Gerald Kersh - Prelude To A Certain Midnight

Mr Pink who was ambling from group to group on uncertain feet, said: ‘Just so, friend. It’s all the same thing.’

‘How do you mean — same thing?’

Sean Mac Gabhann, with something of a sneer, said: ‘Will you be after telling me if any of you horrified people were half as horrified by what the Black and Tans did to us in Ireland?’

‘It’s exactly the same thing,’ said Mr Pink, and slurring some of his words, ‘zactlythesamething. People like to be on the safe side. People want to go on living. Yes? Well. People wait for murder to become leg-leg-legitimatized. When murder is leg — made legal — everything’s all right for murderers. People can serve the Devil in the name of God. They can find, as the Americans say, new angles . Convince themselves that in torturing and raping and killing they are working for the good of the Race. False! False! Mark my words, lots of people everywhere would do what that man did to Sonia Sabbatani, if only a few hundred people were doing the same sort of thing at the same time. Look at lynch mobs in the Southern States of America. All of a sudden, up jumps a führer, and shouts Let’s lynch this nigger! And all sorts and conditions of men throw down their tools, and rush together, and make a mad, murderous mob that wants to break places open and tear poor human beings out, and march by torchlight, and hang unhappy wretches on trees. All of a sudden, in a small town, up jump two thousand red-handed murderers. They are everywhere all the time, friend, everywhere! In every man there lurks a hungry beast. Mr Whateveryou-call-yourself, there isn’t any difference at all between that poor little girl who was murdered the other day and the tens of thousands you were telling us of. Given the opportunity, Catholics murder Protestants, Protestants murder Catholics, Catholics murder Jews and Jews slay Amalekites. Given a Mullah, the Moslems murder the Christians. In everyone there is a little egg full of murder waiting to be hatched. Crack it! Crack it and throw it out! Individual regeneration is everything. Christian girl, Jew girl —’

Bar-Kochba said, in a dangerous voice: ‘You’d better mind your language.’

‘My language? How has my language offended you, sir?’

‘I didn’t quite like the way you said that. What do you mean by Jew girl? You mean Jewish girl, don’t you?’

‘I mean exactly what I say, sir, and I’ll thank you not to grip me by the arm.’

‘You’re all the same,’ said Bar-Kochba, and he went into one of his silences — one of those grey silences in which he seemed to lose all colour and become one with his clothes. He talked to people without looking at them.

35

The Murderer, who appeared to be half asleep, was looking for Turpin, who had side-stepped and slipped away when Cigarette had begun to hiccup herself into hysterics. When, at last, Turpin’s face appeared again, between the beefy red face of Asta Thundersley and the tightly-waved head of Mrs Scripture, the Murderer found it impossible to look away from the man. The thick, cloudy, ice-cold, orange-coloured drink was creeping around in his head. He felt happy and reckless. He believed that if he had a pen and some paper he could, at this moment, write formidable prose. He would describe Detective-Inspector Turpin as a man made of mysterious grey squares, whose eyes alone were conspicuous — pale, bright, white-grey eyes, so similar in colour to the flame of burning sulphur that one expected them to give out a choking stench. No detail escaped him: he noted the narrow soft collar held, under the knot of the three-andsixpenny tie, by a fourpenny gilt pin; the severe grey suit; the old-fashioned gold watch-chain (obviously a legacy from his father) that hung between the lower pockets of his waistcoat. The pallid, puffy face of Turpin indicated that he needed sleep. Murderer found it impossible to look away from the man. The suit, he calculated, could not have cost more than four pounds. Yes, the suit had been bought for about four pounds; the shoes were procurable at nineteen shillings, the shirt — with two collars thrown in — could be got for about six-and-sixpence in the City. The Murderer smiled inwardly. Here he sat, ten feet away from a Scotland Yard man, a full-blown detective-inspector, who, if he only knew what was what, could put out a hand and, simply by grasping his shoulder, hurry himself towards a chief inspectorship.

He took another drink. In the five seconds that passed between the swallow and the gentle clink of the carefully-put-down glass, the Murderer found himself in the clutch of an irresistible yearning to get up, walk over to Turpin, and give himself up.

He drank again and, as the stuff that tasted like orange juice went down, determined to make an end of the matter before Turpin left the house.

He slid everyday prudence into the pigeon-hole of another daydream. Now he saw himself as a nonchalant man of ice and fire, making as great a sensation as any man had ever made in that locality, by means of a gesture.

He would save this gesture for its proper moment. When that moment came he would approach Detective-Inspector Turpin, touch him on the shoulder in the manner of a policeman making an arrest and say:

‘Look here, my dear sir. I really am getting a little sick of all this conjecture touching the murder of that little girl Sonia Sabbatani. As a topic of conversation it’s becoming a bore. Anything rather than a bore, don’t you think? Let’s face it. I did it.’

Taking a fresh glass from one of the waiters, he swallowed two or three more mouthfuls, turning the matter over in his mind.

Might it not be better simply, apropos of nothing, taking advantage of a blank space in the conversation, to say in a worldweary way: ‘Oh, look here, I’m the man who killed Sonia Sabbatani’?

Again, it might be better to wait until the talk, inevitably, got around to the murder, and then say:

‘Oh, that? I did that.’

It needed working out. His head was swimming.

While his eyes were open it seemed actually to be swimming — striking out clumsily to keep itself above a sort of sticky, turbid pool in which he felt that he was immersed. As soon as he closed his eyes they seemed to roll up and backward, until they looked into the dome of his skull. Then he saw something indescribable — a kaleidoscope seen through something like an opal. Wretched little pieces of tinfoil, broken glass, crockery, metal, and paper spun between mirrors and came to rest in queer and beautiful patterns — and as soon as the Murderer settled down to admire these patterns there was a whirr and a buzz, and everything dis persed. It twirled away, and came to rest in a fresh pattern.

Someone said: ‘You’re dreaming.’

He replied: ‘Yes, yes … I’m afraid I am …’

Then he opened his eyes and saw the elegant, old-fashioned room, full of cigarette smoke, at the edge of which Asta Thundersley, red and damp as an autumnal dawn, was bullying the barman:

‘Mix, you idle man, mix! What did I hire you for? To get drunk?’

The barman began to laugh like a man who is being tickled under the arms. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and his face had become mottled.

Meanwhile Sinclair Wensday was flirting conspicuously with Catchy, occasionally darting venomous glances in the direction of his wife Avril, who, looking at him with the eyes of an angry cat, deliberately rested her head on the shoulder of the young man called Roget. Five or six glasses had reduced him to the self-revelatory stage of intoxication.

‘You know,’ he was saying, ‘I’m good for nothing. I’m good for nothing at all. Some people, I mean, find happiness. Not me. I don’t know what it feels like to be happy. I’m not a man, I’m a slave. A slave,’ he repeated, while two maudlin tears trickled down his vacant face. ‘Yes, that’s all I am, a slave, a slave to pity.’