The Voyage of Julius Pingouin and Other Strange Stories by Brian Stableford & Brian Stableford

Author:Brian Stableford & Brian Stableford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: short stories, horror, supernatural, French, fantasy
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2017-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

SCENES IN A TAVERN

Dramatis Personae

The Innkeeper

A Taciturn Man

An Old Jew

A Scoundrel

A Man

A Poor Drunkard

A Regular of the Tavern

Five Deserting Sailors

A Naval Officer

Marine Soldiers

A Young Woman with her Child

A Drunken Old Woman

The room is square. The low ceiling is supported by blackened beams from which two smoky copper lamps hang, to the right and the left, lighting the whole room weakly. The walls are covered with dilapidated roughcast. The one to the right is pierced by two narrow windows, very close together, sealed by heavy wooden shutters behind their dusty and broken lead-framed panes. Between the windows is an arched door made of dark wood and garnished with iron; every time it opens its bolt resonates and it grates noisily. Along the walls there are wooden benches, massive tables and stools. A stove extends its crooked flue through the room. At the back stand two enormous oak barrels, almost black; a long ladder is propped against one of them. Barring the space between them, a high and dirty counter extends, laden with bottles. In front of the left-hand barrel, a closed trap-door is outlined on the floor.

Behind the counter stands Jonas Thripp, innkeeper, an immensely large fat man endowed with a prodigious abdomen over which his plump hands can scarcely join up. He is clad in violet, beige and pink check trousers, and a matching waistcoat charged with a heavy gilded chain, which is unbuttoned, allowing sight of a blood red flannel shirt, over the collar of which descends the yellow rind of his cheeks, bristling with brick-colored hairs. On the innkeeper’s head is jammed a double-brimmed cap, as multicolored as his trousers.

Jonas Thripp is seated on an exceedingly high stool, smoking his pipe. Sometimes he gets down to serve a drink or to circulate about the room, waddling like a duck.

In the far corner on the right, the Taciturn Man is sitting on a bench. He is thin, clean-shaven and staring wide-eyed into the void. His clothing is somber. In front of him is a half-empty bottle of whisky and a full glass. From time to time he drinks, and then returns to immobility, his hands flat on the table.

On the same side, sitting on a stool, half-turned toward the door, is the Jew. He is red-haired, old and grotesquely incarnates the type-specimen of his race. He is dressed in a sordid frock-coat.

At the next table is the Drunken Old Woman. Her ruddy face seems swollen. In the middle protrudes a singularly livid bulbous nose. Her eyes are haggard, her mouth allows her inferior jaw to droop slackly, revealing violet-tinted gums and a few teeth. The old woman is wearing a large and lamentable plush hat garnished with frayed bonnet-strings and pretentious but pitiful plumes, which hang down over her face, mingling with a few unkempt wisps of hair. She is clad in a ragged striped shawl, wrapped over rags. She is drinking gin.

At the table furthest away from the counter on the left is the Regular of the Tavern. He is a tall and solid individual, relatively well-dressed.

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