by Gerald Kersh
He said to her three or four words in that unknown tongue which I had heard before, and she darted away to return with a most curious bottle with three necks, a small gallipot, and a vessel of boiling water. The contents of the gallipot she poured into a hole in the body of the bottle and added what I presume to be boiling water. Then, inserting two of the necks of the bottle into my nostrils and the middle neck between my lips, she applied her own to the hole in the body of the bottle and steadily blew. I was first aware of something disagreeably pungent. Then the pungency became pleasurable. She withdrew the bottle and I found myself breathing, with a most charming sense of peace.
But my witticisms had been completely driven out of my mind.
‘It is only asthma,’ my host said, in his powerful but gentle voice. ‘We can cure you of that, Mr Bierce.’
‘Thank you, sir, thank you,’ I said. I was about to add that, with such a formula, he might make his fortune in the north; but I remembered that profusion of pure gold and said, instead: ‘It was that, that drove me here – that, and rheumatism. I thought that the hot, high, dry air …’
My host said, in his gentle voice: ‘Indeed, yes, Mr Ambrose Bierce. You are right, as usual – and, as usual, somewhat wrong. Remember your story entitled The Damned Thing in which you indicate that there are sounds inaudible to the human ear and colours invisible to the human eye. If my memory does not deceive me, you concluded with the words: “God help me, the Damned Thing is of such a colour!” Correct me if I am wrong. Listen, Mr Bierce – up here we can hear the high and the low, the squeak of the bat and the rumblings under the earth; and we know, believe me, we know.’ His eyes were like coals, but his face was bland as he said: ‘What do you know, Mr Ambrose Bierce? … Let us change the subject. Tell me of your experiences in the Oxoxoco jungle. Were you troubled?’
‘Excepting hunger and thirst,’ I said, ‘not a bit. Once or twice I thought I saw some red-brown faces peering at me, but then they disappeared almost as if they were afraid of me.’
My host laughed, and said: ‘Do forgive me, Mr Bierce. Those savages were not afraid of you, they were afraid of Tonto.’
‘I thought it might be my guns that frightened them, sir. But who is Tonto?’
‘Tonto is a Spanish word meaning: silly, irresponsible, stupid. It is the name of the burro upon which you rode here – and for bringing you I will forgive all that perverse donkey’s sins. Allow me to assure you, however, that if you had been riding any ordinary ass, both you and it, by now, would have been butchered, eaten, and forgotten. Thank Tonto. When those jungle beasts see one of my white burros – and they know them, the dogs – they hide their heads.’ Then he mused, ‘Tonto was always a curiously rebellious animal. That is why we call him Tonto. Cross-grained. A donkey is not called a donkey without reason, sir.’ He laughed. ‘It would be no use beating him even if I were so disposed. One must earn the affection of a donkey or a mule; otherwise they will stand and be beaten to death rather than take an order. Not that I have ever beaten beast or man. We are humane here, sir, and loathe violence. Mr Bierce, sir, let it be quite plain that you do here as you will.’
‘I like that donkey, or burro,’ said I. ‘Somehow I find him sympathetic.’
‘Then he is yours,’ said my host.
After some interchange of courtesies, I said: ‘Here is something I do not understand, sir: you live here in the wilds, near a jungle inhabited by savages. Yet you live in a magnificent stone house, attended by servants who would be worth their weight in gold even in Mexico City. I speak of gold – you eat off gold platters, drink out of gold cups or glasses of pure rock crystal. You are an accomplished man; you speak several languages with remarkable purity. This, I do not understand.’
‘Mr Bierce, I am the head of a very ancient family, indeed – possibly the most ancient family extant upon the face of the earth. No, wait! I see, springing to your lips, an inquiry unworthy of you, which would not do justice to me. Did I come over with the Conquistadores? Were my predecessors with Cortez? The answer is, no. Then you will ask whether my forebears, the ancient Aztecs, came up here to escape from the Spaniards and their horses. Sir, you may believe me when I tell you that the Aztecs were mere upstarts by my family reckoning. The very house in which I have the honour of sheltering you is almost as old as the pyramids in Yucatan. Do not speak to me, sir, of the Aztecs – without entering into the detail, they were a foolish people though numerous. My people were kings, sir, before the Aztecs crept out of the jungle. The little they knew of architecture, carving, and so forth, they derived from us. You have seen the Yucatan pyramids? Have you ever seen anything so crude? The Aztec carvings? Put your fingers in the corners of your mouth, pull, and roll your eyes. They are out of drawing, too, if you observe the limbs….
‘Now this house is made of volcanic rock – fused by the fires that die not – cut in cubes, mathematically precise, each side of the cube as long as my stride, which is about thirty-two inches. No baking, no plastering. It is not a house (humble though it may seem to you), it is an ancient jewel. The pyramids of Egypt themselves would, on analysis, look foolish beside this little house…. Now you will ask me about gold, etcetera. Sir, Mr Bierce, we have almost inexhaustible funds of gold, and take it for granted. In effect, we of the Old People scarcely regard it except as a medium of exchange … and for certain other purposes. Personally, for utility, I prefer silver. Silver, I find, is lighter and more agreeable. And while I drink out of crystal – my men grind it to its proper proportions with wet sand, as the Chinese shape jade – 1 prefer a mixture of silver, gold and copper for my dishes. This is firmer than tedious gold. I would like to make an admixture with tin, which might be a very good thing. But I bore you.’
‘I assure you, not in the least, sir,’ I said. ‘I was only about to remark that you seem to have travelled greatly. You say that you have seen me in London, in San Francisco, and so forth——’
‘– Why not, Mr Bierce? Necessarily so, sir. You may have observed that we live, here, in something of a civilised way. You took (and I hope you enjoyed it) champagne, for example, with your meal. Where does it come from? Necessarily, France. How do I get it? Very simple; I exchange gold, of which I have an immense supply. There you have it.’
‘But, my dear sir, you are a man of the world. It seems to me,’ said I, ‘that you speak every language fluently – even including languages I have never heard spoken.’
‘Oh, I move, here and there as necessity dictates. But this is my home. Not only do I speak languages, Mr Bierce – I speak accents and dialects.’ Then he made a chewing motion with his jaws, let the right-hand side of his mouth droop loosely, and spoke in the accents of a Calaveres prospector and pretended to spit as he said: ‘Mr Ambrose Bierce, sir! Me and my folks sure would admire to have you for supper!’
I replied, in the same intonation: ‘Yes sir, you bet!’
We shook hands in the California style. His handshake was exploratory – he seemed to be feeling my hand joint by joint. Said he: ‘But we were speaking of rheumatism. We can first alleviate, then cure that. Nothing simpler, if you overcome your modesty.’
‘My modesty apart,’ said I, ‘what is your process?’
My host said: ‘There are two processes. The preliminary process is a form of massage. You have been massaged, no doubt, by shampooers in Turkish baths and Hummumms in various cities. But only by ten fingers. Now my masseuses have seventy fingers. That is to say, there are seven of them. Each takes a joint, a muscle, or a place where certain nerves cross. The seven women – I am sorry, but only women can do it – work at the same time, in perfect co-ordination. They were trained from childhood, bred to the business. They will prepare you for the second treatment, which is sonic.’
‘Sonic? That, sir, should pertain to sound.’
‘Just so, Mr Bierce. My masseuses will prepare you for the sound treatment that will take away the crystals that come between certain joints and fibres, and make you uncomfortable. With all you
r perspicacity you do not understand? Here, I’ll demonstrate.’
This extraordinary man now picked up a crystal water glass, and threw it down. It bounced – while I winced – and rocked itself still, undamaged. He picked it up and set it on the low table, saying: ‘To all intents and purposes, Mr Bierce, apart from a sudden shock this crystal is indestructible. But observe me closely.’ While I watched, he rang the glass with a fingernail. It gave out a gloriously melodious note, somewhere in the scale of D major. He listened intently; then, filling his lungs, which were the enormous lungs of the man who lives in the rarefied air of the uplands, he sang into the glass precisely the same note as it had sounded. Only that one note, and he sang it with tremendous volume and power. The glass quivered, appeared to dance – then suddenly burst asunder, fell to pieces.
He said: ‘One must take into consideration the natural cohesion of particles. The particles, or atoms, of all matter, living or dead, are obedient to certain natural laws of cohesion. They respond to their own vibrations, Mr Bierce. By means of sound, and sound alone, I could – for example – have made that glass very light or very heavy. And when you are relaxed, almost inert, I will find the right vibration and, by the proper application of sound, I will break the tiny nodules and disperse the antagonistic acids that cause you so much pain … with your permission, let it be understood – not without your permission.’
‘If you can rid me, sir, of these aches and pains as you have rid me of this asthmatic attack, you have my permission to do anything.’
He rang the little golden bell. A manservant came in, immediately, to whom he gave an order in that tantalisingly familiar yet utterly foreign tongue of the household. Then he said to me, in his impeccable English: ‘I must ask you, if you will be so kind, to remove your robe. I may say, by the bye, that the clothes in which you came have been cleaned and mended, so that they are as good as new; your boots likewise. They are in the cupboard by the door, together with your gun, your revolver, and your machete. Understand me: it is my desire that you be perfectly content. You have only to express a wish and it will be granted…. You may think this odd, Mr Bierce?’
‘Delightfully so,’ I said.
‘Yes, by common standards it is. But I am of the Old People, and we live by the spirit of the great. I have sent out messages, north, south, east and west, to my scattered family. They will assemble here in a month, and then——’
But then eight women came into the room. An anthropologist would have been hard put to it to define their race. Presumably their heads had been bound at birth, because their skulls were curiously conical. Their faces were of the neutral colour of weak coffee, and quite expressionless. While I lay on the bed, seven of them took positions around me. The eighth carried a golden bowl of some kind of aromatic oil, which she offered to the others who steeped their hands in it.
Then began the massage as my host had explained it – inch by inch, line by line, nerve by nerve and muscle by muscle – seventy skilled fingers working in perfect co-ordination. There used to be a masseur with a red beard in the Turkish bath at Covent Garden whom I regarded as a master of his profession. He could take away indigestion, muscular pains, or a headache simply by the application of his supple and intelligent hands. His name was Jim. Any one of these seven women was worth ten Jims. I had been tolerably comfortable before they went to work. But they brought to me a sense of tranquillity of which I should never have thought myself capable.
I fell asleep while they were still working. How long they worked I do not know, but the sun was setting when I awoke, and I was hungry and thirsty again. I rang my little bell and the two men who had previously attended me, came in again, this time with a larger table which they set for two. Now, my host dined with me, anticipating my every want. ‘With this meal,’ he explained, ‘you may eat only white meats – merely poultry of various sorts, unborn veal, fish, omelettes, etcetera. Hence, only white wine. Because, after an hour for digestion and a good cigar, you must come with me and we will complete the treatment. There will be no more rheumatism, no more arthritis, no more gout. Believe me, Mr Bierce, we live by the spirit here and once purged of pain and hate, relieved of the necessity to earn a living, yours is the greatest spirit of the age and I want you to become one of us. We will make you perfect.’
It was in my heart to say that I did not want to be perfect; that perfection was for saints and gods, and I had no ambition in that direction; for they used to call me ‘Bitter’ Bierce, not without reason. Certain souls thrive on bitter fruit; only fools love sugar, only madmen hope for perfection. But I was too comfortable to argue the point, and my host had been somewhat more than kind to me. I may have been born a farmer’s boy, but I have some of the instincts of a gentleman.
‘A cigar, if you will, but no brandy until later. Then, anything you like. Later, nothing will hurt you, Mr Bierce. I have had a steer killed, and the filet hung; likewise a five-year-old sheep, well fed, well penned, well killed – we shall eat the saddle …’
So, eventually, having dressed me in a suit similar to his own, he led me through a labyrinth of corridors, down and down from door to door, into the bowels of the mountain, and there we came into a great cave. One might put St Paul’s Cathedral in London, entire, into the dome of St Peter’s in Rome; but St Peter’s itself might have been lost in the vastness of that cave. It was occupied by something, the sight of which impelled me to ask: ‘Is this an organ, sir?’
‘An organ, of a kind,’ said my host, ‘but of such a kind that I venture to say that its like will never be seen again. I suppose you know that the Indians in Yucatan, etcetera, have what they call “water-pipes”. These are a series of pottery jars of varying sizes, to the tops of which are attached a certain kind of whistle. By means of a primitive sort of spigot they regulate a flow of water into the largest jar, first of all. The water, rising, compresses the air which, being forced out through the whistle, makes a certain sound – what time the water, having reached a certain level, pours into the next jar … and so on, until the air is full of mysterious music. It must be,’ he mused, ‘a race memory. Crude, yes; primitive, unquestionably. But derived from the Old People, who used sound in its proper application before Atlantis sank into the sea. Now these things which seem to you to be the pipes of some colossal organ are water-pipes. They are grey only with the encrustations of age, but they are mostly of pure gold. The largest one, which is about the size of five hogsheads, is of massive gold. The next is of silver. The following five are of gold and bronze. There are ninety-three in all. You yourself, Mr Bierce, have written of colours the human eye cannot see, and sounds the human ear cannot hear. You cannot hear the great pipe because it is too deep; and you cannot hear the ninety-third pipe, which is thinner than a pencil, because its note is higher than the squeak of a bat…. Now you must take off your clothes and lie down on this pallet. Shut your eyes, open your mouth, and wait while I control the flow.’
I asked: ‘What happens now?’
‘There are sounds which it is not vouchsafed to man to hear, Mr Bierce. You won’t hear them – you will scarcely feel them. Breathe deeply, and let us have done with discussion. Listen and tell me what you hear.’
‘I hear,’ I said, ‘a pouring of water. A tinkling of water conjoined to something strangely compounded of melody and thunder.’
‘Aha! The great pipe fills. Now wait ——’
My host held to my lips that bitter, effervescent drink which I so clearly remembered, and then as it were through a veil I sensed an agreeable numbness while, from basso to alto, the pipes made their music. I felt them rather than heard them. The first sensation was in the back of my head, in my cerebellum; then it was in my wrists and my elbows, my hips and knees and ankles. Soon this fabulous vibration, controlled as it was by my host, as it seemed took hold of the front of my throat. If I had the will of ten men I could not have resisted this spell. It is not that I swooned – I very gently became unconscious. It is common knowledge that I am a
man of a certain strength of will: I held on to my senses as long as I could; was aware of strange vibrations in all my joints; and finally floated out of the world in a black sleep. The last thing I remember in this gigantic cave was the intolerably thin whistle of the smallest pipe, queerly compounded with the dull thunder of the great pipe. It was as if I were melting.
‘– We only want your spirit,’ said my host.
I could not speak, but I remember saying within myself: ‘I hope you may get it.’
Soon the music died. All I could hear was a sound of water running away. Somebody wrapped me in a soft blanket and I was carried away again, back through those labyrinthine passages, to my bedroom where I fell into a profound slumber. I did not awaken until about noon next day. One of my silent attendants led me to a bath of warm water delicately perfumed with something like sandalwood. Again, they shaved me while I slept. He had laid out a fresh white suit, a fine silk shirt, and a black cravat. Studs, cuff-buttons, and scarf-pin were of matched pearls. He was setting the table again, so that I had my choice of a dozen dishes. My host came in when I was dressed. ‘Now, Mr Bierce,’ said he, ‘confess that our treatment is efficacious.’
‘I never felt so well in all my life,’ I said.
‘I dare say not. And you will feel better yet. We will not need to repeat yesterday’s treatment. Only, after you have taken luncheon and rested a little, I might advise the use of the bottle again. Two or three repetitions, and there will be an end to your asthma. Your rheumatism, sir, you may regard as cured for ever; but if you will allow me I shall have the Seven Sisters repeat the massage every night before you retire, to make you plump and supple. Repose, repose – refresh, refresh! Pray be seated with a good appetite. Will you take a glass of sherry with me? … Aha – here, I see, is this saddle of mutton. You must try it. It is of Welsh breed. Do you prefer capers or red-currant jelly? You must eat, Mr Bierce, and relax and be happy. Soon my family (what is left of it) will be here, and then we shall have a real feast, and you shall be one of us…. Allow me to serve you …’