The Opal, and Other Stories Read online

  Since then I have sworn an oath by Vishnu never to do the same thing again.

  I prefer to admit quite publicly that I am depraved. I take no interest in the sort of things that fill the rest of the nation with pride; I am bored by the most revered canons, my heart does not beat one whit the faster at the sight of Cloth iIde the Chaste’s lacy breast-binders.

  A fellow like me knows of nothing better than to wander about the streets when he’s on holiday, watching people go by, standing for hours in the flea-market or gazing into shop windows.

  I had spent another day in just this fashion, and when evening came I fetched out my compass and set out in a direction that would take me most quickly and assuredly away from the city theatre.

  A policeman had assured me on his honour that there wasn’t another one, so I was quite easy in my mind.

  Not long after, I was reading the boldly captioned poster advertising the ‘Vienna Orpheus Society’ by the light of a red lantern suspended above it.

  ‘Izzi Pizzi, the charming young songstress, the ‘Pride of Hernals’ makes her debut again today’ I read. I put a hand to my breast pocket to check that I still had my wallet secure, and with the bold stride of a seasoned rake I stepped through the portal of the ‘Black Horse’ as the place was called – evidently named after its bearded proprietor who directed me towards a glass door.

  I entered a long, narrow room, packed with people, and sat down at the table marked ‘reserved’ - to those in the know a sure indication that rakes are permitted to sit there. Izzi Pizzi is just about to take the stage with her lovely ballad ‘Down at Larkey Meadow where we met the soldier boys’. And every time she comes to ‘Larkey’ she produces an inimitably graceful wave of the arm, and steps back with her left foot on its elegant point.

  She, or no-one, whispers my thumping heart.

  I call to the waiter, pull out a silver florin and invite the beauty to supper. It’s half-past eleven, and the performance will soon be at an end.

  Etelka Horvath, a dark Hungarian lass, slim as a riding crop, stamps her way to the concluding bars of a marvellously intricate Czardas, accompanying herself with a stream oi’oi’s and ‘ai’s.

  The lady will be with you presently.’

  I put on my hat, abandoning my coat where it is, and go across the yard to the ‘chambre séparée’.

  The table has been laid.

  But for three people? Aha – it’s that stupid trick with the chaperone.

  And then all those glasses? By heaven, what can be done about it? I fall into deep thought.

  An idea that might save me: ‘Waiter, send across to Franz Maader, wine merchant in the Eisengasse, for a big stone jar of Ochishchenya. Got it? Ochishchenya, O-chish-chen-ya.’

  There’s a sound at the door. A strawberry-coloured cloak trimmed with a row of undulating blonde feathers and surmounted by a blue hat like a millstone comes in. I take three steps towards this apparition and offer a grave and dignified bow.

  The cloak is first to introduce itself: ‘Izzi Pizzi.’

  ‘Baron Semper Saltomortale, from the foothills of Mount Athos,’ I reply with majestic self-possession.

  Two big blue eyes observe me mistrustfully. I offer the lady my arm, and lead her to the table.

  But what have we here? A shapeless lump of black silk with enamel buttons has already found its way to a chair.

  I stare more closely. The devil! Have I gone mad? Or was the old hag hidden in the piano all the time? I help the young beauty into a chair.

  He really is a foreigner, she thinks.

  ‘My governess,’ she introduces the old woman. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’ The waiter reappears: I rush across and pin him against the door. ‘Look here, I’m not paying any fancy bills, or yesterday’s tabs. And mind you give us the almonds without their shells, and no phillippines at all either.’ The waiter winks conspiratorially with his right eye, and I press a tip into his hand, of a quality that only reigning dukes can usually expect.

  ‘And hang my stick there, too,’ I add aloud, to discourage the ladies from harbouring any suspicions.

  Izzi Pizzi orders for herself‘Caviare for starters – a whole tinful, so’s we don’t have to keep ringing.’ ‘Caviare is very healthy,’ she turns to me with an ardent glance.

  ‘In my country every gentleman always carries a lemon,’ I add, with a knowing air.

  ‘Sorry, caviare’s gone: will sardines in oil be alright?’ says the waiter.

  Izzi Pizzi flares up. ‘But there was a whole big tinful outside!’ ‘Just lead shot, Miss’ replies the brave fellow, remembering the size of his douceur. ‘Alright then. Crabs – a dozen of them!’

  ‘Izzi is an unusual Christian name,’ I say to her, when she has at last finished ordering. ‘That’s just my stage name. Actually I’m called Dinah. ‘There’s nobody finer than your little Dinah’.’

  ‘Witty, like all Viennese, my dear.’

  ‘That’s what the Count always says, don’t he, Izzi?’ interjects the old woman with a simper.

  The Count who is always so jealous?’ I ask.

  ‘You know already ...?’

  ‘Counts are always jealous,’ is my reply.

  I’m treating the little ballad-singer like a grande dame, conjuring up the most abstruse and exotic manners.

  Beads of perspiration bedeck the old woman’s brow – brought on by all her compulsive smiling.

  Izzi feigns suppressed passion, adding in her mind a retaliatory zero to the figure she imagines represents the contents of my wallet.

  ‘Multiply it by five,’ I say, out of the blue.

  She jumps with a start. ‘How did you know? What made you say that?’ Can he read thoughts? She wonders.

  Her guardian gives me a glassy stare, wondering if I’ve gone mad. I’m thinking of some evasive answer when the waiter comes in with the crabs.

  The two ‘ladies’ watch perplexed, waiting to see what strange ritual I’m going to perform. I let them wait, in the meanwhile polishing my monocle with great care.

  The old woman coughs and pulls at her enamelled skullcap. The young one fiddles with her blouse.

  At last I take pity on them, look sorrowfully at my fingernails, pick up a crab and wrap it in my serviette before putting it down again on the table.

  Izzi has already copied me: the other one is rather more cautious. Then with my fist I come down hard on the bundle, open it up and pick out the shattered remains.

  The old woman gapes in astonishment. ‘You’ll never get the stains out of the washing,’ she blurts out.

  ‘Shh,’ whispers the other, giving her a kick under the table.

  Inside me all the joy of hell breaks loose.

  The Rhenish was acid, and the Burgundian over the top,’ said little Dinah, relieved that the stupid meal was over, and with it the opportunity to make herself look silly.

  The old crone had just picked at everything.

  You see, you old bag, I think to myself, if you were a student of mythology, you’d know what the immortal Tantalus had to suffer!

  But now we come to the Champagne, you poor, star-struck fool, she thinks, giving me a better-disposed look: anyone can drink how he likes, there’s no funny stuff there.

  ‘Just put a bottle of Pommery to cool, à l’américain, waiter. Then we’ll move on to another sort. In the meanwhile you can uncork the stone jar there and bring two medium sized water glasses, one for the lady there! I won’t presume to offer it to you, my dear Miss,’ I say, turning towards Izzi. ‘It heats up the blood a little.’

  ‘What’s in it, then?’ she asks inquisitively.

  ‘Ochishchenya – table wine, a Russian thirst-quencher, which we always drink before Champagne, both ladies and gentlemen. It looks just like ordinary water, as you can see.’ And I pour out a full glass for the old woman. Mine I fill with genuine water, without anyone noticing.

  ‘You have to swallow the whole glassful at one go, otherwise the taste is spoiled; permit me to show you how
, madam – thus ...’ I have no idea what Ochishchenya is made of. I don’t even know if its inventor was a real human being. I only know that fumic nitric acid is warm christening water by comparison.

  I was overcome by a feeling of compassion as I saw the old woman really swallow the full glass down as instructed.

  Even Chingachgook, the great Mohican chieftain would have fallen dead.

  But the chaperone twitched not a muscle: she looked down and put a hand up to her coiffure.

  Now, I think, she is going to pull out a long hatpin to thrust into my heart. But nothing of the kind. ‘Really excellent, Herr Baron,’ she says, looking me straight in the eye.

  ‘Let me have a taste,’ lisps Izzi, taking a little sip.

  And she fishes out an insect that has fallen into the glass and trills, oh so knowingly: ‘these flies look like Spanish flies, Spanish flies, Spanish flies.’

  I’m not going to drop my role though, and I retain my conventional demeanour.

  When Izzi’s knee brushes against mine, I say ‘pardon’ and look across apologetically at the ‘governess’. The girl eventually loses patience and sends the old woman to bed. I thrust the stone jar into her arms as she leaves, and wish her a truly quiet night.

  So, now we shall get all the well-rehearsed old stories one after the other about her deprived childhood and so on; all about how she gave herself to some gentleman merely to pay off her brother’s gambling debts.

  The old woman who has just left is a relic of the days when she was just a tomboy scampering round the estates of her aristocratic father: a faithful old retainer. And how she hates the count who watches her so jealously! All she is short of is a few florins in cash to pay some small debts, boot-repairs and suchlike, which she is too proud to admit to him, and she would give him the brush-off on the spot. And then her colleagues! Oh God, what shameless hussies – better not to speak of them!

  I look at Izzi quizzically. It’s true, she has assumed a serious expression and fairy-tale eyes.

  ‘Etelka Horvath went on stage for the last time. The public hissed her off,’ she begins.

  Aha, I say to myself. Variety is the spice of life: she’s starting at the end.

  Today she got a room over there in the Bavaria Hotel the ... the Hungarian. I’m here in the house, the Black Horse, up on the first floor. After seven I’m not allowed to go out, nor may I receive visitors in my room. The Count is a miserable tyrant,’ she continues. ‘And then it’s a Police Regulation, too,’ I add dreamily.

  ‘That too,’ she concedes, embarrassed, ‘but from nine in the morning I am at home to visitors – and I stay in bed till twelve!’

  Pause. My foot brushes hers.

  She leans back, watching me with half-closed eyes; I can hear her teeth chattering as she quickens her breathing.

  At once I fetch the feathered cloak from its hook on the wall, and place it round her shoulders. ‘You must go to bed, my girl, you’re really feverish.’

  We walk back across the courtyard to the hotel entrance, and at the porter’s lodge at the foot of the stairs she stops to say goodbye. ‘Are you going straight home, or back into the Café, Baron?’

  ‘I must get up early tomorrow: I’ve a call to make at nine,’ I reply, looking straight into her eyes. ‘I lost my heart this evening – but you’ll promise to keep it quiet?’

  The girl nods her blue velvet hat uncertainly.

  Then I’ll tell you: I’m absolutely gone on sweet Etelka, your charming partner.’ Izzi sweeps away up the stairs; I stay at the bottom, bathed in a glow of satisfaction and whistle a little tune: ‘

  For the rose

  And the girl

  Are just asking

  To be plucked.’

  The Violet death

  The Tibetan stopped talking.

  His lean figure stood immobile for some moments, and then disappeared in the jungle.

  Sir Roger Thornton stared into the fire. If that fellow hadn’t been a Sanyasin – a holy man – that Tibetan, who was furthermore on a pilgrimage to Benares, he would, of course, not have believed him. But a Sanyasin neither lies, nor can he be deceived. And yet, what was to be made of that horrible and treacherous-looking facial twitch he had?

  Or had the firelight deceived him, reflected as it was so oddly in those Mongolian eyes? Tibetans hate the European, and jealously guard their magic secrets, with whose aid they hope one day to destroy all foreigners, when the time is right.

  Be that as it may, he, Sir Hannibal Roger Thornton is determined to see with his own eyes whether these remarkable people do really have occult powers in their possession. But he is in need of companions, bold men, whose determination will not falter even when the terrors of another world lurk behind them.

  And the Englishman surveys his companions in his mind. Among the Asians only the Afghan over there comes into the reckoning: fearless as a beast of prey, yet superstitious. Otherwise, there is only his own man – a European.

  Sir Roger prods him with his stick. Pompeius Jaburek has been totally deaf since the age often, but he knows how to lip-read every word.

  Sir Roger Thornton explains to him, with elaborate gestures, what he has learned from the Tibetan. Some twenty days march from here, in a distant, but precisely identified Himalayan valley, there is a quite remarkable district. Surrounded on three sides by sheer cliffs, its only access is barred by a belt of poisonous gas which bubbles up continuously out of the ground and which instantaneously kills any animal that attempts to pass across it. The canyon itself, extending over about fifty square miles, is said to be the home of a small tribe of Tibetan origin, who live in the middle of the luxuriant forest, wear pointed red caps and worship some devilish creature in the shape of a peacock. In the course of centuries this satanic beast has taught them the black arts and has revealed to them secrets that will revolutionise the world, teaching them a certain kind of chant that can in an instant destroy the strongest of men. Pompeius smiles in scornful disbelief.

  Sir Roger explains that he proposes to overcome the poison belt with the aid of diving helmets and back-packs loaded with compressed air, and so explore the secret of the valley beyond.

  Pompeius Jaburek nods in agreement, and rubs his dirty hands gleefully.

  The Tibetan had not lied. There below lay the mysterious gorge, filled with the most magnificent verdure, but bordered by a yellowish-brown belt of loose, eroded desert earth about half an hour’s march wide, and cutting the valley off completely from the outside world.

  The gas escaping from the ground was pure carbon monoxide.

  Sir Roger Thornton, having surveyed the distance to be crossed from a hilltop vantage point, decided to make a start the very next day. The diving helmets which he had had sent from Bombay were functioning perfectly.

  Pompeius shouldered both repeating rifles and a variety of instruments that his master had deemed indispensable. The Afghan had stubbornly refused to join them, declaring that he was always ready to enter a tiger’s lair, but would consider very carefully before doing anything that might endanger his immortal soul. So the two Europeans remained as the only ones bold enough.

  The copper diving helmets glinted in the sunlight and cast fantastic shadows across the spongy ground from which the poisonous gas rose in countless tiny bubbles. Sir Roger had struck out at a bold pace to ensure that the compressed air would suffice to make the crossing of the gas belt. Everything looked hazy, as if seen through a thin wall of water. The sunlight was a ghostly green colour, tinting the distant glaciers – the gigantic profile of the ‘roof of the world’ - and giving them the appearance of a grotesque desert.

  And now they had already reached a patch of fresh grass, and lit a match to confirm the existence of atmospheric air at every level above the ground.

  Then they both took off their helmets and packs. Behind them the wall of gas shimmered like a mass of water. The air was filled with the scent of Amberia. Glittering butterflies, as big as a hand and strangely decorated, spread t
heir wings on the motionless flowers like the pages of a book of magic incantations.

  Walking some distance apart the two explorers made their way towards a patch of woodland that obscured the view beyond.

  Sir Roger gave his deaf assistant a sign – he seemed to have heard a noise – and Pompeius cocked his rifle.

  They passed round the edge of the wood and came upon an open meadow. Barely a quarter of a mile away a group of about a hundred men, evidently Tibetans and wearing red pointed caps, were standing in a semicircle: they were already expecting the intruders.

  Sir Roger strode fearlessly towards them, with Pompeius some yards to one side.

  The Tibetans were dressed in traditional sheepskins, but looked for all that hardly like real people; their expressions were so frighteningly ugly and their features so unnatural, with an aspect of terrifying and superhuman evil. They allowed the explorers to get quite close, when suddenly, at the command of their leader, they shot their hands in the air and clapped them over their ears, at the same time giving voice with all the power of their lungs.

  Pompeius Jaburek looked quizzically across at his master, and raised his rifle, for this strange concerted movement in the crowd seemed to signal an attack: but what he now saw froze his blood.

  A shimmering, whirling cloud of gas had formed around his master, similar to the one they had just passed through. The figure of Sir Roger seemed to be growing shapeless, as if it were being worn away by the swirling gas. The head tapered to a point and the whole mass dissolved in a heap: where before the lean Englishman had been there now stood nothing but a bright violet-coloured cone, about the size and shape of a sugar-loaf.

  The deaf Pompeius was seized with a wild fury. The Tibetans were still shouting, and he gazed fixedly at their lips, trying to read what it was they were shouting.

  It was the same word, over and over again. Then suddenly their chief stepped out from among them, and they stopped, at the same time uncovering their ears and letting their hands fall. Like panthers they leaped upon Pompeius, who responded with a volley from his rifle, stopping them in their tracks for a moment. Instinctively he shouted back at them the word he had just read on their lips:-