Gerald Kersh - The Best of Gerald Kersh

Now my host came in, and I had an opportunity to observe him more closely. ‘I trust that you have refreshed yourself, Mr Harte,’ said he.

I replied: ‘My dear sir, it is you who have refreshed me. Never have I, in my wildest dreams, imagined such heliogabalian hospitality. I do not know how to thank you.’

He replied: ‘You thank me by your presence. You reward me, Mr Mark Harte. Let us take coffee and cognac together. I hope you slept well. I thought that it might please you, when you awoke, to find yourself looking a little more like the gentleman whose conversation I – inadvertently but with vast pleasure – happened to over hear in the Imperial Café in London, in the spring of 1873; and later at the Ambassador, not many years ago. But do taste this brandy. It was distilled, I think, about the time when Napoleon was a cadet –

– You heard the jingle? Yes, Mr Harte, the wine merchants speak of “Napoleon Brandy”, but I possess the last few dozen authentic bottles in the world.’

‘You have been so kind to me,’ said I, ‘that I feel bound to tell you: my name is not Mark Harte.’

‘Oh, but I knew that two days ago – yes, you slept forty-eight hours – and I was quite aware that you were neither Mark Twain, nor Bret Harte, nor any imaginable combination of the two. You are Mr Ambrose Bierce and, to be frank with you, I would rather have you under my roof than the other two put together.’

Always of an irritable turn, though somewhat mellowed by deep rest, good food and fine wine, I repeated what I must have said elsewhere a thousand times before: that Bret Harte was a cheap slangy upstart who had wheedled his way; and that Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) was better, but not much, or he would never have written such a puerile work as Huckleberry Finn.

I drew a deep breath, whereupon one of my asthmatic attacks took hold of me. An asthmatic should know better than to draw a deep breath too suddenly, even when he is about to launch a diatribe against his rivals. A certain mockery pervades such occasions. You need at least two good lungsful of air to blow up the epigram, which is, of course, the most brilliant thing that ever came to the tip of your tongue. Then your respiratory tracts close as surely as if a Turk had a bow-string about your throat, and the air you have inhaled refuses to come out. Suddenly, you develop the chest of a blacksmith and the complexion of a general. It is at once the most ridiculous and the most wretched of maladies torturing as it does sufferer and bystander alike. My host rang the little golden bell and in a moment an old woman came in.

He said to her three or four words in that unknown tongue which I had heard before, and she darted away to return with a most curious bottle with three necks, a small gallipot, and a vessel of boiling water. The contents of the gallipot she poured into a hole in the body of the bottle and added what I presume to be boiling water. Then, inserting two of the necks of the bottle into my nostrils and the middle neck between my lips, she applied her own to the hole in the body of the bottle and steadily blew. I was first aware of something disagreeably pungent. Then the pungency became pleasurable. She withdrew the bottle and I found myself breathing, with a most charming sense of peace.

But my witticisms had been completely driven out of my mind.

‘It is only asthma,’ my host said, in his powerful but gentle voice. ‘We can cure you of that, Mr Bierce.’

‘Thank you, sir, thank you,’ I said. I was about to add that, with such a formula, he might make his fortune in the north; but I remembered that profusion of pure gold and said, instead: ‘It was that, that drove me here – that, and rheumatism. I thought that the hot, high, dry air …’

My host said, in his gentle voice: ‘Indeed, yes, Mr Ambrose Bierce. You are right, as usual – and, as usual, somewhat wrong. Remember your story entitled The Damned Thing in which you indicate that there are sounds inaudible to the human ear and colours invisible to the human eye. If my memory does not deceive me, you concluded with the words: “God help me, the Damned Thing is of such a colour!” Correct me if I am wrong. Listen, Mr Bierce – up here we can hear the high and the low, the squeak of the bat and the rumblings under the earth; and we know, believe me, we know. ’ His eyes were like coals, but his face was bland as he said: ‘What do you know, Mr Ambrose Bierce? … Let us change the subject. Tell me of your experiences in the Oxoxoco jungle. Were you troubled?’

‘Excepting hunger and thirst,’ I said, ‘not a bit. Once or twice I thought I saw some red-brown faces peering at me, but then they disappeared almost as if they were afraid of me.’

My host laughed, and said: ‘Do forgive me, Mr Bierce. Those savages were not afraid of you, they were afraid of Tonto.’

‘I thought it might be my guns that frightened them, sir. But who is Tonto?’

‘Tonto is a Spanish word meaning: silly, irresponsible, stupid. It is the name of the burro upon which you rode here – and for bringing you I will forgive all that perverse donkey’s sins. Allow me to assure you, however, that if you had been riding any ordinary ass, both you and it, by now, would have been butchered, eaten, and forgotten. Thank Tonto. When those jungle beasts see one of my white burros – and they know them, the dogs – they hide their heads.’ Then he mused, ‘Tonto was always a curiously rebellious animal. That is why we call him Tonto. Cross-grained. A donkey is not called a donkey without reason, sir.’ He laughed. ‘It would be no use beating him even if I were so disposed. One must earn the affection of a donkey or a mule; otherwise they will stand and be beaten to death rather than take an order. Not that I have ever beaten beast or man. We are humane here, sir, and loathe violence. Mr Bierce, sir, let it be quite plain that you do here as you will.’

‘I like that donkey, or burro, ’ said I. ‘Somehow I find him sympathetic.’

‘Then he is yours,’ said my host.

After some interchange of courtesies, I said: ‘Here is something I do not understand, sir: you live here in the wilds, near a jungle inhabited by savages. Yet you live in a magnificent stone house, attended by servants who would be worth their weight in gold even in Mexico City. I speak of gold – you eat off gold platters, drink out of gold cups or glasses of pure rock crystal. You are an accomplished man; you speak several languages with remarkable purity. This, I do not understand.’

‘Mr Bierce, I am the head of a very ancient family, indeed – possibly the most ancient family extant upon the face of the earth. No, wait! I see, springing to your lips, an inquiry unworthy of you, which would not do justice to me. Did I come over with the Conquistadores? Were my predecessors with Cortez? The answer is, no. Then you will ask whether my forebears, the ancient Aztecs, came up here to escape from the Spaniards and their horses. Sir, you may believe me when I tell you that the Aztecs were mere upstarts by my family reckoning. The very house in which I have the honour of sheltering you is almost as old as the pyramids in Yucatan. Do not speak to me, sir, of the Aztecs – without entering into the detail, they were a foolish people though numerous. My people were kings, sir, before the Aztecs crept out of the jungle. The little they knew of architecture, carving, and so forth, they derived from us. You have seen the Yucatan pyramids? Have you ever seen anything so crude? The Aztec carvings? Put your fingers in the corners of your mouth, pull, and roll your eyes. They are out of drawing, too, if you observe the limbs….