Nightshade and Damnations (7 page)

“Can by can of food, I shed weight. Then my rifle went, and my ammunition. After that, I threw away even my machete. A long time later, that semicircular plate became too heavy for me, so I tied it to a tree with liana vine, and went on.

“So I reached the Ahu territory, where the tattooed men nursed me and were kind to me. The women chewed my food for me, before they fed me, until I was strong again. Of the stores we have left there, I took only as much as I might need, leaving the rest as payment for guides and men to man the canoe down the river. And so I got back out of the jungle. . . .

“Please give me a little more rum.” His hand was steady, now, as he drank, and his eyes were clear.

I said to him: “Assuming that what you say is true: these ‘boneless men’—they were, I presume, the Martians? Yet it sounds unlikely, surely? Do invertebrates smelt hard metals and——”

“Who said anything about Martians?” cried Doctor Goodbody. “No, no, no! The Martians came here, adapted themselves to new conditions of life. Poor fellows, they changed, sank low; went through a whole new process—a painful process of evolution. What I’m trying to tell you, you fool, is that Yeoward and I did
not
discover Martians. Idiot, don’t you see?
Those boneless things are men
.
We are Martians
!
”

“BUSTO IS A GHOST,

TOO MEAN TO GIVE US A FRIGHT!”

T
here
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. Bedbugs, 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. . . .

In whose dim caves God and the ghosts of hope

Hold panic orgy and forget the earth

—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, loudmouthed, moody, quarrelsome, bull-headed, touchy, gloomy, and proud in a silly kind of way. At the prospect of a roughhouse 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 gim
me
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 gamblers 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 centers 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 esthetics, 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 odors 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-colored 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 think ’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 tea-cups. “Drink!” he commanded, handing one to me; and emptied his cup at a gulp. I swallowed a mouthful of the wine. It seemed to vaporize 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, skillful 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 t
o
——”

“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.