The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

A PAIR OF VIKINGS

I.

The first I heard of it—and heard of them—was, of course, from the irrepressible Paul. Naturally. Nothing went on, in that little English country town, that Paul didn’t at once know; and nothing he knew could remain for more than five minutes a secret. He was everywhere, with that long aristocratic nose of his, that hawk-bright and frost-blue stare—whether it was to make quick notes on his little pad for a sketch, or to make a sketch itself, or to take elaborately careful photographs of some obscure “subject” which was later to become, as he put it, an “idea.” You would meet him anywhere, everywhere. Perched on a stile, miles from anywhere, in the middle of the marsh, you would find him waiting to get a very special and particular light on the reeds, meanwhile writing out, in his tiny needle-sharp handwriting, any number of color charts for proposed landscapes which read like poems, like Imagist poems. Once I discovered him astride an old wreck of a steamroller, which had been abandoned by a corner of the muddy little river. And once flat on his belly in the very middle of the path to the shipyards, taking, from that earthworm angle—angleworm?—a peculiar fore-shortened photograph of some up-ended, half-finished fence posts. In fact, he was into everything.

But people, too—he was just as excitable about people, just as curious about them, as about anything else. He was a “collector” of people, and especially the odd and queer ones, or the brilliant ones; and if his extraordinary studio was a perfect museum of oddments—shells, old bottles, misshapen stones, dead leaves, dead insects, broken dolls, whatever had taken his fancy, or struck him as suggestive—so his salons were full of the most surprising people imaginable. He didn’t care where they came from or what they did, so long as they had character, or were handsome, or were amusing—those were the three tests. The social mixtures, at these semi-occasional salons, were simply indescribable—women with blue hair, yogis, dipsomaniac composers, circus dwarfs, countesses, mannequins, chorus girls—but it made no difference, they always seemed to have a good time, Paul saw to that; and of course Paul himself had the best time of all. Whether he was discussing the psychological implications of surrealism with a pale Belgian poet, or giving amusingly amorous advice about her make-up to a pretty, an extremely pretty, young society photographer, it was all the same to him. He enjoyed life immensely.

It was no surprise to me, therefore, when he came under my lighted window, late one summer evening, and told me, laughing excitedly, that he had something to show me.

“What is it?” I said.

“Come down and see.”

When I had joined him in the cobbled street, and repeated my question, he asked one of his own—he asked if I knew that a fair had come to town. As a matter of fact, I did. Early that day I had seen the first of the brightly-striped tents and pavilions going up, and the gaudy gypsy wagons drawn up in a ring on the playing-salts, and the ditch being dug behind a canvas screen, for a latrine, and the fantastic red-and-gold horses of the merry-go-round emerging proudly from their dirty covers. It was the fair’s annual visit to the town, for a week of penny gambling and loud music, but there was nothing so remarkable in that. And I said so.

“Ah—but have you seen it all—have you seen the Drome of Death?”

“The Drome of Death?”

“Yes—and my pair of vikings!”

“Vikings! A pair of vikings! What on earth are you talking about?”

“Then you haven’t seen it all—not by any means. My dear fellow—the most beautiful pair of human beings you ever saw in your life! Come along, or we’ll be too late.”

We hurried along the High Street then, to the little cliff that overlooks the playing-salts, and there below us was all the glare and uproar of the fair—the crowds, the shouts, the strange squealing watery music of the merry-go-round, with its circling and nodding horses, the rows of painted swing-boats, with their tense and silent occupants clinging to the ropes as they darted up from light into shadow, and down into light again—it was all exactly as usual, exactly as it always was. Or so I was thinking, until I heard a sound that seemed to me unfamiliar. It sounded like a motor-bike being accelerated in bursts, each louder than the last—a crescendo of mechanical roars, and then a dying fall, and another crescendo of roars, and a third; and looking down from our parapet to see if I could find where it came from, I saw the Drome of Death for the first time, and then below it, in a dazzle of spotlight, standing on a little raised dais of bright red plush, with the two motor-bicycles beside them, the vikings.

Even at that distance, I could see that Paul must be right. There was something regal in the proud and careless stance of the two blue figures. They stood there above the crowd with a sort of indolent patrician contempt; you feel the same thing in a caged lion or tiger at the zoo. And when we had descended the steep stairway, which quartered down the face of the little cliff, and had pressed through the crowds of merry-makers round the gambling booths and coconut-shy, and came to the foot of the red plush dais, it was at once evident to me that not only had Paul not exaggerated, but that he was guilty of an understatement. The boy and girl—for they seemed hardly more than that—were blindingly, angelically, beautiful. Angelically, because they were both so incredibly fair, so blond, so blue-eyed—but also because there was a fierce purity about them, something untamable, almost unchallengeable. Vikings, yes—Paul had hit the nail on the head, as usual. And the effect was further heightened—now that I looked again—by the fact that the girl, who was otherwise dressed exactly as the boy was, in a blue shirt open at the throat, and loosely fitting dark blue trousers, wore a snug little blue hat, which sat very close to her fair head, with bright silver wings at either side. The effect was really magical; for as she looked over our heads, undazzled by the brilliance of the spotlight in which she stood, it was as if she were already in swift motion, already positively flying. She was speed itself—she was an arrow. And her eyes were the bluest, and the fiercest, I have ever seen.

Meanwhile, the boy had raced the engine of his motor-bike three or four times with a shattering roar, the ticket seller announced through a little megaphone that the performance, the last of the evening, would begin, and people were climbing up the rickety stairs that led to the top of the great varnished cylinder which was called the Drome of Death. A perfect cat’s cradle of wire stays tethered it to earth—I noticed that these, like the wall of the Drome itself, seemed to be brand new—a fact which subsequently, of course, was verified. The boy and girl wheeled their motor-bikes along the runway to a door in the Drome, which an assistant clamped fast behind them, Paul bought the two tickets, and we hurried up the stairs.

“Do you mean to say they’re going to ride round in this mere barrel?” I said, as we seated ourselves, and looked down into the wooden interior. Viewed from the rim, it really looked like an enormous dice-cup. The two vikings stood beside their motorbikes, wiping their hands.

“Of course. Nothing but centrifugal force—quite simple, really, I believe—they’ve been doing it for years in the States—but just the same it gives you quite a thrill. And those two people—my God, did you ever see anything like them? Look at that girl! Look at the way she stands there! Like a flame, my boy—she’s like a flame. And he’s really just as fine—they’re married, I think.”

“Married? Those children?”

“Well, she’s wearing a ring—you’ll see it when she comes up here.”

“Comes up here?”

“Right to the top, almost up to the top—that’s why they’ve got this guard-wire here.…”

The boy, his fair cool face turned upward, was saying:

“—you see how it is—the risks are thought to be too great, and therefore we are unable to obtain any insurance whatever. No life insurance company will take us—no matter what the premium. That is why I ask you to make any contribution you can, no matter how small—it simply goes into a separate fund which we keep in case of accident.”

He stood there, looking up, calmly and as if appraisingly—one hand resting lightly on his hip—the girl was leaning idly, indifferently, against her motor-bike, not looking anywhere, and visibly bored—it was all quite extraordinary. A cultured voice, too, clear and firm—the accent that of a gentleman. Pennies, sixpences, a few shillings, fell spinning and rolling into the Drome—he said “thank you—thank you—” as he stooped unhurryingly, and with irreproachable dignity, to pick them up. The girl watched him, unmoving, for a second or two, and then began examining her fingernails.

She remained like that, too, exactly like that, at the center of the Drome, while he started his motor-bike, rode with increasing speed round and round the tilted floor at the bottom, and then suddenly was circling round the wall itself. The uproar was deafening. The pent-up racket of the motor-bike would have been quite enough by itself—but in addition the Drome began to creak terrifyingly under that swift rush of pressure and weight, and you could see it actually changing in shape as the rider flashed round the gleaming walls. Higher and higher he came, spiraling always nearer, until at last he was roaring past us within arm’s reach of the top, the hot gust beating against our faces and gone and then back again, his fair hair blown back like a flag. And then he was dipping downward again: and had taken his hands off the handlebars; and his arms outspread, was circling as easily as a swallow. It was as beautiful, and looked just as easy, as that. It was pure flight.

I was just going to say something like this to Paul, and just thinking to myself that swallows alone, of all birds, seem to use flight for pure pleasure, when I happened to look at the girl. She had not moved. The proud face, under its silver wings, was turned slightly aside and downward, she again examined her fingernails, still leaning idly against her tilted machine, only once did she glance upward toward the moving figure above her; and then it was a glance not so much directed toward him as beyond him. Was she—as she appeared—so completely indifferent to him? Or was the whole behavior merely professional? It did not change when he dropped down, slowing, to the tilted floor, and came to a stop beside her—nor when he said something to her, in a low voice, either. Something very brief, only a word or two—he looking straight at her, she looking away—instructions, perhaps, or a word of advice. She simply continued to look away, as if through the walls, while he was announcing to us, in his polite and cultured voice, that he and his wife were the first in the world to ride two motor-bicycles simultaneously in the Drome of Death—adding, as a cautionary note, that it would be as well if the spectators would keep a little back of the guard-wire. And then, in another moment or two, the girl had mounted her machine, and was circling with greater and greater speed for her first strike onto the wall, and—flash!—she was already there, and the two bright wings were swiftly mounting toward us. It seemed to me that she had rushed the whole attack on the perpendicular wall much more rapidly than he had—or could I be mistaken? And that even now she was traveling faster. In next to no time she was whizzing round the very top, barely below the guard-wire, the beautiful viking face fixed in a sort of fierce serenity of speed, the loose blue collar blown back from the white throat; and then, below, the other machine had suddenly shot upwards; and in an indescribable uproar which seemed to be racking the walls to pieces the two flying figures circled and recircled, one above the other—the girl keeping rigidly at one level, the boy alternately dipping and soaring. One didn’t know which of them to watch—the rapt face above, or the more brilliant performance of the boy below. But now, one had to watch him for once more he was sailing like a bird, with his hands off the handlebars, and now too he was taking something out of his pocket—it was a square of black silk, a black handkerchief, fluttering as fiercely as if it were flame in its attempt to escape from his hands, the two hands holding it up before his face. Yes—he was actually going to blindfold himself! The black square blew over his face, over his eyes, and was held stiffly there by the sheer speed at which he was moving, and now again, his arms outspread at either side, he swooped like a swallow round the shining Drome, easily, effortlessly, while the girl above, traveling a little more slowly, for the first time seemed to be watching him.…

But watching him with that same fierceness, still, that same air of remote and unbreakable pride—certainly without fear, either for herself or him. Almost angrily, in fact, or contemptuously; and as if impatient, too, for him to be done with it, to get it over with. You could feel her thinking—“Come on, come on, we’ve had enough of this now, you’ve shown off enough, let’s get down off this wall and go home”—! But all the while, too, her own steel-like delight in the speed and danger, as if that gleaming perpendicular wall, for her, was something more precious than life itself.

It was coming to an end, however. The boy had whipped off the black handkerchief, had tucked it away quickly, was circling downward and slowing, the bursts of sound from the exhaust becoming irregular and intermittent—and now he was out on the floor again, and the girl, in her turn, was spiraling beautifully down the wall, slower and slower, the silver wings pointing downward, the fierce head held proudly back. In less than a minute, without any fuss, she had joined the boy in the center of the floor, they were stacking the motor-bikes for the night, and the people beside us were getting up to leave. Down below, the curved door in the wall of the Drome had been opened from outside, and the assistant had come in, bringing a wooden mallet. The girl went out first, without saying a word—the boy just pausing to say something to the assistant, then following. Our ten golden minutes were over.

“Well”—Paul said as we went down the narrow stairs—“was I right?”

“You were right. Words fail me. A pair of nonpareils. Why they’re incredible! And how exactly like you to find them!”

He chuckled.

“Yes—it was a bit of luck.”

“But tell me—why was there no applause?”

“Isn’t that funny? There never is any. Not a scrap. You know—I fancy it’s because people are really dazzled, really overcome—do you think it could be that—?”

“It may be—it may be. I certainly was …!”

Outside, the fair was closing up for the night. The merry-go-round had been darkened, lights here and there were being turned off, the last few stragglers were drifting across the littered playing-salts. Shadows moved on the curtained windows of the gypsy wagons and caravans—the fair-folk were going to bed. Beside the huge green lorry which was the power-plant, the night watchman sat in a wooden chair on the grass—he was reading a paper by the light of one naked bulb, stuck in the side of the lorry, and keeping an eye on his throbbing motors. Cables ran from the lorry across the grass to the merry-go-round, the Drome, the various wagons—we stepped over them carefully, deciding to walk home by way of the river.

The boy and girl were nowhere in sight.

II.

Of course, we both saw them again, and not once but many times. How could we possibly keep away from them? We couldn’t, and didn’t. We became addicts, sitting through performance after performance—we took parties of friends—we went, in short, over and over again, returning willy-nilly to that delight as the drunkard returns to his bottle. Paul took along his camera, naturally, and got dozens of remarkable photographs—and how many sketches he made goodness knows. At the end, we knew those two lovely creatures absolutely by heart—as you usually know only those people you love. And all this time, right to the end, they both remained just exactly as superb and beautiful and inviolable as they had seemed at the beginning.

That is, as far as the performance was concerned. And in fact, the effect was actually heightened by what we found out about them—it added an element of the dramatic to know what we knew, and to know why they behaved as they did. How much more, too, if we could have known how it was destined to end, and how soon—! But that was impossible, of course, and nobody guessed it; and meanwhile it was quite enough for us to watch day after day the girl’s savage and contemptuous indifference, and the angry pride which so enhanced her beauty, and counter to this, the boy’s calm and cool and patient courage, the quiet courage of the one who knows that he can wait longest.

A start was made when Paul decided to ask them to Sunday tea, and did so, and they accepted. They were surprised, but they were also delighted. They came, and it was a huge success, and—as Margaret told me afterwards, for I was unable to go, much to my sorrow—they behaved beautifully, simply beautifully. Somehow, nobody had quite expected them to have much in the way of manners—an assumption which was quite unfounded, of course, and which collapsed instantly and startlingly when it came out, almost at once, that the boy was the son of a north-country vicar! A gentleman, in fact, and the girl a lady! Margaret was relieved; and Paul was amused; and everybody, as usual, had a good time. And lots of interesting things came out. They were both twenty-two, and had been married less than a year. The boy had spent a few months in New York—it was there that he had learned his stunt-riding, while working as a mechanic for the Wall of Death at Coney Island, or some such place. And he had decided that he would come back to England and be the first to introduce it there. With the money he came into from his mother on his twenty-first birthday, he bought the rights and plans for the first Drome of Death in England, therefore, and had it built at Southampton—and only a week before, at Southampton, he and his wife had given their first performance. All the money had been spent—it was a close thing—and they would be dependent on what they could make, but they were confident. And so on.

It was noticeable—Margaret said—that it was he who did all the talking. But a little nervously, and constantly turning to his wife, as if half afraid of some shadowy criticism or disapproval. The girl said practically nothing. She was perfectly self-possessed, and quite amiable, but she made it evident that she preferred to listen—now and then turning toward her husband, Margaret thought, an expression that seemed perhaps just a shade skeptical. Especially of his exploits—when he was telling of his previous exploits. Not that he boasted at all—not in the least. Apparently he had in fact been extremely modest about it. But it was when he was telling of his winning the Isle of Man trophy, and the race from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, and a few other such things, that Margaret first noticed, as she put it, what looked almost like a curl of the lip, and an angry flash of light in the girl’s eyes. It was odd, and a little disconcerting. And moreover, it seemed disconcerting to the boy.

But that was all, no further light was shed on it at the time, and it was not till a few days before the fair left town, and took the road for Folkstone, that the thing really came out.

And all through a package of cigarettes—and the fact that I had to call at the jeweler’s for my watch, which I had taken to be cleaned. The jeweler’s shop was at the end of the High Street, just beside the cliff, and above the playing-salts; and seeing the fair, and having nothing to do, I went down. Except for one or two of the penny gambling stalls, the fair was not officially open in the morning, and therefore now it looked a little deserted. Nobody about—only a few children. But when I came to the Drome of Death, there, sitting on the edge of the red plush dais, dangling his blue-trousered legs, was the boy, all alone, and the minute he saw me his eyes lighted up with recognition, and he smiled.

“I imagine you’ve seen me before,” I said.

“Many times. You’re a friend of Mr. Nash, aren’t you? I think he spoke of you.”

I admitted this, and said that I was sorry I had been unable to come to the tea, and to meet his wife and himself, and I complimented him on the show, at which he was pleased, and then he asked me if I wouldn’t sit down, and I did. But it was when I offered him a cigarette that he really showed his pleasure—he fairly beamed at me.

“You know”—he said—“I’ve been frantic for a cigarette—absolutely frantic. Ran out half an hour ago, and not a soul around the place, and myself alone here, so that I couldn’t leave—nothing safe, you know, with these gypsies round—thanks!”

“You smoke a lot?”

“Afraid I do. I don’t know, in this sort of business you need something to do in between-times, something to steady your nerves—you know what I mean? When you aren’t riding. And in the morning, especially in the morning!”

“The morning?”

“It’s a long wait in the morning—we were disappointed to find this town so small, you know, it means you can’t have any morning performances—bad luck, too, just when we could do with some extra cash—and it’s bad in this kind of business when you haven’t got anything to do. You can’t drink, not in this game—so there’s nothing to do but smoke. I’m a chain smoker—so’s the kid.”

“The kid—?”

“My wife.”

“Well, I suppose that’s natural. I should think it would get on your nerves.”

“Yes. You want to keep going. On the move all the time—that’s the trouble with a little third-rate fair like this, they only hit the small towns, and there isn’t enough in it.…”

He smiled, the blue eyes looking lightly at me, and then beyond me, as if to something in the future—something quite definitely bigger and better than this third-rate fair. But then he waved his cigarette toward the merry-go-round, and added—

“But it’s all right, you know, and you’ve got to make a beginning somewhere, haven’t you? So I suppose we were lucky, at that.”

There was a pause, he blew the ash off the cigarette, and then after a moment I told him how much I admired the looks of the Drome—in which Nash, who was an artist, agreed with me. He was delighted with this.

“It is pretty, isn’t it—?” he said. “Yes, it is pretty. A little shipyard at Southampton did the building, and they did a lovely job of it. Look at that woodwork—like a yacht, it is—everything of the finest! Much better built than the Yankee ones—much. You know, it’s a tricky piece of work to do, too—there’s got to be a lot of give and play in it, not too rigid—but not too slack either. Have you noticed when we go round there’s a kind of ripple of the whole structure that goes with us—? Well, that has to be just right. We have to tune it up, keep it tuned, just like a fiddle. That’s what the stays are for—we tighten ’em or loosen ’em—watch ’em all the time. And it’ll get better as it ages a bit—got to weather, you know, like everything else. It’s already improving—gets a little more supple.”

We looked up together at the varnished woodwork of the Drome, the sunlight gleaming on its smooth brown flanks, he reached out his hand and touched one of the heavy wire stays—yes, it was true, it did remind one of a yacht—or even, yes, of a fiddle.

“Nash has taken some very good photos of it,” I said.

“Has he?”

“Of you and your wife, too.”

“Oh? I’d like to see them—I’d like to see them. He’s quite an artist, isn’t he?”

“Very fine. One of the best.”

We smoked in silence for a minute, and then, to my great surprise, he said—

“And what do you think of my wife?”

“Your wife—? How do you mean?”

“I mean, in the show.”

“Well, of course—I think she’s wonderful.”

“You do, eh?”

He was frowning at me, a little anxious, a little puzzled. I was uncertain where his questions were leading, so I merely repeated—

“Oh yes, we all do. And of course she’s remarkably beautiful—”

“Yes—she is.… I say, would you mind if I cadged another fag—?”

I handed him the cigarettes, he lit one from the stub, and then, frowning again, he went on—

“You see, it’s a problem.”

“A problem?”

“Yes. This show business isn’t so simple. Of course, she’s good, I know that—”

“Oh, she is!”

“She’s good, but there’s more to it than that. You’ve got to think of the effect. On the people.”

“How do you mean, exactly?”

He looked at me searchingly for a second, as if somehow weighing me personally in the light of what he was going to say next—a troubled look, too, and somehow a little pathetic.

“Well”—he said—“take yourself. Or Mr. Nash.”

“Yes?”

“You come to our show, and, as you say, of course, you like my wife, and that’s all right. But then, you see, there is this ‘star’ business. You see what I mean? There’s always got to be a star. One of the performers has got to be outstanding—otherwise, you’ve got no climax.”

“I see. Yes.”

“You see?” He was visibly relieved at my agreement—he smiled, and went on a shade more confidently. “You’ve got to have that climax. People want a show to be built up to something. And that’s what the kid won’t see.”

“No?”

“No. And that’s what the trouble is. We can’t both of us do the fancy stuff, can we? And what I say is, the audience wants to see the man do that, not the woman. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, I think perhaps you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right! But she won’t see it—no, she won’t see it.”

He shook his head, gazing perplexedly down at his swinging feet, and the grass, where the stub of a cigarette was smoking, and repeated once more—

“She just won’t see it. Mind you, I know she could do some of the things, some of them—she’s got all the nerve in the world, anybody can see that—but that isn’t the point. And then, besides, there’s the risk. No woman is quite as good as a man—she’s more liable to nerves, more liable to make a slip—and in this business there can’t be any slips. Well, I tell her that, but it doesn’t do any good. She’s after me from morning to night, wanting this or that, just to try it once, or try it twice—you know how a woman is, and if you give in you’re gone.…”

He looked at me quickly, and away—and I felt sorry for him.

“Well”—I said a little lamely—“I think you’re perfectly right. The show, as it is, is as good as it could possibly be. Your wife, with her beauty, just adds the right touch—but if I were you I certainly wouldn’t let her do anything else! Not me.”

“You think that?”

“I do indeed.”

“Well, I wish someone could persuade her—but when she gets an idea—!”

He laughed, frankly, boyishly, and affectionately too, as if he were thinking very precisely of his wife’s beautiful stubbornness, and then he swung himself down to the ground, and I saw that his assistant, the mechanic, was approaching.

“Well,” I said, “I expect you’ll see us again later!”

“Right-o. And I say, will you tell Mr. Nash I’d like to see some of those photographs?”

“Yes—of course.”

He was off then, with a quick nervous wave of the hand, and I had already turned away toward the cliff steps that led to the town when I heard him add—

“And please excuse me, will you? Got a little tuning to do!”—

I waved—he waved in answer—it was the last time we were to exchange greetings, though not by any means, the last time I was to see him.… That was to be a year later.

III.

A year later—yes. And almost to the day.

By that time, we had all but forgotten him, hadn’t we—? and the beautiful girl who had been killed at Folkstone, while riding blindfold in a “novelty show”—so the newspaper phrased it—called the Drome of Death. We had read about it, only a few days after they had left us; and we had been inexpressibly shocked and saddened; and then the boy had written to Paul, and asked if he could have some of the photographs; and Paul had sent them.…

But a year later the same little fair came back, and with it again—much to our surprise—the Drome of Death. At first we thought it must be another—for it didn’t look quite right, somehow, and it was certainly a great deal shabbier, as if it weren’t properly kept up. Our doubts were resolved when we drew a little nearer.

There, on the faded plush dais, stood the boy—but himself too somehow faded and cheapened, and looking almost haggard—the beauty had gone out of him. Beside him was a girl, a little dark creature, dull-faced, dull-eyed. The same blue riding suits—but now, no silver wings. The boy was smoking a cigarette, and for a moment, when he saw us, he looked guilty. The recognition wavered, as it were, between us—and then he lifted his chin, proudly, turned his head, turned his eyes, and coldly, fiercely, dismissed us.…

And, with a pang, I knew that he was right.