front yard scabby with refuse. It was a sad, sad habitation for a retired preacher, and I could only wonder how his parishioners could allow their former pastor's home to fall into such decrepitude.
I went cautiously up the front steps and searched for a bell. There was none, although I discovered four stained 392
screwholes in the doorjamb, a larger drilled hole in the middle, and the faint scarred mark of a square enclosing them all. Apparently a bell had once existed but had been removed.
I rapped sharply on the peeling door and waited. No answer. I knocked again. Still no reply.
'Keep trying,' someone called in a cackling voice. 'He's in there all right.'
I turned. On the sidewalk was an ancient black man wearing a holey wool cap and fingerless gloves. He seemed inordinately swollen until I realized he was wearing at least three coats and what appeared to be several sweaters and pairs of trousers. He was pushing a splintered baby carriage filled with newspapers and bottles, cans, an old coffee percolator, tattered magazines, two bent umbrellas, and other things.
'Is this the home of the Reverend Stokes?' I asked him.
'Yeah, yeah, that's it,' he said, nodding vigorously and showing a mouthful of yellow stumps. 'What you do is you keep pounding. He's in there all right. He don't never go out now. Just keep pounding and pounding. He'll come to the door by and by.'
'Thank you,' I called, but he was already shuffling down the street, a strange apparition.
So I pounded and pounded on that weathered door. It seemed at least five minutes before I heard a quavery voice from inside: 'Who is there?'
'Reverend Stokes?' I shouted. 'Could I speak to you for a moment, sir? Please?'
There was a long pause and I thought I had lost him. But then I heard the sounds of a bolt being drawn, the door unlocked. It swung open.
I was confronted by a wild bird of a man. In his late seventies, I guessed. He was actually a few inches taller than I, but his clothes seemed too big for him so he 393
appeared to have shrunk, in weight and height, to a frail diminutiveness.
His hair was an uncombed mess of grey feathers, and on his hollow cheeks was at least three days' growth of beard: a whitish plush. His temples were sunken, the skin on his brow so thin and transparent that I could see the course of blood vessels. Rheumy eyes tried to stare at me, but the focus wavered. The nose was a bone.
He was wearing what had once been a stylish velvet smoking jacket, but now the nap was worn down to the backing, and the elbows shone greasily. Beneath the unbuttoned jacket was a soiled blue workman's shirt, tieless, the collar open to reveal a scrawny chicken neck. His creaseless trousers were some black, glistening stuff, with darker stains and a tear in one knee. His fly was open. He was wearing threadbare carpet slippers, the heels broken and folded under. His bare ankles were not clean.
I was standing outside on the porch, he inside the house.
Yet even at that distance I caught the odour: of him, his home, or both. It was the sour smell of unwashed age, of mustiness, spilled liquor, unmade beds and unaired linen, and a whiff of incense as rancid as all the rest.
'Reverend Stokes?' I asked.
The bird head nodded, pecking forward.
'My name is Joshua Bigg,' I said briskly. 'I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'd just like to talk to you for a few minutes, sir.'
'About what?' he asked. The voice was a creak.
'About a former parishioner of yours, now an ordained minister himself. Godfrey Knurr.'
What occurred next was totally unexpected and unnerving.
'Nothing happened!' he screamed at me and reached to slam the door in my face. But a greenish pallor suffused his face, his hand slipped down the edge of the door, and he began to fall, to sag slowly downwards, his bony knees 394
buckling, shoulders slumping, the old body folding like a melted candle.
I sprang forward and caught him under the arms. He weighed no more than a child, and I was able to support him while I kicked the door shut with my heel. Then I half-carried, half-dragged him back into that dim, malodorous house.
I pulled him into a room that had obviously once been an attractive parlour. I put him down on a worn chesterfield, the brown leather now cracked and split. I propped his head on one of the armrests and lifted his legs and feet so he lay flat.
I straightened up, breathing through my mouth so I didn't have to smell him or the house. I stared down at him, hands on my hips, puzzling frantically what to do.
His eyes were closed, his respiration shallow but steady.
I thought his face was losing some of that greenish hue that had frightened me. I decided not to call the police or paramedics. I took off my hat and coat and placed them gingerly on a club chair with a brown corduroy slipcover discoloured with an enormous red stain on the seat cushion. Wine or blood.
I wandered back into the house. I found a small kitchen from which most of the odours seemed to be emanating.
And no wonder; it was a swamp. I picked a soiled dish-towel off the floor and held it under the cold water tap in the scummed sink. Pipes knocked, the water ran rusty, then cleared, and I soaked the towel, wrung it out, soaked it again, wrung it out again.
I carried it back to the parlour. I pulled a straight chair alongside the chesterfield. I sat down and bent over the Reverend Stokes. I wiped his face gently with the dampened towel. His eyes opened suddenly. He stared at me dazedly. His eyes were spoiled milk, curdled and cloudy.
A clawed hand came up and pushed the towel aside. I 395
folded it and laid it across his parchment brow. He let me do that and let the towel remain.
'I fainted?' he said in a wispy voice.
'Something like that,' I said, nodding. 'You started to go down. I caught you and brought you in here.'
'In the study,' he whispered, 'across the hall, a bottle of whisky, a half-filled glass. Bring them in here.'
I looked at him, troubled.
'Please,' he breathed.
I went into the study, a shadowed chamber littered with books, journals, magazines: none of them new. The room was dominated by a large walnut desk topped with scarred and ripped maroon leather. The whisky and glass were on the desk. I took them and started out.
On a small marble-topped smoking stand near the door was a white plaster replica of Michelangelo's 'David.' It was the only clean, shining, lovely object I had seen in that decaying house. I had seen nothing of a religious nature — no pictures, paintings, icons, statuary, crucifixes, etc.
I brought him the whisky. He raised a trembly hand and I held the glass to his lips. He gulped greedily and closed his eyes. After a moment he opened his eyes again, flung the towel from his brow on to the floor. He took the glass from my hand. Our fingers touched. His skin had the chill of death.
'There's another glass,' he said. 'In the kitchen.'
His voice was stronger but it still creaked. It had an unused sound: harsh and croaky.
'Thank you, no,' I said. 'It's a little early for me.'
'Is it?' he said without interest.
I sat down in the straight chair again and watched him finish the tumbler of whisky. He filled it again from the bottle on the floor. I didn't recognize the label. It looked like a cheap blend.
'You told me your name?' he asked.
'Yes, sir. Joshua Bigg.'
'Now I remember. Joshua Bigg. I don't recognize you, Mr Bigg. Where are you from?'
'New York City, sir.'
'New York,' he repeated, and then with a pathetic attempt at gaiety, he said, 'East Side, West Side, all around the town.'
He tried to smile at me. When his thin, whitish lips parted, I could see his stained dentures. His gums seemed to have shrunk, for the false teeth fitted loosely and he had to clench his jaws frequently to jam them back into place.
