KABARA GOYA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 543, 18 November 1949, Page 10

KABARA GOYA

a A Short Story written for "The Listener" by

MARY

STEWART

taxi, it occurred to her that she had seldom encountered a man of more unreassuring aspect than the driver. It was not that he was particularly ugly, in the popular sense. On the contrary, to a casual glance his appearance was not unpleasing. He had the substantial shoulders, shapely head, and, she judged, the height of the conventionally handsome man. His hair was black, glossy, and robustly curling, and his attitude, as he lounged before the wheel in his suit of greenish tweed, was one of quite extraordinary grace. It was his eyes that startled her. Mrs. Abbott was not an excessively sensitive woman, nor was her imagination easily kindled. But for an instant, as those eyes glanced into hers, she experienced a piercing sense of shock, of psychological recoil, as unpleasant and disconcerting as an extra step taken at the top of a dark staircase. Nerves, perhaps? Was she becoming morbid, hysterical, given to imagining things, with living so much by herself? Solitude, she had discovered after nearly 18 months of it, could soon corrode the bright hard A S Mrs. Abbott stepped into the

surface of commonsense, could nibble subtly at the established contours of personality, producing by this means in time the eccentric and the freak. She knew this, and feared the knowledge, having sometimes looked inwards 92n herself as she went about the motions of her solitary life, and having seen with shock her image blurred, as if thrown back by unstill water. . But even as she reflected thus, there swam up from the depths of memory an image, an impression, which matched with such precision the one of a few moments ago that Mrs. Abbott suddenly sat up straight, and on her face appeared a smile of naive triumph, the childlike smile of wonder and delight with which some people greet the solution of a problem or the final capture of an elusive déja vu. Among his other pursuits, the late Mr. Abbott had numbered a lively interest in natural history. From the time when, as a solitary child in spectacles, he had grovelled for snails among the cranberry bushes or spied upon the mating habits of the mantis, he had maintained a brisk and enterprising connection with the animal kingdom. His horizon had narrowed with the years, and in later life

he had become something of a specialist in reptiles. Of these he kept around the house a large collection, stuffed, labelled, and artistically bedded down in glass cases, amid natural surroundings very creditably reproduced by Mr. Abbott, in plasticine and crepe paper. His attitude had nothing of scientific de-tachment-he regarded each of his specimens with a steady affection, and would pause to glow for a moment through the glass at a newly arrived iguana much as a father views his firstborn in a public nursery. HE pride, the centre-piece as it were, of his collection, was a kabara goya, imported at considerable expense from Ceylon. Large, scaly, implacable, it dominated the entrance hall with a gaze of unremitting malevolence, petrifying the set speeches on the lips of commercial travellers, casting a chill of horror over all who came on it unawares. It was of this creature that Mrs. Abbott was thinking now; its image that had ranged itself. beside the driver’s, like two snapshots of the same face. For the look that had startled her in the eyes of the man was the look in the eyes of the kabara goya: freezing, non-human,

empty of all expression save that of a sapient and timeless evil. She had not imagined it, then; she had seen it before. A curious fantasy, something less than a conviction, something more than a daydream, now began to take shape in her mind: For a while she played with it, elaborating it, busily inventing and retouching, finding in it the macabre entertainment afforded her by nightmares; for Mrs. Abbott was one of those people who, even as they dream, recognise their dreams for what they are, and know that at any moment they can transport themselves from unimaginable terrors to the dim familiar furniture of waking life. A week-old murder, still unsolved, of which she had tread extensively in the last day or two, provided just that bare allowance of possibility without which her fantasy would have been flat and pointless. This man, she thought, this driver with his kabara goya eyes, is the murderer in the Slade case. Observe his silence, he is planning further mischief; observe his hands ... they were cf length above the average, and gripped the wheel with a kind of nervous predatory strength ... they are the hands

of a strangler. Somewhere on this road «-perhaps at the end of the journey-it will be my turm for death. The idea held no alarm for her. Knowing it contained no grain of truth, she viewed it with detachment, and even amusement. A calm, factitious resignation flowed over her. She smiled slightly to herself. How fortunate that the driver couldn’t read her thoughts! ... She hugged their absurdity to herself, BUT presently she grew tired of the game, and. abandoned it. She yawned; then, wincing a little, she sank back in the corner and began to ease off her left shoe. It must be going to rain, her foot was hurting so dreadfully. Ah, that was better! Six miles to goone might as well be comfortable. She peered anxiously out of the window, but there was no moon, ahd it was really too dark to see properly. They had left the traffic, the lights, the town, and begun the long stretch along the coast road. To the right one heard the pounding of the invisible sea; to the left, against a dense and liver-coloured sky that pressed close to the earth like a blanket, there tossed the darker shapes of trees. Inside the taxi it was warm and cosy, almost intimate. Mrs. Abbott felt herself enclosed within a little lighted box, rushing through the darkness. Cosy, but a little vulnerable. It -was like being in a shop window. She switched out the light. As if he had waited for this signal, the driver spoke for the first time, without turning his head. "Going to be some storm tonight, I reckon." His voice was curiously toneless, and flat, flat as a puddle. Like his eyes, it seemed drained of all human quality or warmth. It was like the voice of the congenitally deaf. "Yes, indeed," replied Mrs. Abbott after a moment. Her tone was pleasant, but designed to discourage further comment. She did not believe in talking to taxi-drivers. The car swung to the left, and began. the upward-climb through a beech plantation. The thunder of the sea grew faint and muffled, receded to a distant roar, The sky now was invisible. On either side the trees pressed close, leaning, leaning, shuddering back, full of sounds like the echoes of a remote and half-re-membered dream. Rain spattered sud-

denly on the roof, and died away again on a moaning breath. Then it began again, in earnest. "TLTERE she comes." said the grey, extinguished voice. Mrs. Abbott frowned. It was a good step up to the house from the road. She’d be soaked. She watched it dancing madly on the bonnet, driving across the windscreen like glass rods. A thorough downpour. Up started the windscreen wiper, Clock, Clock, like a metronome, and against its laboured beat the driver began again. "See by tonight’s paper that strangler chap’s been at it again," he remarked.

"Another body found this morning-out | Woodend way this time ... . . stickin’ out of a gorse bush. He sure gets around. That’s the second, and the police haven't got so much as a smell of him yet. Some reckon he’s a looney, but I think myself he’s a pretty shrewd piece of work." Mrs. Abbott stiffened slightly, but made no reply. This introduction of the topic of her fantasy by its chief protagonist affected her disagreeably. It was like pegging down one corner of it to reality. She stared resentfully at the driver’s back. "Funny thing,’ he went on, "how he makes a bee-line for cripples. Must have | a bug about ’em ... gassin’ ’em off like old Hitler used. to. Not," he continued slowly, "that there isn’t some sense in it, if you see what I mean . . ." He gave a faint snicker, and looking up Mrs. Abbott saw that he was watching her intently in the mirror. For the first time she began to be afraid. Her eyes dropped, in spite of her, to her left foot, lying misshapen and pathetic beside its built-up shoe. The thought of her fantasy returned, and instantly the nightmare world closed round, leaving this time no loophole of escape. Whatever happened, she mustn't lose her head. Absurd to panic, she told herself fiercely. Deliberately she made her hands relax and composed her face in tranquil lines. There was no connection: there could be no connection. In five more minutes she would be at home, Warm and dry... light the gas fire... a cup of tea... +: Absurd, absurd to panic. : ANOTHER hundred yards, and the road left the plantation, turning right and running parallel with its upper fringe. Half a mile away shone the lights of the neighbours’ houses, and ; further up the hill, a dark hump against the sky, appeared her own. The sight restored ‘her to such an extent that she heard herself saying, almost lightheartedly, "Well, I’m not exactly a cripple, but perhaps I’d better be care‘ful. I have-that is, my foot is not-" She broke off, suddenly embarrassed, and even as she did so. became aware that the car was sliding to a stop. Panic returned, in full flood this time, sweeping her up like a straw. Every (continued on next page)

Short Story (continued from previous page) nerve screamed for flight: to open the door, leap out, to run, to run. But the nightmare persisted. She could not move. The driver switched on the light and turned déliberately to face her. The kabara goya! She panted in her corner. "Engine’s cut out," he said flatly. "I'll have to get some help. Any phones round here, lady?" A ruse? A trap? Or was it possible ? ‘Don’t ..." she began faintly. He was watching her. Gathering all her courage, she continued rapidly, "Don’t bother to get out of the car. I can ring from my house, You'll only get wet. It isn’t far. Whom shall I ring?" "Poole’s," he said. "Poole’s garage. Tell them to send the Chev. This’ll have to stay tonight. We'll bring up your things." Scarcely breathing, the skin on her neck and shoulders crawling with fright, Mrs. Abbott clutched at the handle, turned it, and got out of the car. As her foot touched the ground she felt a sharp tug. The pocket of her coat had caught on the door handle. She jerked at it in a frenzy, ripping the cloth almost to the hem. At once, she began to run stumbling in puddles and on the loose metal, hurling herself blindly against the wind. Her eyes strained blank and wild, hair whipped across her face, and her mouth gaped, wet with rain. She ran clumsily, her breath a harsh groaning, her foot a weight of pain past all belief. Her body had become her enemy,- but still -she forced it on, faster .... faster .... towards the sanctuary of her house. Only at her own front door did’ she pause. She stopped then, for the key; and so she failed to notice that the door was being opened from within. : And she had no breath left for screaming as she was pulled inside. On the road below, the taxi-driver waited a long time. At length hé grew impatient, left his car, and began to walk through the rain towards the house. Half-way .there he passed a stranger, walking briskly in the opposite direction. "Dirty weather, mate," he called in his toneless voice. And as if in confirmation, the rain began to fall more heavily than ever. CC OrrrereooereraeOawWmes +