[IV...] In this, there was one of those typically Lavalesque flashes,
an infernally inspired cri de coeur, when The Ripper, remorseful,
sunken in shame, enraged at his destiny, surfeited with killings but
unable to stop, tore a rhymed couplet from the bottom of his soul and
flung it like a live thing into the house:
La vie est un corridor noir
D'impuissance et de désespoir!
That's not very much in English--"Life is a black corridor of impotence
and despair"--but in the original, and when hurled with the ferocity of
Laval, it was Kean's Hamlet, Irving's Macbeth, Salvini's Othello, all
fused into a single theatrical moment.
And, in that moment, there was another fusion--a fusion, in my own mind,
of two voices. One was that of the commissaire de police--"It
resembles, does it not, the work of your English killer . . . Jaques?"
The other was the voice of the dead Clothilde, repeating a phrase she
had first uttered in life, and then, after her death, in that fugitive
dream--"Je le déteste!"
As the curtain fell, to tumultuous applause, I sent my card backstage,
thus informing Laval that "un admirateur" wished to buy him a
drink. Might we meet at L'Oubliette? The response was long in coming,
insultingly long, but at last it did come and it was affirmative. I
left at once for L'Oubliette.
Forty minutes later, after I had consumed half a bottle of red wine,
Laval entered. The waitress brought him to my table and we shook hands.
I was shocked, for I looked into the ugliest and most evil face I had
ever seen. I immediately realised that Laval never wore make-up on the
stage.
He had no need of it.
V. An Intimate Knowledge of Horrors
Looking about, Laval said, "L'Oubliette," and sat down. "The filthy
place is aptly named. Do you know what an oubliette is M'sieu'?"
"No," I said; I wish my French were as excellent as your English."
"But surely you know our word, oublier?"
"My French-English lexicon," I replied, "says it means 'to forget, to omit,
to leave.'"
He nodded. "That is correct. In the old days, a variety of secret dungeon
was called an oubliette. It was subterranean. It had no door, no window.
It could be entered only by way of a trap door at the top. The trap door was
too high to reach, even by climbing, since the walls sloped in the wrong
direction and were eternally slick with slime. There was no bed, no chair,
no table, no light, and very little air. Prisoners were dropped down into
such dungeons to be--literally--forgotten. They seldom left alive. Infrequently,
when a prisoner was fortunate enough to be freed by a change of administration,
he was found to have become blind--from the years in the dark. And almost always,
of course, insane."
"You have an intimate knowledge of horrors, Monsieur Laval," I said.
He shrugged. "C'est mon métier."
"Will you drink red wine?"
"Since you are paying, I will drink whisky," he said; adding, "if they have it here."
[...]
"You know, sir, you are really quite rude."
"True."
"You must have few friends."
"Wrong. I have none."
"But that is distressing! Surely--"
He interrupted. "There is a verse of the late Rostand's. Perhaps you know it.
'A force de vous voir vous faire des amis . . .' et cetera?"
"My French is poor."
"You need not remind me. I will give you a rough translation. 'Seeing the
sort of friends you others have in tow, I cry with joy: send me another foe!'"
(the above in ISBN 1-56865-043-4, an anthology edited by and @ Marvin Kaye, Doubleday, 1993)
The Door
by E. B. White
Everything (he kept saying) is something it isn't. And everybody is
always somewhere else. Maybe it was the city, being in the city,
that made him feel how queer everything was and that it was
something else. Maybe (he kept thinking) it was the names of the
things. The names were tex and frequently koid. Or they were flex
and oid or they were duroid (sand) or flexsan (duro), but
everything was glass (but not quite glass) and the thing that you
touched (the surface, washable, crease-resistant) was rubber, only
it wasn't quite rubber and you didn't quite touch it but almost.
The wall, which was glass but turned out on being approached not
to be a wall, it was something else, it was an opening or
doorway--and the doorway (through which he saw himself approaching)
turned out to be something else, it was a wall. And what he had
eaten not having agreed with him.
He was in a washable house, but he wasn't sure. Now about those
rats, he kept saying to himself. He meant the rats that the
Professor had driven crazy by forcing them to deal with problems
which were beyond the scope of rats, the insoluble problems. He
meant the rats that had been trained to jump at the square card
with the circle in the middle, and the card (because it was
something it wasn't) would give way and let the rat into a place
where the food was, but then one day it would be a trick played on
the rat, and the card would be changed, and the rat would jump but
the card wouldn't give way, and it was an impossible situation (for
a rat) and the rat would go insane and into its eyes would come the
unspeakably bright imploring look of the frustrated, and after the
convulsions were over and the frantic racing around, then the
passive stage would set in and the willingness to let anything be
done to it, even if it was something else.
He didn't know which door (or wall) or opening in the house to jump
at, to get through, because one was an opening that wasn't a door
(it was a void, or kid) and the other was a wall that wasn't an
opening, it was a sanitary cupboard of the same color. He caught a
glimpse of his eyes staring into his eyes, in the and in them was
the expression he had seen in the picture of the rats--weary after
convulsions and the frantic racing around, when they were willing
and did not mind having anything done to them. More and more (he kept
saying) I am confronted by a problem which is incapable of solution (for
this time even if he chose the right door, there would be no food
behind it) and that is what madness is, and things seeming
different from what they are. He heard, in the house where he was,
in the city to which he had gone (as toward a door which might, or
might not, give way), a noise--not a loud noise but more of a low
prefabricated humming. It came from a place in the base of the wall
(or stat) where the flue carrying the filterable air was, and not
far from the Minipiano, which was made of the same material
nailbrushes are made of, and which was under the stairs. 'This,
too, has been tested,' she said, pointing, but not at it, 'and
found viable.' It wasn't a loud noise, he kept thinking, sorry
that he had seen his eyes, even though it was through his own eyes
that he had seen them.
First will come the convulsions (he said), then the exhaustion,
then the willingness to let anything be done. 'And you better
believe it will be.'
All his life he had been confronted by situations which were
incapable of being solved, and there was a deliberateness behind
all this, behind this changing of the card (or door), because they
would always wait until you had learned to jump at the certain
card (or door)--the one with the circle--and then they would
change it on you. There have been so many doors changed on me, he
said, in the last twenty years, but it is now becoming clear that
it is an impossible situation, and the question is whether to jump
again, even though they ruffle you in the rump with a blast of
air--to make you jump. He wished he wasn't standing by the
Minipiano. First they would teach you the prayers and the Psalms,
and that would be the right door(the one with the circle) and the
long sweet words with the holy sound, and that would be the one to
jump at to get where the food was. Then one day you jumped and it
didn't give way, so that all you got was the bump on the nose, and
the first bewilderment, the first young bewilderment.
I don't know whether to tell her about the door they substituted or
not, he said, the one with the equation on it and the picture of
the amoeba reproducing itself by division. Or the one with the
photostatic copy of the check for thirty-two dollars and fifty
cents. But the jumping was so long ago, although the bump is . .
. how those old wounds hurt! Being crazy this way wouldn't be so
bad if only, if only. If only when you put your foot forward to
take a step, the ground wouldn't come up to meet your foot the way
it does. And the same way in the street (only I may never get back
to the street unless I jump at the right door), the curb coming up
to meet your foot, anticipating ever so delicately the weight of
the body, which is somewhere else. 'We could take your name,' she
said, 'and send it to you.' And it wouldn't be so bad if only you
could read a sentence all the way through without jumping (your
eye) to something else on the same page; and then (he kept
thinking) there was that man out in Jersey, the one who started to
chop his trees down, one by one, the man who began talking about
how he would take his house to pieces, brick by brick, because he
faced a problem incapable of solution, probably, so he began to
hack at the trees in the yard, began to pluck with trembling
fingers at the bricks in the house. Even if a house is not
washable, it is worth taking down. It is not till later that the
exhaustion sets in.
But it is inevitable that they will keep changing the doors on you,
he said, because that is what they are for; and the thing is to
get used to it and not let it unsettle the mind. But that would
mean not jumping, and you can't. Nobody can not jump. There will
be no not-jumping. Among rats, perhaps, but among people never.
Everybody has to keep jumping at a door (the one with the circle
on it) because that is the way everybody is, especially some
people. You wouldn't want me, standing here, to tell you, would
you, about my friend the poet (deceased) who said, 'My heart has
followed all my days something I cannot name'? (It had the circle
on it.) And like many poets, although few so beloved, he is gone.
It killed him, the jumping. First, of course, there were the
preliminary bouts, the convulsions, and the calm and the
willingness.
I remember the door with the picture of the girl on it (only it was
spring), her arms outstretched in loveliness, her dress (it was
the one with the circle on it) uncaught, beginning the slow,
clear, blinding cascade-and I guess we would all like to try that
door again, for it seemed like the way and for a while it was the
way, the door would open and you would go through winged and
exalted (like any rat) and the food would be there, the way the
Professor had it arranged, everything O.K., and you had chosen the
right door for the world was young. The time they changed that
door on me, my nose bled for a hundred hours--how do you like
that, Madam? Or would you prefer to show me further through this
so strange house, or you could take my name and send it to me, for
although my heart has followed all my days something I cannot
name, I am tired of the jumping and I do not know which way to go,
Madam, and I am not even sure that I am not tired beyond the
endurance of man (rat, if you will) and have taken leave of sanity.
What are you following these days, old friend, after your recovery
from the last bump? What is the name, or is it something you
cannot name? The rats have a name for it by this time, perhaps,
but I don't know what they call it. I call it and it comes in
sheets, something like insulating board, unattainable and
ugli-proof.
And there was the man out in Jersey, because I keep thinking about
his terrible necessity and the passion and trouble he had gone to
all those years in the indescribable abundance of a householder's
detail, building the estate and the planting of the trees and in
spring the lawn-dressing and in fall the bulbs for the spring
burgeoning, and the watering of the
grass on the long light evenings in summer and the gravel for the
driveway (all had to be thought out, planned) and the decorative
borders, probably, the perennials and the bug spray, and the
building of the house from plans of the architect, first the sills,
then the studs, then the full corn in the ear, the floors laid on
the floor timbers, smoothed, and then the carpets upon the smooth
floors and the curtains and the rods therefor. And then, almost
without warning, he would be jumping at the same old door and it
wouldn't give: they had changed it on him, making life no longer
supportable under the elms in the elm shade, under the maples in
the maple shade.
'Here you have the maximum of openness in a small room.'
It was impossible to say (maybe it was the city) what made him feel
the way he did, and I am not the only one either, he kept
thinking--ask any doctor if I am. The doctors, they know how many
there are, they even know where the trouble is only they don't like
to tell you about the prefrontal lobe because that means making a
hole in your skull and removing the work of centuries. It took so
long coming, this lobe, so many, many years. (Is it something you
read in the paper, perhaps?) And now, the strain being so great,
the door having been changed by the Professor once too often . . .
but it only means a whiff of ether, a few deft strokes, and the
higher animal becomes a little easier in his mind and more like the
lower one. From now on, you see, that's the way it will be, the
ones with the small prefrontal lobes will win because the other
ones are hurt too much by this incessant bumping. They can stand
just so much, em, Doctor? (And what is that, pray, that you have in
your hand?) Still, you never can tell, em, Madam?
He crossed (carefully) the room, the thick carpet under him softly,
and went toward the door carefully, which was glass and he could
see himself in it, and which, at his approach, opened to allow him
to pass through; and beyond he half expected to find one of the old
doors that he had known, perhaps the one with the circle, the one
with the girl her arms outstretched in loveliness and beauty before
him. But he saw instead a moving stairway, and descended in light
(he kept thinking) to the street below and to the other people. As
he stepped off, the ground came up slightly, to meet his foot.
