‘Come in! Come in, for God’s sake!’
M. Munigant came in. Thank God the door was unlocked.
Oh, but Mr Harris looked terrible. M. Munigant stood in the center of the living room, small and dark. Harris nodded. The pains rushed through him, hitting him with large iron hammers and hooks. M. Munigant’s eyes glittered as he saw Harris’s protuberant bones. Ah, he saw that Mr Harris was now psychologically prepared for aid. Was it not so? Harris nodded again, feebly, sobbing. M. Munigant still whistled when he talked; something about his tongue and the whistling. No matter. Through his shimmering eyes Harris seemed to see M. Munigant shrink, get smaller. Imagination, of course, Harris sobbed out his story of the Phoenix trip. M. Munigant sympathized. This skeleton was a—a traitor! They would fix him for once and for all!
‘Mr Munigant,’ sighed Harris, faintly, ‘I—I never noticed before. Your tongue, Round, tubelike, Hollow? My eyes, Delirious. What do I do?’
M. Munigant whistled softly, appreciatively, coming closer. If Mr Harris would relax in his chair, and open his mouth? The lights were switched off. M. Munigant peered into Harris’s dropped jaw. Wider, please? It had been so hard, that first visit, to help Harris, with both body and bone in revolt. Now, he had cooperation from the flesh of the man, anyway, even if the skeleton protested. In the darkness, M. Munigant’s voice got small, small, tiny, tiny. The whistling became high and shrill. Now. Relax, Mr Harris, NOW!
Harris felt his jaw pressed violently in all directions, his tongue depressed as with a spoon, his throat clogged. He gasped for breath. Whistle. He couldn’t breathe! Something squirmed, corkscrewed his cheeks out, bursting his jaws. Like a hot-water douche, something squirted into his sinuses, his ears clanged! ‘Ahhhh!’ shrieked Harris, gagging. His head, its carapaces riven, shattered, hung loose. Agony shot fire through his lungs.
Harris could breathe again, momentarily. His watery eyes sprang wide. He shouted. His ribs, like sticks picked up and bundled, were loosened in him. Pain! He fell to the floor, wheezing out his hot breath.
Lights flickered in his senseless eyeballs, he felt his limbs swiftly cast loose and free. Through streaming eyes he saw the parlor.
The room was empty.
‘M. Munigant? In God’s name, where are you, M. Munigant? Come help me!’
M. Munigant was gone.
‘Help!’
Then he heard it.
Deep down in the subterranean fissures of his body, the minute, unbelievable noises; little smackings and twistings and little dry chippings and grindings and nuzzling sounds—like a tiny hungry mouse down in the red-blooded dimness, gnawing ever so earnestly and expertly at what might have been, but was not, a submerged timber…!
Clarisse, walking along the sidewalk, held her head high and marched straight toward her house on St James Place. She was thinking of the Red Cross as she turned the corner and almost ran into this little dark man who smelled of iodine.
Clarisse would have ignored him if it were not for the fact that as she passed, he took something long, white and oddly familiar from his coat and proceeded to chew on it, as on a peppermint stick. Its end devoured, his extraordinary tongue darted within the white confection, sucking out the filling, making contented noises. He was still crunching his goody as she proceeded up the sidewalk to her house, turned the doorknob and walked in.
‘Darling?’ she called, smiling around. ‘Darling, where are you?’ She shut the door, walked down the hall and into the living room. ‘Darling…’
She stared at the floor for twenty seconds, trying to understand.
She screamed.
Outside in the sycamore darkness, the little man pierced a long white stick with intermittent holes; then, softly, sighing, his lips puckered, played a little sad tune upon the improvised instrument to accompany the shrill and awful singing of Clarisse’s voice as she stood in the living room.
Many times as a little girl Clarisse had run on the beach sands, stepped on a jellyfish and screamed. It was not so bad, finding an intact, gelatin-skinned jellyfish in one’s living room. One could step back from it.
It was when the jellyfish called you by name…
The Man Upstairs
He remembered how carefully and expertly Grandmother would fondle the cold cut guts of the chicken and withdraw the marvels therein: the wet shining loops of meat-smelling intestine, the muscled lump of heart, the gizzard with the collection of seeds in it. How neatly and nicely Grandma would slit the chicken and push her fat little hand in to deprive it of its medals. These would be segregated, some in pans of water, others in paper to be thrown to the dog later, perhaps. And then the ritual of taxidermy, stuffing the bird with watered, seasoned bread, and performing surgery with a swift, bright needle, stitch after pulled-tight stitch.
This was one of the prime thrills of Douglas’s eleven-year-old life span.
Altogether, he counted twenty knives in the various squeaking drawers of the magic kitchen table from which Grandma, a kindly, gentle-faced, white-haired old witch, drew paraphernalia for her miracles.
Douglas was to be quiet. He could stand across the table from Grandma, his freckled nose tucked over the edge, watching, but any loose boy-talk might interfere with the spell. It was a wonder when Grandma brandished silver shakers over the bird, supposedly sprinkling showers of mummy-dust and pulverized Indian bones, muttering mystical verses under her toothless breath.
‘Grammy,’ said Douglas at last, breaking the silence. ‘Am I like that inside?’ He pointed at the chicken.
‘Yes,’ said Grandma. ‘A little more orderly and presentable, but just about the same…’
‘And more of it!’ added Douglas, proud of his guts.
‘Yes,’ said Grandma. ‘More of it.’
‘Grandpa has lots more’n me. His sticks out in front so he can rest his elbows on it.’
Grandma laughed and shook her head.
Douglas said, ‘And Lucie Williams, down the street, she…’
‘Hush, child!’ cried Grandma.
‘But she’s got…’
‘Never you mind what she’s got! That’s different.’
‘But why is she different?’
‘A darning-needle dragon-fly is coming by some day and sew up your mouth,’ said Grandma firmly.
Douglas waited, then asked. ‘How do you know I’ve got insides like that, Grandma?’
‘Oh, go ’way, now!’
The front doorbell rang.
Through the front-door glass as he ran down the hall, Douglas saw a straw hat. The bell jangled again and again. Douglas opened the door.
‘Good morning, child, is the landlady at home?’
Cold gray eyes in a long, smooth, walnut-colored face gazed upon Douglas. The man was tall, thin, and carried a suitcase, a briefcase, an umbrella under one bent arm, gloves rich and thick and gray on his thin fingers, and wore a horribly new straw hat.
Douglas backed up. ‘She’s busy.’
‘I wish to rent her upstairs room, as advertised.’
‘We’ve got ten boarders, and it’s already rented; go away!’
‘Douglas!’ Grandma was behind him suddenly. ‘How do you do?’ she said to the stranger. ‘Never mind this child.’
Unsmiling, the man stepped stiffly in. Douglas watched them ascend out of sight up the stairs, heard Grandma detailing the conveniences of the upstairs room. Soon she hurried down to pile linens from the linen closet on Douglas and send him scooting up with them.
Douglas paused at the room’s threshold. The room was changed oddly, simply because the stranger had been in it a moment. The straw hat lay brittle and terrible upon the bed, the umbrella leaned stiff against one wall like a dead hat with dark wings folded.
Douglas blinked at the umbrella.
The stranger stood in the center of the changed room, tall, tall.
‘Here!’ Douglas littered the bed with supplies. ‘We eat at noon sharp, and if you’re late coming down the soup’ll get cold. Grandma fixes it so
it will, every time!’
The tall strange man counted out ten new copper pennies and tinkled them in Douglas’s blouse pocket. ‘We shall be friends,’ he said, grimly.
It was funny, the man having nothing but pennies. Lots of them. No silver at all, no dimes, no quarters. Just new copper pennies.
Douglas thanked him glumly. ‘I’ll drop these in my dime bank when I get them changed into a dime. I got six dollars and fifty cents in dimes all ready for my camp trip in August.’
‘I must wash now,’ said the tall strange man.
Once, at midnight, Douglas had wakened to hear a storm rumbling outside—the cold hard wind shaking the house, the rain driving against the window. And then a lightning bolt had landed outside the window with a silent, terrific concussion. He remembered that fear of looking about at his room, seeing it strange and awful in the instantaneous light.
So it was, now, in this room. He stood looking up at the stranger. This room was no longer the same, but changed indefinably because this man, quick as a lightning bolt, had shed his light about it. Douglas backed up slowly as the stranger advanced.
The door closed in his face.
The wooden fork went up with mashed potatoes, came down empty. Mr Koberman, for that was his name, had brought the wooden fork and wooden knife and spoon with him when Grandma called lunch.
‘Mrs Spaulding,’ he said, quietly, ‘my own cutlery; please use it. I will have lunch today, but from tomorrow on, only breakfast and supper.’
Grandma bustled in and out, bearing steaming tureens of soup and beans and mashed potatoes to impress her new boarder, while Douglas sat rattling his silverware on his plate, because he had discovered it irritated Mr Koberman.
‘I know a trick,’ said Douglas. ‘Watch.’ He picked a fork-tine with his fingernail. He pointed at various sectors of the table, like a magician. Wherever he pointed, the sound of the vibrating fork-tine emerged, like a metal elfin voice. Simply done, of course. He pressed the fork handle on the table-top, secretly. The vibration came from the wood like a sounding board. It looked quite magical. ‘There, there, and there!’ exclaimed Douglas, happily plucking the fork again. He pointed at Mr Koberman’s soup and the noise came from it.
Mr Koberman’s walnut-colored face became hard and firm and awful. He pushed the soup bowl away violently, his lips twisting. He fell back in his chair.
Grandma appeared. ‘Why, what’s wrong, Mr Koberman?’
‘I cannot eat this soup.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I am full and can eat no more. Thank you.’
Mr Koberman left the room, glaring.
‘What did you do, just then?’ asked Grandma at Douglas, sharply.
‘Nothing. Grandma, why does he eat with wooden spoons?’
‘Yours not to question! When do you go back to school, anyway?’
‘Seven weeks.’
‘Oh, my land!’ said Grandma.
Mr Koberman worked nights. Each morning at eight he arrived mysteriously home, devoured a very small breakfast, and then slept soundlessly in his room all through the dreaming hot daytime, until the huge supper with all the other boarders at night.
Mr Koberman’s sleeping habits made it necessary for Douglas to be quiet. This was unbearable. So, whenever Grandma visited down the street, Douglas stomped up and down stairs beating a drum, bouncing golf balls, or just screaming for three minutes outside Mr Koberman’s door, or flushing the toilet seven times in succession.
Mr Koberman never moved. His room was silent, dark. He did not complain. There was no sound. He slept on and on. It was very strange.
Douglas felt a pure white flame of hatred burn inside himself with a steady, unflickering beauty. Now that room was Koberman Land. Once it had been flowery bright when Miss Sadlowe lived there. Now it was stark, bare, cold, clean, everything in its place, alien and brittle.
Douglas climbed upstairs on the fourth morning.
Halfway to the second floor was a large sun-filled window, framed by six-inch panes of orange, purple, blue, red and burgundy glass. In the enchanted early mornings when the sun fell through to strike the landing and slide down the stair banister, Douglas stood entranced at this window peering at the world through the multi-colored panes.
Now a blue world, a blue sky, blue people, blue streetcars and blue trotting dogs.
He shifted panes. Now—an amber world! Two lemonish women glided by, resembling the daughters of Fu Manchu! Douglas giggled. This pane made even the sunlight more purely golden.
It was eight A.M. Mr Koberman strolled by below, on the sidewalk, returning from his night’s work, his umbrella looped over his elbow, straw hat glued to his head with patent oil.
Douglas shifted panes again. Mr Koberman was a red man walking through a red world with red trees and red flowers and—something else.
Something about—Mr Koberman.
Douglas squinted.
The red glass did things to Mr Koberman. His face, his suit, his hands. The clothes seemed to melt away. Douglas almost believed, for one terrible instant, that he could see inside Mr Koberman. And what he saw made him lean wildly against the small red pane, blinking.
Mr Koberman glanced up just then, saw Douglas, and raised his umbrella angrily, as if to strike. He ran swiftly across the red lawn to the front door.
‘Young man!’ he cried, running up the stairs. ‘What were you doing?’
‘Just looking,’ said Douglas, numbly.
‘That’s all, is it?’ cried Mr Koberman.
‘Yes, sir, I look through all the glasses. All kinds of worlds. Blue ones, red ones, yellow ones. All different.’
‘All kinds of worlds, is it!’ Mr Koberman glanced at the little panes of glass, his face pale. He got hold of himself. He wiped his face with a handkerchief and pretended to laugh. ‘Yes. All kinds of worlds. All different.’ He walked to the door of his room. ‘Go right ahead; play,’ he said.
The door closed. The hall was empty. Mr Koberman had gone in.
Douglas shrugged and found a new pane.
‘Oh, everything’s violet!’
Half an hour later, while playing in his sandbox behind the house, Douglas heard the crash and the shattering tinkle. He leaped up.
A moment later, Grandma appeared on the back porch, the old razor strop trembling in her hand.
‘Douglas! I told you time and again never fling your basketball against the house! Oh, I could just cry!’
‘I been sitting right here,’ he protested.
‘Come see what you’ve done, you nasty boy!’
The great colored window panes lay shattered in a rainbow chaos on the upstairs landing. His basketball lay in the ruins.
Before he could even begin telling his innocence, Douglas was struck a dozen stinging blows upon his rump. Wherever he landed, screaming, the razor strop struck again.
Later, hiding his mind in the sandpile like an ostrich, Douglas nursed his dreadful pains. He knew who’d thrown that basketball. A man with a straw hat and a stiff umbrella and a cold, gray room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He dribbled tears. Just wait. Just wait.
He heard Grandma sweeping up the broken glass. She brought it out and threw it in the trash bin. Blue, pink, yellow meteors of glass dropped brightly down.
When she was gone, Douglas dragged himself, whimpering, over to save out three pieces of the incredible glass. Mr Koberman disliked the colored windows. These—he clinked them in his fingers—would be worth saving.
Grandfather arrived from his newspaper office each night, shortly ahead of the other boarders, at five o’clock. When a slow, heavy tread filled the hall, and a thick, mahogany cane thumped in the cane-rack, Douglas ran to embrace the large stomach and sit on Grandpa’s knee while he read the evening paper.
‘Hi. Grampa!’
‘Hello, down there!’
‘Grandma cut chickens again today. It’s fun watching,’ said Douglas.
Grandpa kept reading. ‘That’s twice this week, chickens. She’s
the chickenist woman. You like to watch her cut ’em, eh? Cold-blooded little pepper! Ha!’
‘I’m just curious.’
‘You are,’ rumbled Grandpa, scowling. ‘Remember that day when that young lady was killed at the rail station? You just walked over and looked at her, blood and all.’ He laughed. ‘Queer duck. Stay that way. Fear nothing, ever in your life. I guess you get it from your father, him being a military man and all, and you so close to him before you came here to live last year.’ Grandpa returned to his paper.
A long pause. ‘Gramps?’
‘Yes?’
‘What if a man didn’t have a heart or lungs or stomach but still walked around, alive?’
‘That,’ rumbled Gramps, ‘would be a miracle.’
‘I don’t mean a—a miracle. I mean, what if he was all different inside? Not like me.’
‘Well, he wouldn’t be quite human then, would he, boy?’
‘Guess not, Gramps. Gramps, you got a heart and lungs?’
Gramps chuckled. ‘Well, tell the truth, I don’t know. Never seen them. Never had an X-ray, never been to a doctor. Might as well be potato-solid for all I know.’
‘Have I got a stomach?’
‘You certainly have!’ cried Grandma from the parlor entry. ‘’Cause I feed it! And you’ve lungs, you scream loud enough to wake the crumblees. And you’ve dirty hands, go wash them! Dinner’s ready. Grandpa, come on. Douglas, git!’
In the rush of boarders streaming downstairs, Grandpa, if he intended questioning Douglas further about the weird conversation, lost his opportunity. If dinner delayed an instant more, Grandma and the potatoes would develop simultaneous lumps.
The boarders, laughing and talking at the table—Mr Koberman silent and sullen among them—were silenced when Grandfather cleared his throat. He talked politics a few minutes and then shifted over into the intriguing topic of the recent peculiar deaths in the town.
‘It’s enough to make an old newspaper editor prick up his ears,’ he said, eying them all. ‘That young Miss Larson, lived across the ravine, now. Found her dead three days ago for no reason, just funny kinds of tattoos all over her, and a facial expression that would make Dante cringe. And that other young lady, what was her name? Whitely? She disappeared and never did come back.’