Prelude to a Certain Midnight

by Gerald Kersh

  —Graham Strindberg!

  Ah-ah! Keep hold of yourself, Asta I… 20… 21… 22… 23… 24… 25… 26… 27… (Be calm, calm, calm)… 28… 29…

  —Or little Mr Scripture, why not?

  No. Sleep, sleep, Asta, you must sleep!… 30… 31… 32… 33… 34… 35… 36…

  The world spun itself into a smoke ring, and this ring spinning slower and growing greyer slid into the shape of a stretched-out heart; and this stretched-out heart pushed a pale tendril into a cold black wind which took hold of the whole and sucked it away into nothingness, and then Asta was walking on something that felt like cotton. She was in a street. The houses were nightmarishly constructed of whorls and coils of creeping smoke. Amorphous, strangely flabby-looking clouds, or lumps, of this smoke pushed out tentacles. They writhed and heaved themselves into unimagined squid-like forms.

  The belly of one floating vaporous octopus cracked open and disclosed four vacant black eyes… and the eyes became windows, and the tentacles, moving like the hands of a Javanese dancer, described the structure of a disintegrating house, an abandoned, crumbling house that danced and quivered like a mirage. But this mirage, in this desert of mist, was not born of light but of darkness; and not of heat, because it was deadly cold.

  Asta was afraid. She wanted to go away, but she had to go on. As she went, she heard a secretive whisper, and she knew that if she looked back she would see that the street had closed behind her. But she dared not look back. Yet she knew that the dead house with doric columns on the left and the ghostly house on the right with the Byzantine dome that palpitated as if it were alive had slid into each other and were following her. She knew that she was going to a certain house, ten paces down this hellish street. She struggled with all her might to stand still, but she was compelled to go on. The squat, four-eyed, fantastic houses slipped together behind her, cold and pale and quiet as jelly, so that she knew that if she turned – if she could turn – she would find herself stuck for ever in a clammy wall of congealed mist that had the power to form disgusting shapes. There was no turning. And here was the House.

  It was a sealed, silent house, solid in comparison with those shifty, house-shaped vapours that had crept behind her. Yet it looked sick, sick and bad. The spiked area-railings were rotten brown teeth. The basement was a mouth. The windows were veiled eyes under cataracts of fog. She had to go to the door and knock. She struggled, but something irresistible – something flabby and cold in the small of her back impelled her forward.

  There loomed the great grey door, blistered with age and dampness. There hung the iron door-knocker, red with rust. Behind her were gathered all the powers of darkness. They were whispering. They were closing in, jostling her. Something dead yet alive, a gelatinous something that had the colourlessness and the coldness of twilight in deep water wrapped itself around her right hand.

  This Thing, so cold and so pale, palpitated like the heart of a bird, but mixed with the palpitation there was a sort of twitching and squirming.

  She lifted the knocker and let it fall. As the reverberations and the echoes died, the door opened and something she could not see reached out and dragged her inside and the door slammed -

  —And she awoke with a scream of terror, in her bedroom. The fire was not yet out. Something was rattling on the floor. Asta cried: “Who is it?” and switched on the light. It was a little bedside table rolling itself still on the carpet in the debris of a glass cigarette-box. She must have struck out and knocked it down.

  Laughing and crying with relief, Asta got up, put on a warm dressing-gown, and made herself a cup of tea. She said to herself sturdily that there was no use trying to sleep again. In point of fact, she was afraid to sleep again.

  She wandered about the house and waited for the dawn, brooding…

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Twenty-Six

  Milton Catt. Here, potentially, was anything in the world. He was a beautiful man, a masculine man, a man at whom every woman looked twice. He had the head and the body of an Apollo – a bronze Apollo exquisitely finished about the head in coppery gold. Imagine a shy, withdrawn, discontented, and slightly sullen Apollo. He inspired in women a devouring passion; they felt that in his embrace they might experience the ecstasies of those women of the Ancients that had in unimaginable orgasms slaked the brief lusts of Olympus. Milton Catt was a physical culturist. He strove with the gods: he fought the earth – he wrestled with the law of gravity. He was a weight-lifter. Twisting himself into strange attitudes he could get tremendous weights away from the ground by means of the Dead Lift, the Snatch, and the Bent Press. He never travelled half a mile without a pair of Patent Spring Crusher Grips in his trouser pockets, and as he walked he squeezed them rhythmically, breathing in and holding his breath until he could hold it no more and then letting it out in a fine trickle – all the time squeezing and slowly relaxing the grip of his hands on his Patent Springs. It was common knowledge that when he was at home, Catt worked hard stretching a springy contraption called a Buster. He stretched and relaxed, stretched and relaxed, stretched and relaxed, building and building his body.

  Now he had a sun-ray lamp. Recently he had married an elderly woman of independent means, the widow of a crockery manufacturer named Woodware, a half-sober lady with feverish eyes and tremendous eyebrows, at least thirty years older than himself. She had bought him the lamp. He owed his tan to her. Since their marriage, the eyes of the widow Woodware had grown even more feverish. Several widows, spinsters, and unhappy wives in Asta’s neighbourhood – lifting the corners of their mouths and exchanging glances – thought that they could guess why. They recognized frustration when they saw it.

  Catt, despite his enormous muscles, was a humanitarian. He shuddered at the thought of slaughtered beasts, yet he ate steak because he believed that steak was necessary for the proper development of the Apollonian body. He loved lambs, and he loved lamb chops. He loathed offal on the butcher’s slab; yet he was unable to resist fried liver or grilled kidneys. He adored Woman, but was girl-shy. He had four albums of photographs of himself illustrating the development of his muscles. What did he want muscles for? To exhibit. But why?

  Catt, surely, thought Asta, might find himself involved, one foggy afternoon, in a certain sort of crime. People had expected too much of this young man. He had been embraced as a bronze god and sent away with contemptuous smiles – less than a man. Could it be that Milton Catt, desiring to prove himself to himself, had chosen a certain moment to demonstrate himself to himself, using the body of a female child who expected nothing?

  Asta sipped her tea.

  How about little Mr Scripture? He was a nobody, indescribable. For a living he worked as an accountant and seldom went out without his wife, Oonagh, who was somewhat younger than himself.

  He always wore glasses, never wore a hat, was getting bald, and had a noticeably delicate way of politely insinuating himself into your company. There seemed to be no harm in the little man.

  But Oonagh was a good deal taller than her husband; she went in for conspicuous hats, and spoke in an affected way. Winter and summer she wore some sort of fur – in the winter a mink-marmot coat somewhat the worse for wear – in the summer the pieced-together bits of some sliced-up mink, real mink in a strip about three inches wide and two feet long. Oonagh publicly despised her husband. She laughed at the things he said. When he wanted to tell a story, her great glottal laugh sucked it away like a rusty pump, leaving the poor little man high and dry. It was easy to see that she dominated him – hated him, yet had no idea of how to live without him. As for her husband, a schoolgirl might perceive that she was a burden to him but that he needed her, as a buzzer needs a battery. Or he was afraid of her.

  Such a man, it might be argued, would look for some way to make the most of his manhood. He might do evil in order to keep it locked up in his heart – to be able to smile to himself occasionally, between midnight and dawn.

  “You think I’m nobody,�
�� he would say, inside himself. “I am not nobody. I’m dangerous, but you’ll never know.”

  Asta remembered that a little man not unlike Mr Scripture had been convicted of firing ricks not far from where she had lived thirty years before. He was a tailor with a club-foot, appropriately nicknamed ‘Rabbits’; he really did look remarkably like a rabbit escaped from a snare, hopping and lamely bobbing, twitching its poor little nose. A convicted poacher had been suspected, but at the last moment Rabbits came forward with the pride of hell in his eyes and the terror of the magistrate in his quavering voice, and confessed, offering incontrovertible evidence against himself. Asked why he had put a match to three haystacks, Rabbits had replied: “Because I wanted to.”

  Rabbits had been married to a big, noisy wife – like Crippen, or like Scripture. Mr Scripture might easily have killed Sonia Sabbatani. Asta could see the little man, prim and respectable, coming home an hour or two late on a foggy afternoon. Out comes Oonagh, sloppy in a sweaty old rayon dressing-gown, stuffing back into place a pale, pear-shaped breast, tightening her girdle, at the same time screaming: “Where have you been?” Delayed by the fog, Oonagh dear. “ – And I suppose you expect me to sit and wait for you? Open yourself a tin of salmon, my Lord-and-Master, and bring me up a cup of tea when you’ve finished. And mind you wash the plate. I’ve got a pain. I’m lying down. You and your Fog! Ach, you shrimp!”

  And Mr Scripture with a couple of words of cringing acquiescence goes to the kitchen and puts on the kettle… and smiles at the dirty dishes. The kettle sings and bubbles; and so does his heart…

  Why not?

  Or why not Graham Strindberg? He was a plunger into strange depths. He believed that there was a God, and that there was a Devil. But not knowing exactly how things stood he did not like to commit himself. Graham Strindberg saw everything from every viewpoint, all at the same time; and he saw himself as a self-supporting state, beautifully mountainous, elegantly painted with sunsets, traditionally neutral. He was a little Switzerland in an embattled universe. Equally protected, the agents of heaven and of hell sunned themselves by the placid lakes of his retirement. He was neutral territory, where the saints and the demons were all one, as long as they did not assert themselves by daylight.

  Yet what queer contracts might be mace under the blanket of the dark?

  Good is a gentleman; Evil is a cad – a gentleman gone wrong. Good is a dog; Evil is a fox. Good, as a gentleman, tries to think well of the watchful enemy; but Evil knows all the tricks.

  Given a certain midnight (thought Asta), such neutral territory might find itself possessed by the Powers of Evil. Shame and remorse might come with the daylight… but a strangled child would still be lying with a blackened face in a rotting house…

  Impossible, impossible! cried the daytime mind of Asta Thundersley. Why impossible? asked the scavenging intelligence of the dark. What has he done that is good? What has he done that is evil? He can fly into a rage. To which Side Of The Frontier does his anger belong?

  Asta shook her head. Rain was falling: dawn was far away. She made herself some tea. The kitchen was warm: the stove was a good one – it never went out, and one dirty little shovelful of coke kept its fire alive for a day and a night. This was a comforting thought. So much kindly warmth out of a handful of slaggy cinders! Putting her elbows on the table she fitted her resolute chin into the cup of her joined hands. She was calmer now, and drowsy; almost at peace.

  If Asta had closed her eyes then she might have fallen asleep; but she opened them and saw, on the lowest rack of the dresser, a large oval dish, biscuit-coloured and patterned in high relief. This dish had not been used upstairs for many years. The pattern crept in and out around a lobster.

  Mothmar! said Asta, starting up. The body of the lobster resembled Mothmar’s nose, and the extended claws his eyebrows. Mothmar Acord had a baked, glazed, pitted face – a dish-shaped face, discoloured by oriental suns and high fevers, and distorted by unholy passions. The oval dish might have been Mothmar’s head on a pillow – only the mouth was not there. His mouth was difficult to describe and impossible to forget. The upper lip was a Cupid’s bow: the lower was sucked away so that it radiated wrinkles like the ribs of a fan. Under heavy brows like frayed packing-string, his murderous little blue eyes stared you out of countenance and then withdrew into spider webs of wrinkles while the mouth smiled downwards. He had lived most of his life in the tropics; drank soberly for hours, and then suddenly got drunk and pinched you viciously, always smiling. Mothmar had the air of a man gone rotten without ripening, in too much sunshine – the kind of sunshine from which a man tries to hide, and so goes yellow and decays.

  Why not Mothmar Acord? Why not?

  But if it comes to the matter of that, why not Sinclair Wensday? There was a pleasant fellow, tall and popular, well-spoken, well-mannered, generous, and good-looking in that tired, dissipated way which makes women interested. Sometimes he was gloomy: sometimes he was hilarious – it was whispered that Sinclair Wensday took drugs – he had what they call a ‘cocaine personality’. Nothing was proved. It was known that he had had love affairs with two or three girls of the neighbourhood. Men wondered how Sinclair Wensday could have anything to do with anyone but his wife, Avril, who was extremely beautiful. Women wondered how Avril could have anything to do with any man but Sinclair, who, they were agreed, was terribly attractive. He looked like Galahad gone to the devil. When she was sullen and quiet Avril might have sat to a painter of biblical pictures: she was a martyr with dull red hair and half-closed eyes, seeing Paradise between the bars of black lashes. Then, when she smiled – which was seldom – she looked like a whore. Everybody knew that Avril and her husband loved each other. Yet they could not live together – they separated for ever about four times a year. Sinclair Wensday would come into the Bar Bacchus with wild eyes, his collar unbuttoned, and a drying scratch on his cheek. He would look left and right with desperate expectation; then lose a couple of inches of stature as he sank into himself at the bar. “Well, this is it,” he would say, gulping liquor, “once and for all, this is it…”

  Soon he would vomit unassimilated miseries. Avril slept with this one, Avril slept with that one, Avril went to bed with the other one… but he loved her, loved her!

  At the same time, in the Firedrake two streets away, Avril would be rolling a sleeve to show a bruise, or pointing to a black eye and sobbing: “This is it. Definitely, this is it.” And she would describe how Sinclair slunk out to make love to half the women in town.

  In a week they would be together again in the Bar Bacchus, squeezing hands half in love and half in loathing, exchanging glances and sighs, and snarls.

  Who could say how such savage love might end? It was nothing but hate and lust, thirst for power and the desire to be hurt and to hurt! Why not Sinclair Wensday?

  Asta sighed in the middle of a yawn, or yawned in the middle of a sigh; whispered “Murderers, murderers,” and fell asleep.

  Mrs Kipling came down at half-past seven next morning and saw her bent over the table with her stubborn forehead in the crook of her left arm. An end of her grizzled hair was floating in a cup of cold tea, and her right hand clutched a teaspoon.

  “Tea, Kipling!” shouted Asta, starting up.

  Mrs Kipling screamed: she had thought – almost hoped – that Asta was dead.

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Twenty-Seven

  At eight o’clock the first post came. The postman had to ring: one of the envelopes was too bulky to pass through the slot of the letter-box. It came from Schiff, and was stuffed with samples of carnival novelties; paper hats, coloured streamers, coiled toys designed to stretch out squeaking and tickle your neighbour, uninflated rubber balloons of unconventional patterns, red cardboard noses, masks, balls of pith for throwing at people, and all kinds of amusing invitation-cards. Near the bottom of the second page Schiff had written: “… To be for the present unhappy in the position to not on account of certain circums
tances over which I have no control be, as I ordinarily would, in a position to gladly and with my hand on my heart as one friend to another offer you free of charge my services, gives me grief and unhappiness. My Formule I give freely and hope to, in happier circumstances over which I trust I shall have the fullest control, give more as it is in my nature to ordinarily do. I at, however, the present sad moment, am by the circumstances with grief compelled to ask Consultant Fee £5.0.0. (Five Pounds Exactly.) The Formule, which I baptize in the name of BATTLE AXE, is as research has made clear a psychic laxative and brain-cathartic of the first order. Put on the Market it could not fail to succeed, in which case I have a cheaper formula almost equally as good as the one that I have with all possible admiration and respect pinned to this note…”

  The Formule, on Page Three, was as follows:

  THE FORMULE

  According to Quantity, in the Following Proportion

  Take 1 Bot. ORANGE CURAÇAO

  1 Bot. VERY DRY GIN

  1 Bot. MANDARIN

  1⁄4 Bot. BRANDY

  1⁄4 Bot. ABRICOTINE

  1⁄8 Bot. COINTREAU

  A Dash of ORANGE BITTERS.

  Mix the above very thoroughly.

  Now, squeeze out and carefully strain the juice of 24 fresh oranges. Mix this juice with the above Mixture, very thoroughly. Put in ice-box and freeze very cold.

  WHEN READY TO SERVE:

  Fill a large tumbler 5⁄8 (five eighths) full with the Mixture as above.

  Almost fill your tumbler then with Champagne.

  It need not be Vintage Champagne.

  Add a slice of orange, a slice of fresh peach, a finely-cut curl of orange-peel.

  Serve Bitterly Cold.

  If the Formule is preferred weaker, dilute with Champagne.

  I recommend ROUSPETEUR FRERES, which I can get for you at not disadvantageous prices. Many people prefer it weaker. It is argued that the Formule is better in the following proportions: