Nightshade and Damnations (8 page)

“Nothing can be done. I’m sorry,” said the vet.

Busto rebuttoned his waistcoat. “So what you wanna do? Killum?”

“It’s the only merciful thing
to
do.”

“How mucha dat cost?”

“Mmmmm, five shillings.”

“But make ’im oright, dat aina possible?”

“Quite impossible.”

“Not for no money?”

“Not for all the money in the world.”

“Hooh! Well, what you want?”

“For my visit? Oh, well, I’ll say half a crown.”

“Go ’way,” said Busto, poking half a crown at him.

“The dog will only suffer if you let him live on like this. I really——”

“I give-a you money for cure. For killum? No.”

“I’ll do it for nothing, then. I can’t see the dog suffering——”

“You go ’way. Dissa
my
dog, hah?
I
killum! You go ’way, hah?” He approached the vet with such menace that the poor man backed out of the room. Busto poured another cup of red Lisbon, and drained it at once. “You!” he shouted to me, “Drink! . . . You, Mick! Drink!”

The wizened man helped himself to wine. Busto fumbled under one of the pillows on the bed, very gently in order not to disturb the dog, and dragged out a huge old French revolver.

“Hey!” I said. “What are you going to do?”

“Killum,” said Busto. He patted the dog’s head; then, with a set face, stooped and put the muzzle of the revolver to Ouif’s ear. With clenched teeth and contracted stomach-muscles, I waited for the explosion. But Busto lowered his weapon; thought for a moment, rose and swung round, all in the same movement, confronting the lithograph of Mona Lisa.

“Twenna-five quid ada Convent!” he shouted.

Mona Lisa still smiled inscrutably.

“Fifty!” cried Busto. He returned to the table, poured three more drinks, and emptied another cup. Nobody spoke. Fifteen minutes passed. Ouif, brought back to consciousness by pain, began to whine.

“No good,” said Busto. He clenched his teeth and again aimed at the dog’s head. “Gooda dog, hah? Lil Ouif, hmm?”

He pressed the trigger. There was a sharp click, nothing more. The revolver had misfired. The dog whined louder.

“I knoo a bloke,” said Mick, “a bloke what made money during the War aht o’ profiteerin’ on grub. Done everybody aht of everyfink, ’e did. So ’
e
’as to live; this ’ere dawg ’as to die.”

The walls of the room seemed to be undulating in a pale mist; the wine burned my throat. Busto opened a third bottle, drank, and returned to the bed.

“You look aht you don’t spoil that there piller,” said Mick, “if you get what I mean.”

I shut my eyes tight. Out of a rickety, vinous darkness, there came again the brief click of the hammer on the second cartridge.

“Now, agen,” said Mick.

Click
. . . .
click
. . . .

“For God’s sake call that vet back, and let him—”

“You minda you biz-ness, hah?”

“It’s ’is dawg. ’E’s got a right to kill ’is own dawg, ain’t ’e? Provided ’e ain’t cruel. Nah, go easy, Busto, go easy——”

I hunched myself together, with closed eyes.

Click
, went the revolver.

“Last cartridge always goes orf,” said Mick. “Try once agen. ’Old yer gun low-
er
. . . . Nah,
squeeeeeeze
yer trigger——”

I pushed my fingers into my ears and tensed every muscle. The wine had put a raw edge on my sensibilities. I shut my eyes again and waited. I heard nothing but the pulsing of blood in my head. My fingers in my ears felt cold. I thought of the revolver-muzzle, and shuddered. Time stopped. The room spun like a top about me and the red Lisbon wine, the lunatic’s broth, drummed in my head like a boxer with a punching-ball—
Ta
-
ta
-
ta
,
ta
-
ta
-
ta
,
ta
-
ta
-
ta
.

I opened my eyes. Busto was still kneeling by the bed. The revolver, still unfired, remained poised in his hand; but Ouif had ceased to whimper. He lay motionless, the petrified ruins of a dog.

“Anyway ’e die,” said Busto.

“Of ’is own accord,” said Mick. “Bleedn war-profiteers is still alive. So ’e ’as to die, if yer see what I mean.”

“Some people complain,” I said, “because men die and dogs go on living.”

Busto made an unpleasant noise, with his tongue between his lips: “
Pthut!
Men is rubbish. Dogs is good.”

He drank the last of the wine. Then, pensively raising the revolver, he cocked it and let the hammer fall. The last cartridge exploded with the crash of a cannon; the big bullet smacked into the ceiling, bringing down an avalanche of plaster; the revolver, loosely held, was plucked out of Busto’s hand by the recoil and fell with a tremendous clatter and jingle of broken crockery among the teacups. For a moment we all sat still, stunned with shock. The clean piercing smell of burnt gunpowder cut through the close atmosphere of the underground bedroom. Busto jumped to his feet, kicked over the table, jerked his elbows sideways in an indescribably violent gesture and, raising his fists to the ceiling, yelled:

“Ah, you! Death! Greedy pig! Wasn’t you a-belly full yet?”

Then he grew calm. He pointed to the body of Ouif and said to Mick: “Chucka disaway.”

“Where?”

“Dussbin.”

“Wot, ain’t yer goin’ to
bury
’im?”

“Whagood dat do?” Busto turned to me, and made a familiar gesture. Raising his eyebrows and sticking out his chin, he pointed with the index finger of his left hand to the palm of his right, and uttered one sound:

“Hah?”

I remembered; paid him my rent, nine shillings and sixpence, and went up the creaking stairs to bed.

I should say, I suppose, that there was a great deal of good in Pio Busto—that a man who could love his dog must have something fine and generous somewhere in his soul. It may be so, but I doubt it. I said I feared him. That was because he was my landlord, and I had no money and knew that if I failed to pay my rent on Saturday I should be in the street on Sunday as surely as dawn follows night. How I detested him for his avarice, his greed, his little meannesses with soap, paint, and matches! Yet I admit that I felt a queer qualm of pity for him—that grimy, grasping, hateful little man—when he gave away cups of lizzie wine that night in the wash-house when the little dog Ouif lay dying in his bed. I don’t know . . . there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armor, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.

I have met many men who inspired me with much more loathing than Busto, several of whom passed as jolly good fellows. It is terrible to think that, after the worst man you know, there must always be somebody still worse.

Then who is the last man?

The same applies to places. The insects at Busto’s drove me mad. But, say I had been at Fort Flea? You will not have heard the story of Fort Flea, for it was hushed up. I got it from a man who learned the facts through an account written by a Mr. de Pereyra, who knew the commanding officer. It went into the official reports under the heading of
Fuerte di Pulce
, I think.

During the Spanish campaign in North Africa, in the latter years of the Great War, a company of Spanish soldiers occupied a fort. There was the merest handful of Spaniards, surrounded by at least two thousand Kabyles. Yet the tribesmen retreated and let them take the fort. Later, a Kabyle, carrying a flag of truce, approached the soldiers and, screaming with laughter, cried: “Scratch! Scratch! Scratch!” They didn’t know what he meant, but they found out before the day was over.

The doctor, who had been attending two men who had been wounded, came to the captain and, in a trembling voice, asked him to come to the improvised hospital. “Look,” he said. The wounded men were black with fleas—millions of fleas, attracted by the smell of fresh blood. They were coming in dense clouds, even rising out of the earth
—
countless trillions of fleas, which had their origins in a vast sewage-ditch which, for centuries, had received the filth of the town. They were mad with hunger; attacked everybody, swarming inches deep; drew points of blood from every man; killed the wounded, devitalized the rest, made eating impossible by pouring into the food as soon as it was uncovered, prevented sleep, made life intolerable. And nothing could be done. The Spaniards had the strictest orders to hold their position. A desperate dispatch was rushed to the general—General Sanjurjo, I believe—who sent a scathing reply. What kind of men were these, he wondered, who could let themselves be driven back by the commonest of vermin? So at last, when reinforcements arrived, there were only twelve men left, all wrecks. The Kabyles hadn’t attacked: they had stood by, enjoying the fun. The rest of the men had been eaten alive; nibbled to death.

And I complained of the polite little insects in the bedrooms at Busto’s.

THE APE AND THE MYSTERY

W
hile
the young duke had been talking, the aged Leonardo had been drawing diagrams with a silver point on a yellow tablet. At last the duke said: “You have not been listening to me.”

“I beg your pardon, Magnificence. There was no need. Everything is clear. Your water down there near Abruzzi is turbid and full of bad things, evil humors. Cleanse it, and this flux will pass.”

“What,” said the duke, “I must wash my water?”

“You must wash your water,” said Leonardo.

The young duke stared at him, but he continued still drawing on his tablet: “You must wash your water. Tell your coopers to make a barrel, a vast barrel, as large as this hall, and as high. Now in this barrel you must lay first, clean sand to the height of a man. Then charcoal to the height of a man. Above this, to the height of a man, gravel. Then, to the top, small stones. Now down here, where the sand is, there must be a pipe. The bottom of this great cask will incline at a certain angle. The pipe will be about as large as a man’s arm, but a plate of copper, or brass, suitably perforated, will cover the end embedded in the sand and will be further protected by a perforated case so that it may be withdrawn, if choked with sand, and replaced without considerable loss of pure water.”

“What pure water?” asked the young duke.

“The pure water of Abruzzi, Magnificence. It will pour in foul at the top and come out clean at the bottom. These fluxes are born of the turbidity of the water.”

“It is true that our water is far from clear.”

“The purer the water, the smaller the flux. Now your water poured in at the top will purify itself in its downward descent. The greater pebbles will catch the larger particles floating in it. The smaller pebbles will take, in their closer cohesion, the lesser particles. The gravel will retain what the little pebbles let pass. The charcoal will arrest still tinier pollutions, so that at last the water—having completely purged itself in the lowest layer of sand—will come out pure and sweet. Oxen, or men (whichever you have most o
f
) may pump the water by day and by night into my filter. Even your black pond water, poured in here, would come out clear as crystal.”

“I
will
do that,” said the young duke, with enthusiasm. “The coopers shall go to work, the rogues. This moment!”

“Not so fast, Magnificence. Let us consider. Where is the cooper that could make such a cask? Where is the tree that could yield such a stave for such a cask? Big pebbles, little pebbles, gravel, charcoal, sand. . . . Yes, reinforce it at the bottom and construct it in the form of a truncated cone. Still, it crushes itself and bursts itself asunder by its own weight. No, Magnificence. Stone is the word. This must be made of stone. And”—said Leonardo, smearing away a design on his tablet and replacing it with another—“between every laye
r
, a grill. To every grill, certain doors. Bronze doors. The grills, also, should be of bronze. As for the pipes—they had better be bronze. A valve to control the flow of the water, a brass valve. Below, a tank. Yes, I have it! We erect this upon . . . let me see . . . fourteen stone columns twenty feet high, so that, since water must always run down to level itself, it would be necessary for your servants only to turn a screw, to open a spring of pure water, gushing out of a bronze pipe in twenty places at once in your palace, as long as the tank is full. I have also an excellent idea for a screw, designed to shut off the water entirely or let it in as you will, wherever you will, either in a torrent or in a jet no thicker than a hair’s breadth. In this case, of course, your Magnificence will need a more powerful pumping engine. . . .”

The young duke asked: “What do you want all those bronze doors for?”

Leonardo said: “Magnificence, you have seen the pebbles in a stream.”

“Naturally.”

“You have seen them, and you have touched them no doubt?”

“Well?”