.’

  Always of an irritable turn, though somewhat mellowed by deep rest, good food and fine wine, I repeated what I must have said elsewhere a thousand times before: that Bret Harte was a cheap slangy upstart who had wheedled his way; and that Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) was better, but not much, or he would never have written such a puerile work as Huckleberry Finn.

  I drew a deep breath, whereupon one of my asthmatic attacks took hold of me. An asthmatic should know better than to draw a deep breath too suddenly, even when he is about to launch a diatribe against his rivals. A certain mockery pervades such occasions. You need at least two good lungsful of air to blow up the epigram, which is, of course, the most brilliant thing that ever came to the tip of your tongue. Then your respiratory tracts close as surely as if a Turk had a bow-string about your throat, and the air you have inhaled refuses to come out. Suddenly, you develop the chest of a blacksmith and the complexion of a general. It is at once the most ridiculous and the most wretched of maladies torturing as it does sufferer and bystander alike. My host rang the little golden bell and in a moment an old woman came in.