The Opal, and Other Stories Read online

  And he hurries back indoors. As he reaches the threshold he turns once more, wags a finger in lofty disapproval and calls angrily:

  ‘Sunt pueri pueri pueri puerilia tractcmt.’

  The Waxworks

  ‘It was such a good idea of yours to send Melchior Kreuzer a wire: do you think he will do as we ask, Sinclair? If he took the first train’ - Sebaldus glanced at his watch - ‘he should be here any moment.’

  Sinclair had stood up, and by way of reply was pointing out of the window.

  They could see a tall, gaunt man hurrying up the street.

  ‘Sometimes there are moments in your life when quite ordinary everyday events seem fearfully novel, don’t you think, Sinclair? It’s like waking up suddenly and then falling asleep again, and in that intervening heartbeat of time getting a glimpse of all kinds of ominous and mysterious events.’

  Sinclair looked attentively at his friend: ‘What are you getting at?’ ‘I suppose it’s probably the waxworks that have upset me,’ Sebaldus went on, ‘I’m unspeakably nervous today. When I saw Melchior just now in the distance, and watched his figure getting bigger and bigger as he approached, I could feel some kind of perturbation, I don’t know how to say it, but it was something uncanny, as if the distance could swallow up everything, no matter what: bodies, sounds, thoughts, fancies, events. Or conversely, as if we could see them tiny at first, then slowly getting bigger, everything, even non-material things, which don’t have to move through space in the same way. - I don’t think I’m using the right words here, but you know what I mean? Everything seems to obey the same law!’ His friend nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes, and there are some thoughts and happenings that come creeping up, as if there were an ‘over there’, like a hill or something that they can hide behind; and then they jump out right in front of you when they’ve grown to giant size.’

  The door clicked open, and Dr. Kreuzer joined them at the bar.

  ‘Melchior Kreuzer: Christian Sebaldus Obereit, Chemist’, said Sinclair, introducing them.

  ‘I can imagine why you sent me the wire,’ said the new arrival. ‘Lucretia’s old trouble!? I couldn’t help shuddering when I read Mohammed Daryashkoh’s name in the paper. Have you discovered anything? Is it the same man?’

  The tent housing the waxworks had been erected in the unpaved market-place, and the last reflections of dusk glinted pink from the hundred little angular mirrors that spelled out the ornamental words across the top of the canvas portico:

  Mohammed Daryashkohs Oriental Panopticon Presented by Mr. Congo-Brown The canvas sides of the tent, brightly embellished with crudely painted scenes, swayed gently and billowed out like taut cheeks as the people inside moved about or leaned for a moment against the cloth.

  Two wooden steps led up to the entrance, above which there stood, behind a glass panel, a lifesize wax image of a woman in a sequinned leotard.

  Her pale face with its glass eyes rotated slowly, surveying the crowd below pressing around the tent, and looking from one to another before glancing to the side as if waiting for a covert signal from the dark-skinned Egyptian who presided over the cash desk. Then in a series of three jerky movements the head twisted completely backwards, before slowly and hesitantly unwinding again to return to its starting point, staring listlessly ahead. From time to time the figure suddenly twitched its arms and legs as if struck with a violent cramp, threw its head right back and bent over, till its forehead grazed its heels.

  ‘It’s that motor over there which drives the clockwork controlling these grotesque movements,’ murmured Sinclair, pointing to the polished machine on the other side of the doorway rattling away to a four-stroke rhythm.

  ‘Electrissiti, life si, all alife’ pattered the Egyptian up above, handing them down a printed slip of paper.

  ‘In half-hour, begin, si.’

  ‘Do you think this fellow possibly knows where we can find Mohammed Daryashkoh?’ asked Obereit.

  But Melchior Kreuzer wasn’t listening. He was engrossed in the leaflet, reading aloud those phrases that struck him most forcefully.

  “The magnetic twins Vayu and Dhananjaya (with vocal accompaniment)’: what’s that? Did you see that yesterday?’ he asked suddenly.

  Sinclair replied in the negative. ‘The living performers are only supposed to arrive today, and But Sebaldus Obereit interrupted him. ‘You were personally acquainted with Thomas Charnoque, though, Dr. Kreuzer, Lucre-tia’s husband?’ ‘Of course, we were friends for years.’ ‘And you never felt he might not take kindly to the child?’ Dr. Kreuzer shook his head. ‘I could see there was some mental illness slowly developing, but nobody could foresee the way it broke out so suddenly. He would torment poor Lucretia with such awful jealous scenes, and when we as his friends tried to show him how groundless his suspicions were, he would hardly listen. He was obsessed! Then, when the child came, we thought things would get better with him. And for a while they seemed to do so. But his mistrust had just sunk deeper, and one day we got the frightful news that he had suddenly gone mad, had stormed and shouted, and had then torn the baby out of its cradle and made off with him.

  All enquiries proved fruitless. Someone thought he had seen him with Mohammed Daryashkoh at a railway station. And then a few years later news came, I think from Italy, that a foreigner called Thomas Charnoque, who had often been seen in the company of a small child and an Oriental gentleman, had been found hanged. But of Daryashkoh and the boy there was no trace. Since then every enquiry has come to nothing, so I can scarcely believe that the sign hanging up outside this tent has anything to do with that Asian. And then, what of that odd name Congo-Brown? I can’t help thinking Thomas Charnoque must have mentioned it once at some time or other. Mohammed Daryashkoh was a Persian with an aristocratic background, too, with an unexampled breadth of knowledge – what would he be doing as the proprietor of a waxworks?’

  ‘Perhaps Congo-Brown was a servant of his, who has misappropriated his master’s name?’ suggested Sinclair. ‘Maybe. We shall have to follow the trail. But I’m still certain that the Asian encouraged Charnoque to make off with the child – indeed, that he put him up to it.

  He hated Lucretia absolutely. To judge by something she said once, it seems to me that he was continually pestering her with proposals, even though she found him repulsive.

  But there must be some other deeper mystery to explain Daryashkoh’s passion for revenge.

  There’s nothing more to be got out of Lucretia, and she almost passes out with emotion if you make even an incidental reference to the affair.

  All in all, Daryashkoh was an evil genius behind this family. Thomas Charnoque was completely under his thumb; he often told us he thought the Persian was the only man alive to have penetrated the mysteries of some kind of secret preadamite skill, which actually enabled him to take a human being apart, and separate out the various living organs, for his own quite inexplicable purposes.

  Of course, we thought Thomas was making it all up, and that Daryashkoh was just a malicious swindler, yet there was never any proof or evidence ... But the show’s about to start. Isn’t that the Egyptian lighting the lamps round the tent?’

  ‘Fatima, Pearl of the Orient’ had played her piece, and the spectators were walking to and fro or squinting through the peepholes cut in the red cloth walls at a crudely painted panorama of the siege of Delhi.

  Others were standing in silent contemplation of a glass coffin, in which lay the body of a dying Turk, breathing heavily, his bare chest displaying the seared and livid-edged wound inflicted by the impact of a cannon-ball. As the wax figure opened its leaden eyes the gentle whirring of machinery could be heard from the casket, and the bystanders would put their ear to the glass, the better to hear the sound.

  The motor at the entrance pumped away, driving some kind of musical organ. It was playing a tune with a stumbling, breathless beat, loud and muffled at the same time, the notes sounding strange and sodden, as if the thing was being played under water.


  The air in the tent was heavy with the smell of wax and smoky oil-lamps.

  ‘No. 311: Obeah-Wanga voodoo skulls’ Sinclair read from his leaflet as they both gazed at three severed heads arranged in a cabinet set against the wall in a corner, incredibly lifelike, with mouths gaping and eyes staring with horrific expressions.

  ‘Do you know, those are not wax at all – they’re genuine!’ said Obereit with astonishment, pulling a magnifying glass from his pocket. ‘But I just don’t understand how it’s been done. It’s extraordinary, the whole of the cut surface of the neck has been covered over with silk – or perhaps it has grown over. And I can’t see any joins! It just looks exactly as though they have grown like pumpkins, and have never sat on human shoulders at all. If only we could just lift the glass lid a little!’

  ‘All wax, si, life wax, si – real dead head too dear, and smell – phoo,’ said the Egyptian, suddenly materialising behind them. He had sidled up to them without their noticing: his face twitched, as if he were trying to suppress a mad laugh.

  The two visitors exchanged a startled glance. ‘Let’s hope the old gyppo heard nothing – we were just talking about Daryashkoh,’ said Sinclair after a while.

  ‘Do you think Dr. Kreuzer will manage to get anything out of Fatima? If the worst comes to the worst we shall have to invite her round one evening to share a bottle of wine. He’s still standing out there talking to her.’

  The music stopped abruptly, someone sounded a gong and a piercing female voice penetrated through the curtain: ‘Vayu and Dhananjaya, magnetic twins, 8 years old. The greatest marvel in the world. They will sssingl’

  The crowd pressed towards the stage at the back of the tent.

  Dr. Kreuzer had re-entered the tent: he grasped Sinclair’s arm. ‘I’ve got an address,’ he whispered. ‘The Persian is living in Paris under an assumed name. Here it is.’

  And he surreptitiously displayed a scrap of paper to the two friends. ‘We must take the next train to Paris!’

  ‘Vayu and Dhananjaya. They will sssingl’ screeched the voice once more.

  The curtain drew aside, and there lurched onto the stage a grotesque and gruesome figure dressed as a page and carrying a bundle under one arm.

  The re-animated corpse of a drowned man, with long blond hair and dressed in scraps of multicoloured velvet.

  A ripple of revulsion spread through the crowd.

  The thing was the size of an adult, but it had the features of a child. Its face, arms and legs, its whole body indeed, even down to the fingers, were inexplicably swollen and bloated.

  It was inflated, like a thin rubber balloon. The skin on the lips and hands were drained of colour, almost translucent, as if they were full of air or water, and the eyes looked dead, without a flicker of comprehension.

  It stared helplessly about.

  ‘Vayu, se greater brosair,’ explained the hidden female voice with its peculiar accent; and from behind the curtain, fiddle in hand, a woman appeared in the guise of an animal-tamer, and wearing high red Polish boots trimmed with fur.

  ‘Vayu’ she said again, indicating the inflated child with her fiddle-bow. Then she opened a small book she was carrying and read out aloud:

  ‘Sese two male childs are now eight year old, and se great marvel. Sey join only by se navel cord, which iss tree ell long and altogeser transparent. If one iss cut off, se osair must die. It iss astonishment to all scientists. Vayu, he iss far above his age. Developed. But behind in mind, while Dhananjaya, he iss so very clevair, but so very small. Like a baby. For he iss born wiss no skin, and grows not. He must be kept in animal bubble, in warm water. Se parents are not ever known. It iss se greatest sport of nature.’

  She signed to Vayu, who with great hesitation unwrapped the bundle on his arm.

  A head the size of a fist was revealed, with great piercing eyes.

  A face, a blue-veined baby face, yet so ancient a mien and with an expression so menacingly twisted with hate, evil and full of such indescribable vileness that the spectators involuntarily shrank back.

  ‘M – My brother D-D -Dhananjaya,’ stammered the inflated creature staring at the public again uncompre-hendingly.

  Take me out – I think I’m going to faint. Cod almighty!’ whispered Melchior Kreuzer. They led him stumbling slowly, half unconscious, towards the exit, and past the sly and watchful gaze of the Egyptian.

  The woman had picked up her fiddle, and they heard her strike up a song to accompany the strangled voice of the overblown child;

  ‘Oh once I had a comrade true You’ll never find a better.’ And the infant, incapable of articulating the words properly, shrilled along, echoing in piercing tones no more than the mere vowel sounds: ‘Owahai Inaha howa wu iou ea ai a ea.’

  Dr. Kreuzer hung heavily on Sinclair’s arm, gulping in the fresh air. The sound of applause drifted out of the tent.

  ‘It’s Charnoques face! What a fearful similarity,’ groaned Melchior Kreuzer. ‘But how – I don’t understand. Everything was spinning in front of my eyes, I was sure I was going to faint. Sebaldus, please, fetch a cab. I’ve got to tell the authorities. Something’s got to be done. You, both of you, get off to Paris – Mohammed Daryashkoh -you must have him arrested at once.’

  The two friends were sitting once more looking out of the window of the secluded cafe at Melchior Kreuzer as he hurried up the street.

  ‘Just as it was before,’ said Sinclair. ‘Fate is so miserly with her scenarios!’ They heard the door close with a click. Dr. Kreuzer entered, and they shook hands.

  ‘You really do owe us a long report,’ said Sebaldus Obereit eventually, after Sinclair had detailed how they had spent fully two fruitless months in Paris in pursuit of the Persian. ‘You sent us so little information.’

  ‘I nearly lost the ability to write; speaking too, nearly,’ apologised Kreuzer.

  ‘I feel I have grown so old since then. When you’re continually presented with new puzzles, you get worn down faster than you think. Most people can’t possibly imagine what it means for those who always have to carry some eternally insoluble riddle about in their minds. And then, to have to watch poor Lucretia’s agonies every day!

  It wasn’t long ago that she died – I wrote you that – of grief and despair.

  Congo-Brown escaped from the prison where he was waiting to be questioned, and that was the end of the last source from which we might have got at the truth.

  I’ll tell you everything in detail sometime later, when the immediacy of it all has receded. It’s all too close just yet.’

  ‘But aren’t there any clues at all?’ asked Sinclair.

  ‘It was a bleak picture I uncovered. Things our medical department could not or would not credit. Black superstition, tissues of lies, hysterical self-deceit they insisted on calling it, and yet there was so much that was frighteningly obvious.

  I had everyone arrested at once. Congo-Brown admitted that the twins, indeed the whole Panopticon for that matter – had been given to him by Daryashkoh in return for earlier services rendered, and that Vayu and Dhanan-jaya were an artificially created double figure, which the Persian had put together out of the elements of a single child (Thomas Charnoque’s own son), without interrupting its vital function. He had simply teased out a number of magnetic currents of a kind which exist in everyone of us and which can be individually picked out by means of certain secret processes, and then, with the aid of some organic additives, created two quite different consciousnesses possessing quite different characteristics.

  Altogether, Daryashkoh was an expert in the most abstruse arts. Even the three Obeah-Wanga skulls were no more than the remains of other experiments, which had been previously kept alive for some time. It was all confirmed by Fatima, Congo-Brown’s inamorata, and everyone else, who were themselves all quite innocent.

  Fatima further deposed that Congo-Brown was an epileptic who during certain phases of the moon would be seized with a strange state of mind in which he imagined he w
as Mohammed Darayaskoh himself. In this condition his pulse would cease, his breathing would be arrested and his features undergo an alteration, such that you would imagine you had Daryashkoh himself (who had in the past often been seen about in Paris) right in front of you.

  Furthermore, he would under these circumstances emanate such an undeniable magnetic force that, without having to issue any sort of order, he could induce anyone to imitate every movement or forced gesture that he himself proposed. It was as if people were struck by St. Vitus’ dance – irresistible. He possessed an unparalleled suppleness, and could for example produce every sort of dervish-movement by means of which he could generate the most enigmatic phenomena and shifts of consciousness (the Persian had personally taught him these) – gestures so elaborate that no contortionist in the world could follow them.

  In the course of their travels from place to place with the waxworks Congo-Brown had occasionally attempted to use this mesmeric power to force children to mirror these distortions. Most of them had shattered their spines. The rest had been so affected in the mind that they had been reduced to imbecility. Our doctors naturally shook their heads at Fatima’s assertions, but subsequent events must have given them pause for thought. Congo-Brown in fact absconded from the chambers where he was being examined through a side-room, and the magistrate reported that just as he was about to start an interrogation the fellow had suddenly stared at him and waved his arms about in an odd fashion. The magistrate had felt a sudden uncertainty and had attempted to ring for assistance, but he had been struck by a paralytic attack, his tongue had somehow twisted round in a way he could not now recall (the whole fit must have begun with this feeling in his mouth) and he had then passed out.’

  ‘Couldn’t they find out anything about how Mohammed Daryashkoh had made this double creature without actually killing the child?’ interrupted Sebaldus. Dr. Kreutzer shook his head. ‘No. I thought a lot about what Thomas Charnoque had told me once, though. A human life is quite different from what we imagine, he used to say; it is made up from a number of magnetic currents that circulate partly within and partly outside the body; and our scientists are wrong to assert that someone who has had his skin removed is bound to die for lack of oxygen. The element that the skin draws from the atmosphere is something quite different from oxygen. Furthermore, the skin doesn’t really absorb this fluid – it is only a kind of grid serving to enable the current to cover the surface -rather like a piece of wire netting which, dipped in soapy water, enables the bubbles to spread across all its spaces. Even people’s spiritual character, he said, was shaped by the dominance of this or that current, so that an excess of one particular one could produce a character of such extraordinary depravity that it exceeded our comprehension.’