On an Odd Note Read online

  “Well?” I said.

  “Little Sato had been baptized, you know. He was a Christian, among other things. I don’t know if I mentioned it.”

  “No, you didn’t. Why?”

  “Why, this says: I was asleep with my wife. It was all a bad dream. Now I know that it was not a dream. God have mercy on poor Sato who must die. Hiroshima 1945. How can it be? Sato had a wife, and they lived somewhere in Hiroshima. . . . He was in the Jap navy—submarines—and he was on leave in August, 1945, when they dropped that damned thing which I wish to God they’d never thought of. I don’t understand this. There must be a mistake somewhere. Yet this is Sato all right. What do you make of it? This beats me. I suppose, of course, poor little Sato got it when we dropped that confounded atom bomb. But—”

  “I never was in favor of fiddling about with atoms,” I said, “it always seemed to me that there is a limit to what one ought to know. All those fantastic blasts and horrible disintegrations! One feels like the sorceror’s apprentice! You will observe, by the way, that this wretched Brighton Monster suffered from peculiar cancerous sores?”

  The Colonel said: “Poor Sato! I liked the little fellow. But my dear Kersh, I hate to think what I can’t help thinking. To die, that’s nothing. It’s easier to die than to live, once you get the hang of it. But this nasty business—it seems to indicate that you don’t actually die when you run into one of those damned things. That was Sato, without a doubt. But imagine it—just imagine it! I don’t believe I ever mentioned that I was married once? You go to sleep happily, and then . . . Poor little Sato! Flipped back two hundred years. Or it might be forward two hundred years . . . Of course the earth turns and space shifts. He might have found himself in the middle of the Sahara Desert, or at the South Pole, or in some place where they’d worship him like a god straight out of heaven. But Kersh, Kersh, think of the horror of it! The nightmare—you were asleep—that turns out to be no nightmare at all. You wake up, with a sigh of relief, and there is your nightmare still. The loneliest death imaginable! Can you wonder at poor Sato’s despair? A Jap will kill himself as soon as look at you. So he ran out and threw himself into the sea. . . . How cold it must have been for him in Brighton in November!”

  So, out of a salvage basket on the third floor of No. 93 Long Acre, London, W.C. 2 came the only evidence of a double death —the unique history of a man unhappily destined to be a victim of natural philosophy twice in two hundred years.

  Here is food for thought, but I do not like the thought it feeds.

  THE EXTRAORDINARILY HORRIBLE DUMMY

  An uneasy conviction tells me that this story is true, but I hate to believe it. It was told to me by Ecco, the ventriloquist, who occupied a room next to mine in Busto’s apartment house. I hope he lied. Or perhaps he was mad? The world is so full of liars and lunatics that one never knows what is true and what is false.

  All the same, if ever a man had a haunted look that man was Ecco. He was small and furtive. He had disturbing habits; five minutes of his company would have set your nerves on edge. For example, he would stop in the middle of a sentence, say Ssh! in a compelling whisper, look timorously over his shoulder and listen to something. The slightest noise made him jump. Like all Busto’s tenants, he had come down in the world. There had been a time when he topped bills and drew fifty pounds a week. Now, he lived by performing to theatre queues.

  And yet he was the best ventriloquist I have ever heard. His talent was uncanny. Repartee cracked back and forth without pause, and in two distinct voices. There were even people who swore that his dummy was no dummy, but a dwarf or a small boy with painted cheeks, trained in ventriloquial back-chat. But this was not true. No dummy was ever more palpably stuffed with sawdust. Ecco called it Micky; and his act, “Micky and Ecco.”

  All ventriloquists’ dummies are ugly, but I have yet to see one uglier than Micky. It had a home-made look. There was something disgustingly avid in the stare of its bulging blue eyes, the lids of which clicked as it winked; and an extraordinarily horrible ghoulishness in the smacking of its great, grinning, red wooden lips. Ecco carried Micky with him wherever he went, and even slept with it. You would have felt cold at the sight of Ecco, walking upstairs, holding Micky at arm’s length. The dummy was large and robust; the man was small and wraithlike; and in a bad light you would have thought: The dummy is leading the man!

  I said he lived in the room next to mine. But in London you may live and die in a room, and the man next door may never know. I should never have spoken to Ecco but for his habit of practicing ventriloquism by night. It was nerve-racking. At the best of times it was hard to find rest under Busto’s roof; but Ecco made nights hideous, really hideous. You know the shrill, false voice of the ventriloquist’s dummy? Micky’s voice was not like that. It was shrill, but querulous; thin, but real—not Ecco’s voice distorted, but a different voice. You would have sworn that there were two people quarreling. This man is good, I thought. Then: But this man is perfect! And at last, there crept into my mind this sickening idea: There are two men!

  In the dead of night, voices would break out:

  “Come on, try again!”

  “I can’t!”

  “You must—”

  “I want to go to sleep.”

  “Not yet; try again!”

  “I’m tired, I tell you; I can’t!”

  “And I say try again.”

  Then there would be peculiar singing noises, and at length Ecco’s voice would cry:

  “You devil! You devil! Let me alone, in the name of God!”

  One night, when this had gone on for three hours I went to Ecco’s door, and knocked. There was no answer. I opened the door. Ecco was sitting there, gray in the face, with Micky on his knee. “Yes?” he said. He did not look at me, but the great painted eyes of the dummy stared straight into mine.

  I said, “I don’t want to seem unreasonable, but this noise . . .”

  Ecco turned to the dummy and said, “We’re annoying the gentleman. Shall we stop?”

  Micky’s dead red lips snapped as he replied, “Yes. Put me to bed.”

  Ecco lifted him. The stuffed legs of the dummy flapped lifelessly as the man laid him on the divan and covered him with a blanket. He pressed a spring. Snap! the eyes closed. Ecco drew a deep breath and wiped sweat from his forehead.

  “Curious bedfellow,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Ecco. “But . . . please—” And he looked at Micky, frowned at me and laid a finger to his lips. “Ssh!” he whispered.

  “How about some coffee?” I suggested.

  He nodded. “Yes, my throat is very dry,” he said. I beckoned. That disgusting stuffed dummy seemed to charge the atmosphere with tension. He followed me on tiptoe and closed his door silently. As I boiled water on my gas-ring I watched him. From time to time he hunched his shoulders, raised his eyebrows and listened. Then, after a few minutes of silence, he said suddenly, “You think I’m mad.”

  “No,” I said, “not at all; only you seem remarkably devoted to that dummy of yours.”

  “I hate him,” said Ecco; and listened again.

  “Then why don’t you burn the thing?”

  “For God’s sake!” cried Ecco, and clasped a hand over my mouth. I was uneasy—it was the presence of this terribly nervous man that made me so. We drank our coffee, while I tried to make conversation.

  “You must be an extraordinarily fine ventriloquist,” I said.

  “Me? No, not very. My father, yes. He was great. You’ve heard of Professor Vox? Yes, well he was my father.”

  “Was he, indeed?”

  “He taught me all I know; and even now . . . I mean . . . without him, you understand—nothing! He was a genius. Me, I could never control the nerves of my face and throat. So you see, I was a great disappointment to him. He . . . well, you know; he could eat a beefsteak, while Micky, sitting at the same table, sang Je crois entendre encore. That was genius. He used to make me practice, day in and day out—Bee, Eff, Em, En, Pe, V
e, Doubleyou, without moving the lips. But I was no good. I couldn’t do it. I simply couldn’t. He used to give me hell. When I was a child, yes, my mother used to protect me a little. But afterward! Bruises—I was black with them. He was a terrible man. Everybody was afraid of him. You’re too young to remember: he looked like—well, look.”

  Ecco took out a wallet and extracted a photograph. It was brown and faded, but the features of the face were still vivid. Vox had a bad face; strong but evil—fat, swarthy, bearded and forbidding. His huge lips were pressed firmly together under a heavy black mustache, which grew right up to the sides of a massive flat nose. He had immense eyebrows, which ran together in the middle; and great, round, glittering eyes.

  “You can’t get the impression,” said Ecco, “but when he came out to the stage in a black cloak lined with red silk, he looked just like the devil. He took Micky with him wherever he went—they used to talk in public. But he was a great ventriloquist—the greatest ever. He used to say, ‘I’ll make a ventriloquist of you if it’s the last thing I ever do.’ I had to go with him wherever he went, all over the world; and stand in the wings and watch him; and go home with him at night and practice again—Bee, Eff, Em, En, Pe, Ve, Doubleyou—over and over again, sometimes till dawn. You’ll think I’m crazy.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Well . . . This went on and on, until—ssh—did you hear something?”

  “No, there was nothing. Go on.”

  “One night I . . . I mean, there was an accident. I—he fell down the elevator shaft in the Hotel Dordogne, in Marseilles. Somebody left the gate open. He was killed.” Ecco wiped sweat from his face. “And that night I slept well, for the first time in my life. I was twenty years old then. I went to sleep, and slept well. And then I had a horrible dream. He was back again, see? Only not he, in the flesh; but only his voice. And he was saying: ‘Get up, get up and try again, damn you; get up I say—I’ll make a ventriloquist of you if it’s the last thing I ever do. Wake up!’

  “I woke up. You will think I’m mad.

  “I swear. I still heard the voice; and it was coming from . . .”

  Ecco paused and gulped.

  I said, “Micky?” He nodded. There was a pause; then I said, “Well?”

  “That’s about all,” he said. “It was coming from Micky. It has been going on ever since; day and night. He won’t let me alone. It isn’t I who makes Micky talk. Micky makes me talk. He makes me practice still . . . day and night. I daren’t leave him. He might tell the . . . he might . . . oh God; anyway, I can’t leave him . . . I can’t.”

  I thought, This poor man is undoubtedly mad. He has got the habit of talking to himself, and he thinks—

  At that moment I heard a voice; a little, thin, querulous, mocking voice, which seemed to come from Ecco’s room. It said:

  “Ecco!”

  Ecco leaped up, gibbering with fright. “There!” he said. “There he is again. I must go. Forgive me. I’m not mad; not really mad. I must—”

  He ran out. I heard his door open and close. Then there came again the sound of conversation, and once I thought I heard Ecco’s voice, shaking with sobs, saying: Bee, Eff, Em, En, Pe, Ve, Doubleyou . . .

  He is crazy, I thought; yes, the man must be crazy . . . And before, he was throwing his voice . . . calling himself . . .

  But it took me two hours to convince myself of that; and I left the light burning all night, and I swear to you that I have never been more glad to see the dawn.

  FANTASY OF A HUNTED MAN

  In Kentucky, in the year 1918, there lived a ferocious old man who was known as the Major. I suppose he was of the kind that carves out empires and breaks open new territories. He was indomitable, wiry, strong as steel in spite of his sixty years, and devoid of fear. An admirable, though far from lovable man, he lived alone, deeply respected and half feared by everybody who knew him. He was something of a madman, terrifying in his fanatical devotion to anything he regarded as his duty. The Major belonged to the hard old days when men, single-handed, fought wildernesses and beat them tame.

  Into his battered, lion-like head, there had crept the craziness of race-hate. He loathed foreigners, and abhorred Negroes, and was always to be found in the forefront of any demonstration against the unhappy black men of Kentucky—a figure of terror, with his rifle, and his great mustache which curved down like a sharp sickle, and his huge and glaring blue eyes.

  That kind of fanaticism seems to bubble dangerously near the surface of the Deep South. A word cracks the skin over it, and lets loose an eruption of murder and cruelty.

  One day, a hysterical woman said that she had been accosted by a Negro named Prosper. He had, in fact, asked her some question pertaining to firewood; but she had run, screaming for help. (That happens frequently.) She ran, I say, screaming. The drowsy little town seemed to start and blink. The Negroes knew what that meant and they trembled. Somebody passed a word to Prosper. He knew that innocence was no argument: he was a Negro black as night and therefore damned before judgment. He took to the woods, flying from what he knew must come.

  A great mutter rose. Men clustered, tense and angry. Mouths twitched up in snarls. Beware of the undercurrent of blood-lust that crawls in the depths of men! Somebody yelled, “Are we going to let that nigra get away with this?” A hundred other voices roared: “No!” The mutter of the mob became a howl, like that of mad dogs. Guns came down from hooks. Night had fallen. Torches flared. Two great bloodhounds, straining at their leashes, snuffled on the trail of Prosper. The men followed the dogs. The mob was out for blood and torture. And the Major led them, with a gun loaded with buckshot under his arm.

  But Prosper had a long start and he knew the woods. The mob hunted all night long and far into the next day. Then they became exhausted, and paused. But not the Major. He was drunk with hate. When everybody rested, he went on alone. He plunged into the depths of the wood. His long legs had the loping stride of a hunting wolf. The trees covered him. He disappeared.

  And two days later he appeared again, and it seemed that he had gone quite mad. He was afraid! He cringed. He staggered toward some people who were watching him, and said, “I didn’t do it! I never done nothing! I’m a harmless old nigger! Don’t hurt me, white folks! Please don’t hurt me!”

  Then he fell into a sleep, so deep that it was almost a death. And when he awoke, twelve hours afterward, he was the Major again . . . but changed. He was quiet and gentle. He blinked uncertainly—he who had never been uncertain of anything, right or wrong, in sixty years of life—he who had never uttered a kind word in living memory. The Major, the nigger-hater, the lynch-lawyer, the whipper, the killer—the Major was seen gently patting the head of a terrified little black boy who stood, paralyzed with fear under the unexpected caress.

  What had happened to him in that dark forest?

  One day he told the story:

  When the others had rested he had gone on, and on, until he could walk no longer. His body was exhausted, but not his hate. He determined to rest a little and then continue his hunt for the vanished Negro Prosper. And as he sat resting, sleep came down on him like a deadfall, and he lay among the leaves and snored.

  But it was no ordinary sleep. It was a strange kind of sick coma in which the Major found himself. He was caught in the meshes of a dark and nightmarish dream, like a bird in a net. He knew that he was dreaming and struggled to awake, but could not. And then he found himself floating away . . . and there was a blank, a hiatus, a timeless silence.

  He awoke. He found himself crouching in a thicket, in a part of the wood which he did not know. And his heart was thumping in his breast, and he was terrified, disgustingly terrified of something that was following him. The Major was bewildered. He had never known fear, and now he was afraid. He somehow knew that he was going to a hollow beyond the thicket. Something was urging him there. He knew, also, that dawn was at hand, and he dreaded the dawn . . . and yet he also dreaded the dark.

  He had lost his rifle. H
is clothes seemed to have been torn to shreds by thorns. His face was swollen where branches had snapped back at him in his headlong rush through the wood.

  He crawled on, footsore and exhausted. Prosper!—he had to find Prosper the Negro and drag him back to be slaughtered by the mob. But of what was he afraid? He did not know. The Major went on. He got out of the thicket. There, sure enough, dimly outlined in the starlight, lay a hut. He went toward it. It was a mere ruin. Those who had lived there had either died or gone away. It was empty.

  He went in. He shouted, “Anybody here?”—and was surprised to hear the husky rasp of his voice. His throat was dry. He felt ill and weak . . . and still frightened. His mind revolted against the trembling of his limbs. His body was scared and wanted to hide. As he stood in the hut, shaking like a man in an ague, the first glimmer of day showed holes in his boots “. . . I must have been walking in black mud . . .” Then he saw his hands. They were black and wrinkled, with whitish nails and pink palms—Negro’s hands.

  Sick with anguish, the Major leaped up. There was a fragment of broken mirror. He looked at his reflection.

  The terrified face of Prosper the Negro looked back at him.

  He does not know how long he stood there, staring. He, the Major, was in the body of Prosper, the black fugitive. Some strange flash of intuition told him that somehow . . . God knew how . . . while he lay in his exhausted trance, and while Prosper also lay in a coma of weariness and misery . . . somehow their souls in sleep had met and changed places . . .

  He heard, in the remote distance, a baying of bloodhounds.

  The spirit of the Major turned to give battle. But the body of Prosper fainted with horror.

  And it must have been exactly at that moment that the body of the Major, gibbering in the voice of Prosper, came staggering through the trees toward the lynch mob and begged for mercy, so that they took him home while the Negro escaped.