The Best of Gerald Kersh

‘Busto is a Ghost, Too Mean to Give us a Fright!’

THERE was no such man as Shakmatko, but there really was Busto’s lodging-house. It was just as I described it: a rickety, rotting melancholy old house not far from New Oxford Street. The day came when Busto was kicked out: his lease had expired five years before, anyway. He fought like a trapped lynx to retain possession of the place, but the Borough Surveyor and the Sanitary Inspector had it in iron pincers. It was condemned and executed, torn to pieces, taken away in carts. And a good riddance, I say! Yet in retrospect one half regrets such demolitions. ‘Where is the house in which I lived?’ one asks; and, walking past, looks up at the housebreakers, and sighs … ‘Ahhhhh….’

Pah!

Time is more than a healer. It is a painter and decorator; a gilder and a glorifier. It converts the gritty particles of half-forgotten miseries into what sentimental old gentlemen call Pearls of Memory. Memory! Memory; Fooey on Memory! What a smooth liar it is, this Memory! I have heard a shrapnel-tattered veteran recalling, with something suspiciously like sentimental regret, the mud of Passchendaele. I could feel twinges of pleasurable emotion about Busto’s, if I let myself go. Yet I endured several miseries there. The place was chock-full of my pet aversions. Bed-bugs, of which I have always had a nameless horror, came out at night and walked over me. For some reason unknown to science they never bit me. But other insects did. I used to lie in bed, too hungry and tired to sleep, and look out of the window over the black roofs, and listen to the faint, sad noises of the sleeping house; and marvel at the fearsome strength of vermin. Sandow, Hackenschmidt, gorillas, whales; they are nothing. For truly awful physical force watch insects. Compare the heart-bursting sprints of Olympic runners with the effortless speed of the spider; the bloody and ferocious gluttony of the wolf with that of the louse; the leap of the panther with the jump of the flea!

Busto’s ghoulish presence filled the house. One worried about the rent. Sometimes I wrote verse at night, in true poetic style, by the light of a halfpenny candle – oh, most execrable verse, full of inspissated, treacly, heavy blue-black gloom….

– that kind of thing. What green caves? I forget. I think they were to be found in a ‘sea to sink in’. What sea? Sink what? I don’t remember. I also wrote a novel called The Blonde and Oscar. It was so sordid that it made publishers’ readers scratch themselves. Compared with it, L’Assommoir was like something by Mrs Humphry Ward, and Jude the Obscure a kind of Winnie the Pooh. Prostitutes? Millions of ’em. Degenerates? On every page. I left no stone unthrown; explored every drainpipe; took three deep breaths, attached a stone to my feet, exhaled, and sank to the bottom of the cesspit with a hideous gurgle. I tell you, publishers dropped it with muffled cries, and afterwards scrubbed their hands, like men who reach for pebbles on a beach and accidentally pick up something disgusting.

I was always having fights with other lodgers. My nerves were on edge. I was, in any case, a bit of an idiot, foolish with an uninspired foolishness – hell is full of such. I was unbelievably bumptious, arrogant, loud-mouthed, moody, quarrelsome, bull-headed, touchy, gloomy, and proud in a silly kind of way. At the prospect of a rough-house I boiled over with murderous joy. Only one man on earth inspired me with fear, and that was Busto.

Pio Busto used to cross himself before a lithograph of the Mona Lisa. He thought it represented the Virgin Mary. But in any case it was generally believed that Busto had no soul to save.

How small, how bent, and how virulent was Pio Busto, with his bulldog jaws, and his spine curved like a horseshoe! How diabolical were the little eyes, hard and black as basalt, that squinted out of his pale, crunched-up face! Ragged, dirty, and lopsided, he had the appearance of a handful of spoiled human material, crumpled and thrown aside, accidentally dropped out of the cosmic dustbin. It was said of him: ‘Busto is not human. Busto is not alive. Busto is a ghost, too mean to give us a fright.’

He really seemed to have no thought beyond wringing out the rents of his abominable little furnished rooms. As soon as the money was due, up popped Busto like the Devil in a legend: ‘My landlorda gimme time to pay? Hah? Hooh!’ If you asked him for a match he would say: ‘Buy a box.’ There was a quality of doom about his avarice. Professional bilkers took one look at Busto and ran for their lives. Unemployed waiters – always habitual grumblers and irrepressible mutterers-under-the-breath – remained silent in his presence. He uttered few words, but his thin lips, corrugated like the edges of scallop-shells, sawed off a whole repertoire of formidable noises. His Hooh! expressed all the scorn in the world: his Hah? was alive with malice.

About once a month he used to get drunk on Red Lisbon – a deadly and incalculable wine concocted of the squeezed-out scrapings of rotted port-casks and laced with methylated spirits – a terrible drink of doubtful origin, which smites the higher centres as with a sandbag. It is otherwise known as Lunatic’s Broth, or Red Lizzie. Busto would consume bottles of it, and even offer small saucers-full to his dog, Ouif. This, also, was a taciturn animal; shaggy, half-deaf, suspicious, and altogether badly formed. It was as if some amateur Creator had tried to piece together a bull-terrier with odds and ends of Airedale, Saluki, Dachshund, and jackal. Ouif shared his master’s bed. Dogs have no æsthetics, so it is easy for them to be noble. Besides, it is physically necessary for a dog to attach himself to somebody, if only a man like Busto, just as a man must love some living thing, even a dog like Ouif.

Without Ouif, how could Busto have lived in the atmosphere of hate with which he surrounded himself? He trailed a tradition of pitilessness. Extortion was his métier. As he went his rounds, his feet seemed to squeeze out of the squeaking stairs all the squealing notes in the gamut of human misery. Hopelessness had soaked into the pores of his ancient house; multitudes of passing tenants had left behind them the ghosts of their anguish and despair. Busto’s was the step before the bottom. People came, lingered, clinging desperately as to a rock overhanging an abyss; then weakened and dropped out of sight. The time always came when Busto said: ‘Clear out before twellovaclock!’ Almost every rent-day, some unhappy defaulter was thrown out.

My rent-day was Saturday. One Saturday evening I was hurrying in with the necessary nine-and-six, when I met Mr Butts in the passage. He was an addresser of envelopes, a man with a booming voice, no shirt, and a monocle, most of whose earthly possessions were contained in a four-pound biscuit-tin. He was carrying this tin under his arm.

‘Going?’ I asked.

‘Yes, my dear sir, I am,’ said Mr Butts.

‘Did Busto——’

‘Of course. But he is sorry, now. You know, my dear sir, I never go out of my way to do anybody any harm, but people who wrong me always suffer for it afterwards. Busto throws me out into the street. Very good. An hour ago, his dog was run over. You see?’

‘No! His dog?’

‘Run over, my dear sir, by a taxi. Could you lend me fourpence?’

‘Twopence?’

‘A thousand thanks, my dear sir…. Good-bye, good-bye!’

The door slammed heavily. The rickety umbrella-stand vibrated to a standstill. Silence, darkness, and the evil odours of dampness and decay settled upon the passage. I went downstairs to the disused wash-house in

which Busto lived and slept. I knocked. He tore the door open and cried: ‘Yes? Yes?’ But when he saw me his face fell, and he said: ‘Oh, you. Hooh! I toughta you was da vet.’

‘The vet?’ I said. ‘Why, is Ouif ill?’

‘Yes.’

‘May I see him? I know a little bit about dogs.’

‘Yeh? Come in.’

Ouif lay on Busto’s bed, surrounded with pillows and covered with a blanket.

‘Run over, eh?’ I said.

‘Ah-ah. How you know?’

Without replying, I lifted the blanket. Ouif was crushed, bent sideways. Practically unconscious, he breathed with a strenuous, groaning noise, his mouth wide open.

‘Whacan I do?’ asked Busto. ‘I touch ’im, it ’urts. You tella me. What I oughta do?’

I passed my hand gently down the dog’s body. Ouif was smashed, finished. I replied: ‘I don’t think there’s anything much you can do.’

‘A hotawatta-bottle?’

‘A hot-water bottle’s no use. Wait till the vet comes.’

‘Hooh. But what I do? Dis is my dog. Brandy?’

‘Don’t be silly. Brandy’ll make him cough, and it hurts him even to breathe.’

‘Hell!’ exclaimed Busto, savagely.

I touched Ouif’s stomach. He yelped sharply. I covered him again.

‘How did it happen?’

Busto flung up his big, earth-coloured fists in a helpless gesture. ‘Me, I go buya one-two bottla wine ova da road. Ouif run afta me. Dam taxi comes arounda da corner. Brr-rrr-oum! Fffff! Run aright ova da dog, withouta stop!’ shouted Busto, opening and closing his hands with awful ferocity. Hell, Ker-ist! If I getta holda diss fella. Gordamighty I tear ’im up a-to bits! Lissen; I tear outa diss fella’s ’eart an’ tear dat up a-to bits too! Yes!’ shrieked Busto, striking at the wall with his knuckles and scattering flakes of distemper. ‘Lissen, you tink ’e die, Ouif?’

‘I’m afraid he might. All his stomach’s crushed. And his ribs. All the bones——’

‘Basta, basta, eh? Enough.’ Busto slouched over to the table, seized a bottle of wine and filled two teacups. ‘Drink!’ he commanded, handing one to me; and emptied his cup at a gulp. I swallowed a mouthful of the wine. It seemed to vaporise in my stomach like water on a red-hot stove – psssst! – and the fumes rushed up to my head. Busto drank another cup, banging down the bottle.

‘You like this dog, eh?’ I said.

‘I send my fraynd for the vet. Why don’t dey come, dis vet?’

There was a knock at the front door. Busto rushed upstairs, and then came down followed by a wizened man who looked like a racing tipster, and a tall old man with a black bag.

‘Dissa my dog.’

‘What happened?’ asked the vet.

‘Run over,’ said the little man, ‘I told yer, didn’t I?’

‘Well, let’s have a look.’ The vet stooped, pulled back the blanket, and began to touch Ouif here and there with light, skilful hands; looked at his eyes, said ‘Hm!’ and then shook his head.

‘So?’ said Busto.

‘Nothing much to be done, I’m afraid. Quite hopeless.’

‘’E die, hah?’

‘I’m afraid so. The best thing to do will be to put him out of his misery quickly.’

‘Misery?’

‘I say, the kindest thing will be to put him to sleep.’

‘Kill ’im, ’e means,’ said the wizened man.

‘Lissen,’ said Busto. ‘You mak this dog oright, I give you lotta money. Uh?’

‘But I tell you, nothing can possibly be done. His pelvis is all smashed to——’

‘Yes, yes, but lissen. You maka dis dog oright, I give you ten quid.’

‘Even if you offered me ten thousand pounds, Mister … er … I couldn’t save your dog. I know how you feel, and I’m sorry. But I tell you, the kindest thing you can possibly do is put him quietly to sleep. He’ll only go on suffering, to no purpose.’

‘Dammit, fifty quid!’ cried Busto.

‘I’m not considering money. If it were possible to help your dog, I would; but I can’t.’

‘Dammit, a hundreda quid!’ yelled Busto. ‘You tink I aina got no money? Hah! Look!’ He dragged open his waistcoat.

‘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 armour, 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 pints of blood from every man; killed the wounded, devitalised 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.