Gerald Kersh - The Best of Gerald Kersh

The old cavemen lived here, scores of thousands of years ago. The great M. Casteret, I believe, began to explore the caves of the Dent Gâtée; one of his predecessors, in 1906, in a hole named Le Chasme Sans Fond, discovered an antediluvian carving of a buffalo, and the carefully arranged teeth of three cave bears…. There was an animal for you, if you like! From nose to tail-root, the cave bear measured ten feet, and he stood five feet at the shoulder. His haunches were considerably higher than his shoulders; so that when he reared up to attack, his forepaws must have hovered twenty feet high, armed with hooked claws ten inches long. His canine teeth were bigger than bananas. But around this creature, which was much bigger than a bull, you must wrap a pelt about three times as long and dense as that of a grizzly bear. This nightmare our ancestors fought with chipped flints lashed to the tips of wooden poles! … All this made me feel that Man is not called Man for nothing.

I tried to convey this to Mavis, but she felt the cold. She wanted to be over the mountain, and into Spain; where, she said, she proposed to hear a flamenco, learn a gipsy dance, and see a bull-fight. So we hurried up and up that tricky road until, a mile before we were to touch the mountain village called Lô, we crashed.

It was not my fault. It happened like this: Mavis was hungry and thirsty, and I was preoccupied…. In my head something kept singing: You murdered your Uncle Arnold – Murdered your Uncle Arnold – He will die in September – You have murdered your Uncle Arnold …. Changing into second gear, coining into low, I encountered a cow, and swerved. My right-hand turn, thoughtlessly twisted on, took me up a steep bank. The car turned over. It stopped rolling at the edge of the road, the rear wheels spinning over the cliff.

Mavis’s arm had gone through the windshield. I was always a coward – I had ducked – I was merely stunned.

Coming to, I ran for help. It happened that an old man was going to Lô, mounted on a mule. I made a tourniquet of my tie, thrust five hundred francs into the man’s hand, mounted Mavis on the mule, and followed her to Lô, where there was a doctor.

I trembled for her, when I saw him: he was a French doctor of the old school, who used his ear for a stethoscope, and did not believe in new-fangled drugs. A rugged old fellow, jack of all medical trades and master of none – but no fool. He said: ‘Madame has lost too much blood and, what with that and the shock, I order a transfusion. But you are in no condition, m’sieur, to have half a litre of blood taken out of your arteries at the moment——’

‘– No, no!’ I cried. ‘I gave blood for a transfusion only a month ago. I am not fit, doctor; not healthy.’

‘– If you will allow me to proceed?’

‘I beg your pardon, doctor.’

‘ Il n’y a pas de quoi, m’sieur…. As I was saying, since you are not in a condition to give blood to your wife, I have called in a woman of the village. A healthy animal, I assure you. She was wet-nurse to the Princesse de Bohemond’s child, which I had the honour prematurely to deliver, after the Prince’s motor-car crashed on this self-same road. The baby thrived – at eight months, mark you! We can’t do better than take a little blood from young Solomona. They do not come much healthier than she – she is bursting with milk and blood.’

Then he introduced the woman Solomona, to whom I gave a thousand francs. She bared a powerful brown arm and giggled as the needle went home in the artery at the crook of the elbow.

A little colour came into Mavis’s cheeks as Solomona’s blood ran into her veins. It worked like magic. Her eyes opened, the lids fluttering, and she smiled.

I remember saying: ‘Now I can die,’ and after that I must have collapsed. When I was conscious again, a day and a half later, the doctor told me that I had concussion; for which, he said, the only remedy was ice-packs and rest.

But how could I rest until I had seen Mavis? I went into the room where she lay – and she looked even more beautiful than ever – and, taking her by the hand, begged pardon for my unskilful driving.

‘It was all the cow’s fault,’ said Mavis. ‘She wasn’t looking where she was going …’ Mavis was still a little light-headed. She rambled on, drowsily: ‘… Poor old cow. Didn’t know where she was going…. But do any of us? Couldn’t see what harm she was doing…. Can any of us? Kind of lost and frightened – her eyes looked lonely…. But aren’t we all? … I hope I won’t be too much scarred.’

I said: ‘The doctor said that there’ll be nothing that a bit of cosmetic won’t cover. You’ll be all right, my sweet.’

‘… Lucky it wasn’t my leg,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t afford that…. Even so, Abaloni always kept nattering about my not knowing what to do with my arms and hands. Perhaps this will make me worse. Oh, Rod – don’t let it!’

‘Dearest Mavis, nothing is ever going to make you unhappy.’

‘That would be nice, Rod … I have made sacrifices for my Art, you know?’

I nodded, not knowing exactly what she meant. To tell you the truth (it might have been on account of my bang on the head) I was a little irritated with her now. I could not help thinking: Uncle Arnold, in her position, by this time would have been sitting up and shouting: ‘A scratch, damme, a bloody scratch! Get some wine – red wine – that makes blood! And steak, bleeding, underdone! Bustle about, you dago dogs!’ … I couldn’t banish from my mind the image of the old gentleman as he lay in the Cottage Hospital: every inch a proper man, but smiling with a kind of tenderness, and eager to give, to pay, all rancour forgotten.

I said: ‘You have made sacrifices, Mavis, no doubt. For your Art. So have I made sacrifices, for your Art!’

She laughed, in a lightly-fluttering, high-pitched way, and said: ‘Oh no! What, you? Sacrifices? Oh no! I sacrificed my body for my Art!’

A great cold came over me then. ‘You sacrificed your body to whom?’

‘To you, of course,’ she said.

Quite calmly, I believe, I said: ‘Very likely. But for your Art, and my love of you, Mavis, I have sacrificed my immortal soul.’

‘Don’t let’s be intense,’ said she, wearily, ‘because I don’t think I could bear it.’

A strange, unpleasant light made a sickly sunrise in my disordered head. ‘Why, I believe you were really in love with Abaloni!’ I cried.

‘Please, Rod, let’s not go into that, now!’

And then I knew that it was the choreographer Abaloni whom Mavis had always truly loved. There surged up in me a great white hate – boiling bubble-to-bubble with my love for her. In circumstances such as this, a man feels at the tip of his tongue some stupendous speech … and comes out with something trite and silly.

I could only say: ‘Abaloni’s fat!’

‘You’re no oil painting,’ said she.

Before I could find words to say in reply, Mavis sat up. For the moment, I thought that she was crying, because tears were running down her cheeks, and I said: ‘Dear Mavis, forgive my inadequacies, and pardon me if I hurt you. I love you most dearly. If it will be better for you to be with Abaloni, then go. I thought you loved me. I was a fool to think so. Take half of what I have, and go to Abaloni——’

But she was not crying. She could not catch her breath.

I called for the doctor. He said: ‘It happens, occasionally. There are people, especially women, who are affected like this in the mountains by changes in atmospheric pressure. Come away, and let her rest.’

I came away with the nurse, who put me to bed with cold towels on my head. Next morning, when I went to see Mavis, she said: ‘I must have been sort of woozy yesterday. Rod, did I say all sorts of silly things? … I can sit up today. Let’s go home soon…. But tell me – did I talk all kinds of silliness?’