Thirty Hours with a Corpse, and Other Tales of the Grand Guignol

Night and Silence

THEY WERE old, crippled, horrible. The woman hobbled about on two crutches; one of the men, blind, walked with his eyes shut, his hands outstretched, his fingers spread open; the other, a deaf-mute, followed with his head lowered, rarely raising the sad, restless eyes that were the only sign of life in his impassive face.

It was said that they were two brothers and a sister, and that they were united by a savage affection. One was never seen without the other; at the church doors they shrank back into the shadows, keeping away from those professional beggars who stand boldly in the full light so that passersby may be ashamed to ignore their importunacy. They did not ask for anything. Their appearance alone was a prayer for help. As they moved silently through the narrow, gloomy streets, a mysterious trio, they seemed to personify Age, Night and Silence.

One evening, in their hovel near the gates of the city, the woman died peacefully in their arms, without a cry, with just one long look of distress which the deaf-mute saw, and one violent shudder which the blind man felt because her hand clasped his wrist. Without a sound she passed into eternal silence.

Next day, for the first time, the two men were seen without her. They dragged about all day without even stopping at the baker’s shop where they usually received doles of bread. Toward dusk, when lights began to twinkle at the dark crossroads, when the reflection of lamps gave the houses the appearance of a smile, they bought with the few halfpence they had received two poor little candles, and they returned to the desolate hovel where the old sister lay on her pallet with no one to watch or pray for her.

They kissed the dead woman. The man came to put her in her coffin. The deal boards were fastened down and the coffin was placed on two wooden trestles; then, once more alone, the two brothers laid a sprig of boxwood on a plate, lighted their candles, and sat down for the last all-too-short vigil.

Outside, the cold wind played round the joints of the illfitting door. Inside, the small trembling flames barely broke the darkness with their yellow light…. Not a sound….

For a long time they remained like this, praying, remembering, meditating….

Tired out with weeping, at last they fell asleep.

When they woke it was still night. The lights of the candles still glimmered, but they were lower. The cold that is the precursor of dawn made them shiver. But there was something else—what was it? They leaned forward, the one trying to see, the other to hear. For some time they remained motionless; then, there being no repetition of what had roused them, they lay down again and began to pray.

Suddenly, for the second time, they sat up. Had either of them been alone, he would have thought himself the plaything of some fugitive hallucination. When one sees without hearing, or hears without seeing, illusion is easily created. But something abnormal was taking place; there could be no doubt about it, since both were affected, since it appealed both to eyes and ears at the same time; they were fully conscious of this, but were unable to understand.

Between them they had the power of complete comprehension. Singly, each had but a partial, agonizing conception.

The deaf-mute got up and walked about. Forgetting his brother’s infirmity, the blind man asked in a voice choked with fear:

“What is it? What’s the matter? Why have you got up?”

He heard him moving, coming and going, stopping, starting off again, and again stopping; and having nothing but these sounds to guide his reason, his terror increased till his teeth began to chatter. He was on the point of speaking again, but remembered, and relapsed into a muttering:

“What can he see? What is it?”

The deaf-mute took a few more steps, rubbed his eyes, and, presumably reassured, went back to his mattress and fell asleep.

The blind man heaved a sigh of relief, and silence fell once more, broken only by the prayers he mumbled in a monotonous undertone, his soul benumbed by grief as he waited till sleep should come and pour light into his darkness.

He was almost sleeping when the murmurs that had before made him tremble wrenched him from an uneasy doze.

It sounded like a soft scratching mingled with light blows on a plank, curious rubbings, and stifled moans.

He leaped up. The deaf-mute had not moved. Feeling that the fear that culminates in panic was threatening him, he strove to reason with himself:

“Why should this noise terrify me?… The night is always full of sounds…. My brother is moving uneasily in his sleep… yes, that’s it…. Just now I heard him walking up and down, and there was the same noise…. It must have been the wind…. But I know the sound of the wind, and it has never been like that… it was a noise I had never heard…. What could it have been? No… it could not be…”

He bit his fists. An awful suspicion had come to him.

“Suppose… no, it’s not possible…. Suppose it was… there it is again!… Again… louder and louder… someone is scratching, scratching, knocking…. My God! A voice… her voice! She is calling! She is crying! Help, help!”

He threw himself out of bed and roared:

“François!… quick! Help!… Look!…”

He was half mad with fear. He tore wildly at his hair, shouting:

“Look!… You’ve got eyes, you, you can see!…”

The moans became louder, the raps firmer. Feeling his way, stumbling against the walls, knocking against the packing-cases that served as furniture, tripping in the holes in the floor, he staggered about trying to find his sleeping brother.

He fell and got up again, bruised, covered with blood, sobbing:

“I have no eyes! I have no eyes!”

He had upset the plate on which lay the sprig of box, and the sound of the earthenware breaking on the floor gave the finishing touch to his panic.

“Help! What have I done? Help!”

The noises grew louder and more terrifying, and as an agonized cry sounded, his last doubts left him. Behind his empty eyes, he imagined he saw the horrible thing….

He saw the old sister beating against the tightly closed lid of her coffin. He saw her superhuman terror, her agony, a thousand times worse than that of any other death…. She was there, alive, yes, alive, a few steps away from him… but where? She heard his steps, his voice, and he, blind, could do nothing to help her.

Where was his brother? Flinging his arms from right to left, he knocked over the candles: the wax flowed over his fingers, hot, like blood. The noise grew louder, more despairing; the voice was speaking, saying words that died away in smothered groans….

“Courage!” he shrieked. “I’m here! I’m coming!”

He was now crawling along on his knees, and a sudden turn flung him against a bed; he thrust out his arms, felt a body, seized it by the shoulders and shook it with all the strength that remained in him.

Violently awakened, the deaf-mute sprang up uttering horrible cries and trying to see, but now that the candles were out, he too was plunged into night, the impenetrable darkness that held more terror for him than for the blind man. Stupefied with sleep, he groped about wildly with his hands, which closed in a viselike grip on his brother’s throat, stifling cries of:

“Look! Look!”

They rolled together on the floor, upsetting all that came in their way, knotted together, ferociously tearing each other with tooth and nail. In a very short time their hoarse breathing had died away. The voice, so distant and yet so near, was cut short by a spasm… there was a cracking noise… the imprisoned body was raising itself in one last supreme effort for freedom… a grinding noise… sobs… again the grinding noise… silence….

Outside, the trees shuddered as they bowed in the gale; the rain beat against the walls. The late winter’s dawn was still crouching on the edge of the horizon. Inside the walls of the hovel, not a sound, not a breath.

Night and Silence.