by Emil Petaja
THE INSISTENT GHOST
Seagulls, their bellies filled with herring spawn, halted their greedy peregrinations long enough to perch on Tessa Alder’s faded sign, and not infrequently to add a brief comment to Tessa’s corny but commercially sound device for luring tourists and townspeople into her little gift and book shop. Her beloved landlord would do nothing at all to relieve the peeled, dilapidated condition of the double-flat’s facade (or indeed any other part of the house) so Tessa, with her usual delicate counterbalance of shrewd realism and affection for whimsy, painted the legend “YE OLDE GHOSTE SHOPPE” on an old piece of driftwood, and set it to swinging on the low brick wall in front of her window. Occasionally, when some young couple breathlessly asked her who haunted the shop and why, she would blandly improvise something appropriate.
Today remained bleak and gusty and portentous, the sky having produced rain several times already. Inside the shop Tessa was giving her friend Verbena Smith tea.
“Artists sometimes take poison. Don’t they, Verbena?” Tessa was asking, in her invariably mild sweet way.
As a matter of fact they had been discussing last night’s movie, a lavish musical. Verbena Smith smoothed down her lavender ruffles and smiled uncertainly. She wished Tessa would not ramble so. People frequently asked her if Tessa Alder wasn’t just a little off her head, and Verbena’s ‘no’ was not always as convincing as it might be. But she did enjoy taking tea with Tessa, and going to the movies with her. Then, too, Tessa was old—Tessa was sixty-seven, while she was only sixty-one.
“More tea, darling?” Tessa asked, when Verbena, in her old maid’s brown study, neglected to answer her.
Verbena shook her head and sipped from her egg-shell cup significantly. Tessa hummed as she reached behind the little coal stove for her own special earthen pot and poured herself a third cup. Verbena coughed to conceal her smile. Tessa was so odd. She would serve herself from that ugly earthen pot behind the stove, whereas guests were served from the pretty China pot with the cozy on it, the jaunty red and yellow cozy Verbena herself had knitted Tessa for Christmas. Well, it was likely her way of indicating that her guests were better than she was. Verbena was willing to accept this judgment.
The pursed grimace she put forth to camouflage all this mental activity was intended to be a gracious smile. She would string along with Tessa’s odd fancies, humor the poor thing.
“Sometimes they hang themselves,” she tittered.
“Who—ah—oh, yes! What I meant, Verbena, is that artists are peculiar. They get so intense about their work, and then when their paintings don’t sell and nobody even wants to look at them—” She tilted her dark eyebrows significantly.
Verbena smiled.
“I know who you’re thinking about. You’re thinking about the young man in the flat upstairs:”
“Mr. Teufel? Perhaps. He is an artist—and come to think, I don’t imagine he sells many paintings.”
“He doesn’t sell any,” Verbena corrected. “We were discussing him only yesterday at the Ladies’ Sewing and Bridge Club.”
“Oh?”
“Mrs. Abernathy’s husband knows all about him. He can’t pay his rent. He can’t pay for anything. He tried to get a loan from the bank, but Mr. Abernathy wouldn’t give him one because of course he has no security. Imagine him trying to put up some of his outlandish pictures as security! Mr. Abernathy said if Mr. Heckle, the grocer, wants to be silly and exchange food for those ridiculous daubs of his, let him. As for Mrs. Abernathy’s husband’s bank—”
“Poor Mr. Teufel.”
Tessa wagged her head and poured herself more tea.
“What I say is why doesn’t he go to work? Oh, Tessa, there’s another seagull on your sign.”
“Let him,” Tessa said recklessly. “What else are the dear ladies doing these days, Verbena?”
“Oh, they’re doing some marvelous things for the community, Tessa, Our bazaar alone made enough to plant flowers all along the boardwalk over the city dump and keep the Bird Fanciers going for another year at least.”
“Poor Mr. Teufel.” Evidently Tessa’s thoughts were jammed on an earlier track.
“Why do you keep saying that, Tessa?” Verbena found Tessa’s vagueness very irritating. What she had really hoped from this tea was to acquire some new tidbit to dispense at the card party tonight. “Surely you must know something about Mr. Teufel by this time, something the rest of us don’t. Something definite.”
“I never eavesdrop,” Tessa said.
“Of course not, but—” Verbena wiggled her cup impatiently.
“But I don’t have to with Mr. Teufel. He has a phonograph and he plays it very loudly at all hours. And you can hear every footstep up there, the ceiling is so thin.”
Verbena set her cup down and cocked an ear upwards. “I don’t hear a thing.”
“Mr. Teufel is sleeping.”
“’At three o’clock!”.
“Mr. Teufel always sleeps ’til four. I imagine he paints better at night, although I always thought artists preferred sunlight to artificial light.”
Verbena sniffed. “With the junk he paints I don’t know what difference it makes. All great gobs of nasty colors with no pictures to them at all…”
“Anyway I wish he’d paint in the daytime,” Tessa sighed. “I have to put a pillow over my head to get to sleep, with all that clumping around and that wild music.”
“Any visitors?” Verbena, leaned forward. “Any girl visitors?”
“Not that I know of. I doubt if poor Mr. Teufel has any visitors at all.”
“Oh.” Verbena lost her gleam. She stood up briskly. “Well, dear, I must run along home and feed Poo.”
“Your cat,” Tessa said, without relish. There was more chit-chat at the door, and out along the rococo veranda. Tessa watched her gossip-loving guest mince around the pools of water remaining in the sunken portions of the brick patio and destined for early refills. All at once came a great clatter of army surplus shoes over Tessa’s head, down the open stairs leading to the upper flat. Lean Mr. Teufel swooped past Verbena so rapidly that Verbena’s umbrella lost its moorings and went skittering and bobbing down the walk.
The artist’s gaunt face lifted in the semblance of a smile when he retrieved and handed it back to her. Verbena emitted an explosive little shriek and drew back, as if Mr. Teufel had been a springing cobra.
Mr. Teufel scowled and said, “Boo!”
Verbena fled.
Mr. Teufel looked at Tessa and grinned. Tessa smiled politely, then went in the shop and poured herself another drink from the earthen pot.
After a while, sitting there and watching the day gradually droop and vanish, Tessa became quite tiddly. The sun made a last lavish gesture just before it dipped behind the Farallons. Its burst of brilliance highlighted Alcatraz and the populous hills of San Francisco, and put color to the muddy masses of clouds that hemmed in the East Bay horizon. While this was everyday stuff to Tessa, she was not entirely oblivious to its spectacle, and now, when the brilliance was blotted out and the Bay presented the appearance of something shrouded and good as dead, she shivered. There were seagulls, many seagulls, wheeling ambiguously across the heavy sky. But they were like vultures, and the sound they made, like that last fling of sunlight, only intensified the melancholy assurance of death…
Tessa started thinking about Herb.
It was time to start thinking about him.
She poured herself another cup of sherry; from the earthen pot and let him take over her thoughts. He would anyway.
Thinking about her dead husband had its amusing aspects, when you came right down to it. Maybe that was why she allowed him to keep possession of her emotions and her thoughts now, even as he had while he was alive. Oh yes. Herb had been a greedy man that way. He had expected Tessa to give him first consideration in every instance, even in her most secret thoughts. In a way she had, too. And there was no reason to assume that Herb’s character had undergone any change now that he
was dead, even if his physical self had. No, Herb could never change. He would remain as cantankerous, as selfish, as vindictive as ever, until there was no more anything at all.
Of course she had loved him.
He was handsome, bold, amusing. He captured her fancy completely. It was later, years later, when these traits blossomed forth and enveloped her with what was apparently a studied desire to strangle her and crush her.
But Tessa didn’t crush easily. For all her flights of whimsy, Tessa was an intensely practical woman. So practical as to drive Herb insane with rage at times. She refused to accept surface excuses and reasons, dissecting each one to its very core. She saw into Herb as if he were made of plastic, and after a while that made him hate her. He couldn’t lie to her and foist off cheap excuses or third-class reasoning on her. She always saw what was underneath and indicated she did, in her calm sweet voice.
When his heart went bad—mainly from self-indulgence in spite of his doctor’s stern periodic admonishments—he blamed Tessa. She should have stopped him. How she could have done this, particularly with a self-willed individual like himself, was something Herb never bothered to consider. He had to blame somebody, besides himself, so he blamed Tessa. He took it out on her both in petty vindictiveness, and by a constant stream of ill-temper that would surely have crushed and destroyed a less valiant creature than wiry little Tessa.
He lost his handsomeness. The lines in his face which had formerly suggested swaggering boldness turned to visual evidences of mean suspicion and lurking sadism. He couldn’t work, so Tessa invested the little money he hadn’t squandered or needed for doctors in “YE OLDE GHOSTE SHOPPE.” She made it pay, too. Not much, to be sure, but enough to keep them independent, if she were very careful.
One thing association with Herb had done for Tessa—good or bad—it had given her a taste for sherry, even mediocre sherry. There were so many remembered times when it had proved a great solace. But after Herb became really ill, so ill that he could do nothing but sit in his chair and let Tessa wait on him hand and foot while he raged and bellowed about the condition of the world and about Tessa’s inadequacies, there was no more sherry. None for Herb. It would have killed him. None for her because Herb couldn’t have any. They couldn’t afford luxuries, to be sure, but a thimbleful of sherry now and then wouldn’t have made much difference. But Herb said no, and it was folly to cross him.
Herb was a dog in the manger in other ways, too. He didn’t want Tessa to take a stroll down the breakwater, or go to the movies, or have any friends. Every facet of her existence must belong to him.
Tessa wanted an occasional glass of sherry, she wanted to see Gregory Peck’s latest, she wanted to hear Verbena’s newest gossip. She panted to, very much. But Herb always provided logical (to him) reasons why she shouldn’t have these things. And it was so much easier to let him have his way. It was easier to stay home and wait on him and listen to his invalid grumblings, because if she didn’t Herb would surely make her pay for it—some way.
This insistence on revenge for disobedience was carried to fantastic lengths. Herb was very near-sighted, so near-sighted that he couldn’t even read any longer. But he seemed to develop an uncanny second-sight about everything Tessa did. He had to know everything that went on, every tiny little thing. He distrusted all her actions. He would accuse Tessa of stinting him on cream for his gruel. She was saving it for herself—or for somebody who would slip in later. Then he would proceed to take it out on her. Always he must have his revenge, even when the reason for it existed only in his imagination.
Little things, surely. And yet little horrors, piled one on top of the other, ad infinitum, can lead to desperation…
Tessa began to dream, and in all her dreams there was no Herb. He just wasn’t there. And being essentially a practical person her dreams began to lean toward reality. Herb was near-sighted. For this reason and for selfish reasons he insisted on having a hodge-podge collection of items on a large round table near his chair. Besides his heart medicine, there was salt and catsup and mustard and picture books and a kaleidoscope—and any number of other things.
One day when Herb picked up a vinegar bottle and started spooning vinegar into the water glass Tessa had brought for his medicine, Tessa’s dreams began to take definite shape. She knew about the other medicine bottle in the bathroom, the medicine which was not poison but would surely kill a person with a serious heart condition. And she knew just how to provoke Herb into waiting on himself when it came time for his medicine.
Tessa wouldn’t kill Herb. Oh, no. But she would make it convenient for him to kill himself.
The dangerous medicine bottle found its way onto Herb’s cluttered table. It became an interesting gamble to see just how long it would be before Herb drank some of that, believing it to be his own medicine. Tessa invented excuses for being out of the room at medicine time, then peeked between the dining room’ drapes behind Herb to see what happened. It was always a breathless moment. Then she would breathe a sigh of relief when Herb picked the good bottle. After several months the strained sigh of relief became just a sigh.
A year or so went by. It seemed longer. Tessa dreamed harder than ever. Not only would she be able to have her sherry again when Herb, was gone, but there would be more money to afford it. During this long period of waiting and dreaming Tessa determined that if anything happened she would never stint herself. She would go to bed tiddly from sherry every night. She would!
It happened finally and she did!
* * * *
Tessa put her cup down, regretfully, and prepared to shut up shop for the night. Humming snatches of old songs all mixed together, she took the “Open” sign out of the window, locked the shop door, and snapped off the light.
Outside the seagulls made patterns on the wind. The tide gushed in on the breakwater. Tessa’s driftwood sign creaked gently. Tiny drops of vagrant rain smeared the darkness.
Tessa found her way to bed by feeling the walls, the drapes, the familiar jumble of too much furniture. She went to sleep like a baby. There was nothing to prevent. No Herb, with his querulous rasp. No Mr. Teufel, with his wild phonograph music and his clumping. Mr. Teufel was out. And the contents of the earthen pot had made her all warm and cozy inside.
But that warmth wore off—and then something cold, something ice cold, entered the dark room. It was the room Tessa and Herb had shared for so many years. And how the coldness made her shiver and waken. She yawned and half sat up.
“Herb?” she called, after a long moment. “Is that you?”
There was no other sign—only the cold wind. But somehow she knew. All those years with him had given her a sixth sense where Herb was concerned. She could feel those muddy gray, half-blind eyes watching her as they had when he was alive. Crafty, suspicious, vindictive.
“Herb!” She was not afraid, no. But she was startled and uneasy. It wasn’t nice of Herb to come back like this. Her voice cut the darkness sharply. “I know you’re there, sitting in that same chair, just as you always did. Well? Why don’t you answer me?”
Still no answer.
All the same she knew he was there in that big ugly chair of his. She had meant to get rid of that chair right after the funeral, but somehow she hadn’t got to it.
“Herb Alder! I know you’re in this room! You might as well let me see you.” Her neck muscles twitched. She knew something strange was about to happen. It did happen. Even though this middle room was closed in so that there was no stray light from the outside at all she knew just where to look, and she was looking there. The chair began to glow. It was an untidy unrelated mass of phosphorescence, first, then it took shape, and became Herb. She could still see the chair behind him, it was as if he were etched on plastic.
“Took you long enough,” Tessa greeted him. “What are you up to? Oh, I see. You are back to spy on me, again. To keep track of everything I do, as you did before. Well, let me tell you, Herb. Last night I went to the movies. With Verbena. Yes, and
I’ve seen her nearly every day since you died. And I’ve been drinking sherry, too. Lots of sherry, Herb. Like you couldn’t have and wouldn’t let me have. How do you like that, Herb?”
The figure in the chair didn’t like it. It clouded up redly and elongated, as if to reach out for her.
Tessa began to laugh.
“Trying to frighten me, are you? Let me tell you this, Herb. You never did scare me, with all your yelling and snarling. You didn’t then and you don’t now.”
She paid no attention to the ghost’s feral gyrations. She had always wanted to tell Herb off. Now that he was dead she could. She flared up in a flame of righteous triumph.
“I put up with you a long time, Herb. With your childish tantrums and your petty suspicions. And your little revenge when you thought I was neglecting you or slighting you. Well, I got my share of revenge too! Do you know how, Herb? Haven’t they told you where you are?”
The ghostly figure rippled like so many phosphorescent sea-worms on a glassy night ocean.
“Surprise, surprise, Herb!” Tess chortled, nearly hysterical by now with this supreme adventure of telling Herb off. “It was I who killed you, Herb! It was I who put that bad medicine on your cluttered table. I had to wait a long time for you to pick that bottle. But the gamble kept me amused while I waited. What do you say to all that, Herb?”
Herb expressed himself by elongating almost to the ceiling. He made himself into a luminescent tower of rage. His lips moved and although no spoken words came out he seemed to be saying: I suspected as much. That’s why I came back. Now I know for certain and now…
“What can you do about it now, Herb?” Tessa taunted him. “What can you do?”
She fell back, rocking with laughter.
A faint wisp of light entered the room, a tenuous harbinger of daylight. A blast of freezing cold swept the room and just before Herb vanished, Tessa was sure she heard him rasp:
“I always have my revenge, Tessa. Make the most of your freedom, because you have only until tomorrow night…”