King Coffin by Conrad Aiken

Author:Conrad Aiken
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Psychological, Literary, Crime, Fiction
ISBN: 9781504011419
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-06-01T23:00:00+00:00

IX The Stranger Is Gay

The little procession was monstrous, it was absurd, it was mad and meaningless, and as he watched it from the safe interior of the car, which was filled with tobacco smoke, with his black hat pulled down over his eyes, the pale afternoon sunlight seemed to emphasize and isolate each element in it as grotesquely as if it were merely an outlandish figure in a dream.

Karl Jones had suddenly become new—he was being seen for the first time.

Bareheaded, wearing again his old black sweater, grinning a little self-consciously, as if something in the occasion made him shy, and as if he were trying to carry it off with bravado, he came down the wooden steps of the Alpine Street house with a small striped mattress over his shoulder and a worn suitcase in his hand. The suitcase he dropped on the cement sidewalk, where already stood a white-painted chair, such as are seen in hospitals, a Gladstone bag, a porcelain slop bowl, and a brown wicker hamper. He flung the mattress into the back of the open model-T Ford which waited at the curb, balancing it carefully over the child’s cot which reared its white legs and bright brass casters into the air. A middle-aged woman followed him down the steps, bringing a rope; with this they proceeded to knot the mattress into place, first throwing a patchwork quilt over the whole shapeless pile. Then the hamper was with some difficulty wedged into the front, beside the driver’s seat: it was heavy, tied with cord, and what looked like bed linen protruded from the gaping lid. As the woman reascended the steps Jones called after her:

—Guess we’ll have to carry the rest! Hope you don’t mind!

What she said was inaudible, she waved a hand, entered the house, and in a moment reappeared accompanied by a man. The man climbed into the front seat, slammed the tin door, started the car and began turning it. Jones lifted the slop bowl by its handle, laughing, his head tilted to one side: the woman seated herself in the white chair on the sidewalk. She too was laughing, leaning forward and clapping her hands on her knees. When Jones said something to her, she got up, took the slop bowl from him, picked up the suitcase, and began walking away towards Reservoir Street. Jones swung the chair up against his shoulder, seized the handle of the Gladstone bag, and followed.

The whole thing was unreal: it had no existence.

The woman might be a trained nurse: she was wearing a dark cloak from beneath which, as she walked, flashed the white of what appeared to be a uniform.

And the child’s cot—what about that? If there was a child, in the Reservoir Street house, why had he seen no sign of it in all this time? And if the child was ill—as the presence of the nurse seemed to suggest—then it was difficult to account for the queer cheerfulness of the scene. The logic was a little wrong.

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