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MEMORIES OF PEKING
Lin Hai-yin at the age of six, the year she enrolled
into the Ch’ang-tien Primary School.
Lin Hai-yin

Translated by Nancy C. Ing and Chi Pang-yuan

With an introduction by Peng Hsiao-yen
Memories of Peking: South Side Stories
By Lin Hai-yin
Translated by Nancy C. Ing and Chi Pang-yuan

© The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992, 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

ISBN 978-988-237-129-3

Published by:
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Sha Tin, N.T., Hong Kong.
Fax: +852 2603 7355
Email: cup@cuhk.edu.hk
Website: cup.cuhk.edu.hk

Printed in Hong Kong

CONTENTS

Introduction vii
by Peng Hsiao-yen, translated by Steven K. Luk
Translators’ Introduction xxiii

Winter Sun, Childhood Years, the Camel Caravan   1

Hui-an Hostel 7
Let Us Go and See the Sea 91
Lan I-niang 129
Donkey Rolls 163
Papa’s Flowers Have Fallen 189
—And I Was No Longer a Child
This page intentionally left blank
INTRODUCTION

In 1960 the Taiwanese writer Lin Hai-yin’s

(1918–2001) collection of stories Memories of
Peking: South Side Stories (Ch’eng-nan chiu-shih)
was first published by Kuangch’i Publishing
Company, thus establishing her name in Tai-
wan’s literary circle. Based on the story of a
Taiwanese family living in Peking in the 1920’s,
the work became an immediate success and
was eventually adapted into a movie by the
Shanghai Film Studio in 1982. The heroine of
the stories is a little girl called Ying-tzu, who is
thought to be the persona of the author in her
childhood days. Indeed, the work does take Lin’s
childhood as its background, as is witnessed by
the author herself in the “Preface” to the first
edition. Were those stories real or fictional? She
revealed, “All I can say is that the stories collected
 viii | Memories of Peking

are interrelated. I am not going to tell you whether they are gen-
uine or made up. I just want you to share the memories of my
childhood.” 1 Even though a story or a novel can be based on the
author’s own personal experiences, real facts or people, it is nar-
rative fiction after all. Our appreciation of the work then should
be based on the logic of events as constructed in the narrative,
and not on whether these events are “genuine” or “made up,” or
whether the work is based on “historical events” or not.2
It is helpful to understand Lin Hai-yin’s family background
prior to discussing work. Her father came from a Hakka family
in T’ou-fen, Miao-li, while her mother, of Minnan origin, was
from Pan-ch’iao, Taipei. Hai-yin was born in Osaka, Japan in
1918 and she returned to her native T’ou-fen town with her
parents when she was three. Her father had been a primary
school teacher before going to Osaka to do business. Since
his business did not prosper, he returned to Taiwan and then
moved to Peking later to look for job opportunities. Hai-yin
was five when the family moved to Peking in 1923. Her father
passed away in 1931, when she graduated from primary school.
As the eldest daughter in the family, she had the responsibility
of helping her mother take care of her five brothers and sisters.
She entered the Peking Professional School of Journalism at
the age of sixteen in 1934 and simultaneously functioned as a

1 Lin Hai-yin. “Ch’eng-nan chiu-shih (Daixu)”[Preface of Memories of

Peking]. Ch’eng-nan chiu-shih [Memories of Peking] (Taipei: Kuangch’i
Publishing Company, 1960), pp. 5–11.
2 Cf. Dorrit Cohn, The Distinction of Fiction (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 1999).
 Introduction | ix

journalist trainee at Shih-chieh jih-pao (The world daily). She

returned to Taipei in 1948 after the war with her husband Hsia
Ch’eng-ying and three children. In sum, she had lived in Peking
for twenty-five years. In Taiwan, Lin Hai-yin worked as the
editor of Kuo-yü jih-pao (Mandarin daily news; 1949–1953), the
editor-in-chief of United Daily News Literary Supplement (Lien-ho
pao fu-k’an; 1953–1963), and the editor-in-chief and publisher
of Ch’un-wen-hsüeh yüeh-k’an (Pure literature monthly; 1967–
1971). She was the founder of the Ch’un-wen-hsüeh ch’u-pan-
she (Pure literature publishing house; 1968–1995). In addition,
she authored three novels, four collections of short stories,
nineteen collections of essays and ten children’s books. Hsia
Ch’eng-ying, the editor-in-chief and publisher of Kuo-yü jih-pao
and also well known columnist of “On the Glass Mat of My
Desk” (Po-li-tien shang) under the pen name Ho Fan, said with
a sigh that Peking and Taipei were the only two cities in which
they had ever lived. In fact Lin Hai-yin lived in Taiwan for over
half a century, or fifty-three years to be exact. Although raised
in Peking, Lin Hai-yin made her name in Taiwan. The major
part of her life was devoted to Taiwan’s literary community.
Although most of her works depict her experiences in Taiwan,
she has often been classified as a writer of Mainland origin,
owing partly to the towering success of Memories of Peking:
South Side Stories with its genuine flavor of the old capital, and
partly to her own perfect Peking accent.
In fact, Lin made significant contributions to the localiza-
tion of Taiwan literature during the ten years she acted as the
editor-in-chief of United Daily News Literary Supplement. It was
 x | Memories of Peking

a transitional period when the language of literary creation

was shifting from Japanese to Chinese. She encouraged senior
writers, who had stopped writing because of their poor
mastery of the new language, to start afresh and industriously
corrected their Chinese. They included writers such as Yang
K’uei, Shih Ts’ui-feng, Liao Ch’ing-hsiu, Ch’en Huo-ch’üan,
Wen Hsin, Chuang Ch’i, and others. Many writers of the
succeeding generation had their first works published in the
Literary Supplement under her supervision, including Cheng
Ch’ing-wen,3 Lin Hwai-min,4 Huang Ch’un-ming,5 and Ch’i
Teng-sheng. 6 Chung Chao-cheng’s 7 and Chung Li-ho’s 8
first novels were first serialized in the Literary Supplement
during this period. If we look back at the development of the
localization of Taiwan literature since the Chiang Kai-shek

3 Cheng Ch’ing-wen. “Jimo de xin” [Lonely Heart], Lian fu [United

Daily News Literary Supplement]. March 13th, 1958.
4 Lin Hwai-min. “Erge” [Children Song], Lian fu [United Daily News
Literary Supplement]. April 24th, 1961.
5 Huang Ch’un-ming. “Chengzai luoche” [Getting off at Yilan], Lian fu
[United Daily News Literary Supplement]. March 20th, 1962.
6 Ch’i Teng-sheng. “Shiye puke zhayouyu” [Unemployed, Poker, Fried
Squid], Lian fu [United Daily News Literary Supplement]. April 3rd, 1962.
7 Chung Chao-cheng. “Lubinghua” [The Dull-Ice Flower], Lian fu [Unit-
ed Daily News Literary Supplement]. March 29th–June 15th, 1960. It was
the first serial novel written by native Taiwanese writer that has been
published on local newspaper.
8 Chung Li-ho’s works has been successively published on Lian fu since
August 1960, including short fiction “Fu huo” [Resurrection] (July
30th–August 5th, 1960), novella “Yu” [Rain] (September 1st–October 11th,
1960) and serial novel “Lishan nongchang” [Lishan Farm] (February
24th–June 19th, 1961). After gaining popular support and attention, the
eight volume “Chung Li-ho quanji” [The Complete works of Chung
Li-ho] was finally published by Yuan xing chu ban she.
 Introduction | xi

government moved to Taiwan, the dividing period should be

with Lin Hai-yin’s significant efforts to assist and promote
writers of Taiwanese origin. Without her insight and vision
the literary history of Taiwan would have been vastly
different. At a time when anti-Communist propaganda was
a dominant ideological force in literary creation, the Literary
Supplement under Lin’s editorship created a new space where
the autonomy of literature was valued.
As a writer, Lin Hai-yin’s performance was exemplary
among women writers of her generation. The contributions
of women writers in Taiwan during the early years of the
Chiang Kai-shek government are yet to be assessed; they have
not received the attention they deserve. Their rise to emi-
nence owed much to their Mandarin Chinese proficiency at
a time when the new government mandated that the official
language in Taiwan be Chinese in lieu of Japanese in line with
the change of the regime. Since the early republican years it
had become quite common for women to be formally educat-
ed in Mainland China. Many of Lin’s female contemporaries
who emigrated to Taiwan from the Mainland had had high
school or college education. In keeping with the cultural
policy that implemented the Mandarin Chinese Movement,
Chinese became the only creative language in Taiwan. Those
young and middle-aged intellectuals who had recently arrived
in Taiwan were equipped with a language advantage that
facilitated their emergence as mainstays on the cultural scene.
On the one hand, there was the demise of the old writers
who had flourished under the Japanese regime. On the other,
 xii | Memories of Peking

there was the rise of a new coterie of women writers whose

number and titles published were unmatched since the May
Fourth Movement. When the grands récits of anti-communist
propaganda were in vogue, these women writers’ petits récits
focused on their own personal feelings and daily minutiae,
which won the heart of many a reader. The prose pieces by
Chang Hsiu-ya, Hsü Chung-p’ei and Ch’i Chün, for instance,
were regarded as “stylistic gems for appreciation.” The gener-
ation who grew up in the 1950’s and the 1960’s modeled their
writing exercises on the work produced by these women writ-
ers. Compared with the writing style of the women writers
of the 1980’s and the 1990’s, the language of Lin’s generation
was readable, clear and precise, free from the convoluted
sentence patterns typical of European languages and the long
modifying clauses resulting from Japanese influence.
It was after she came to Taiwan that Lin made her debut
and became established as a writer. Her language has the
same stylistic features as those of contemporary women
writers. She was adroit in her use of short sentences marked
by a rapid and vivid pace. In addition, probably thanks to her
combined Hakka and Minnan origins, she was highly sensi-
tive to dialects, which studded and formed a seamless entity
with the standard Mandarin in her works. A good example
is Memories of Peking: South Side Stories. The narrator of the
stories is Ying-tzu, who attends primary school in Peking.
Her father is a Taiwanese of Hakka origin and her mother,
a Taiwanese of Minnan origin. As such, “mai chu-jou i-chin,
pu-yao t’ai-fei” (buy one catty of pork, not too fat) becomes
 Introduction | xiii

“mai tsu-lou i-chin, pu-yao t’ai-hui” (buy one catty of bark,

not to fly) with her mother. Her father would say, “ching me-
kai” (what are you afraid of ?) instead of “p’a shen-me,” or “tso
wu-te” (you can’t do this) instead of “pu-k’o-i.” By poking fun
at the linguistic pell-mell, Lin portrays an émigré community
with multiple dialects. China’s big cities such as Peking and
Shanghai have attracted continuous flows of population who
come to attend school or look for job opportunities. Given
the historical and political contexts, postwar Taiwan also
accepted an influx of émigrés from the Mainland, which Lin
likewise depicts in her works with Taiwan as their setting. Lin
is skillful in her presentation of the conflicts and harmonies
among different regional groups living side by side in postwar
Taiwan. Her story “The Tale of Blood” is about a local
Taiwanese father-in-law who has opposed to his daughter’s
marrying a Mainland émigré husband. Only after a blood
transfusion to the seriously sick father is the son-in-law finally
accepted into the family. The Mandarin words mimicking
the sounds of Minnan expressions make the scenes hilarious.
Examples abound such as “hsin-ma tai-chi” (the new mother
catches the chicken) for “shen-me shih” (what’s the matter?)
and “shao-tan” (fried eggs) for “shao-teng” (please wait).
Although melodramatically represented, these scenes depict
how difficult it is for people of different dialects and regional
origins to live and work together in the same community.
Memories of Peking: South Side Stories centers on little Ying-
tzu’s life from the age of six to her graduation from primary
school at twelve. There are five episodes, namely, “Hui-an
 xiv | Memories of Peking

Hostel,” “Let Us Go and See the Sea,” “Lan I-niang,” “Donkey

Rolls” and “Papa’s Flowers Have Fallen.” As is typical of a
Bildungsroman, each episode tells the story of how Ying-tzu
explores the meaning of life in her daily surroundings. She
grows from a little girl to a teenager who begins to understand
the complexity of human relations. Ying-tzu is the narrator
throughout the book. It is through her eyes that the reader
looks at the adult world. When adults talk about “crazy
people and thieves” and “good people and bad people,” she
has her own interpretations of these terms, while she tries
to comprehend their meanings in the social context. On the
issues of man-and-woman and parent-and-child relationships,
she is gradually enlightened by watching adults’ behavior
and their interactions. Her simple diction and psychological
reactions throw into relief the complexity of the adult world.
By the time the stories end, she has grown six years older, while
she has also matured psychologically.
From the mind’s eye of a six year old, Hsiu-chen, the
madwoman at Hui-an Hostel, is a lovely person, worthy of
pity. Ying-tzu describes their first encounter, “Her eyes stared
unmovingly at me as if searching for something in my face.
Her face was pale, with a bluish tint, the tip of her nose was
a little red, most probably chilled by the cold wind; her chin
was pointed and her thin lips were tightly pressed together.”
As can be witnessed, this passage is free from lengthy expres-
sions or superfluous modifying clauses. Short sentences and
succinct descriptions like these are typical of standard Chinese
usage. The confused Hsiu-chen mistakes little Ying-tzu for
 Introduction | xv

her illegitimate daughter forcibly taken away from her. She

takes Ying-tzu’s measurements, thinking she would make a
new dress for her daughter. In Ying-tzu’s childish mind, Hsiu-
chen is “playing house” with her. In fact, Hui-an Hostel had
been built by the Hui-an Clansmen Association for young
men from Hui-an to stay at when they are attending college
in Peking. Hsiu-chen fell in love with one of the college
students, who later left her. Her parents discovered that she
was pregnant. The child was taken away from her at birth
and abandoned at the Ch’i-hua City Gate. Hsiu-chen thus
lost her mind, known as a madwoman in the neighborhood.
Everybody keeps away from her and pokes fun at her. Only
Ying-tzu can enter her world and share her feelings about the
loss of a lover and a child. She even tries to search for the lost
child on Hsiu-chen’s behalf. Ying-tzu’s little playmate, Niu-
erh, is beaten up all the time and is eager to look for her real
parents, since she was picked up at the Ch’i-hua City Gate
by her adopted father. By the birthmark on Niu-erh’s neck
Hsiu-chen realizes that she is her daughter. They set out by
train to look for Hsiu-chen’s lover. The neighbors all said that
the madwoman Hsiu-chen kidnapped Niu-erh, and almost
kidnapped Ying-tzu as well. However, Ying-tzu thinks that she
is the only one who knows the truth. She falls ill afterwards
and remains unconscious for ten days. When she comes to,
she discovers that the gold bracelet, which she stole and gave
to Hsiu-chen to provide her with travel expenses, is still worn
on her mother’s wrist. What actually happened? Was it real?
Or was it just a dream? She can hardly tell.
 xvi | Memories of Peking

“Let Us Go and See the Sea” tells the story of a thief.

Ying-tzu comes across a stranger when she is playing and he
becomes her secret friend. He has a younger brother attend-
ing Ying-tzu’s primary school. He confides in her and says
that to send his brother to school, he has to do quite a few
unacceptable things. Around this time people in the neighbor-
hood often complain about the loss of clothes and other stuff.
The culprit is apprehended at last and to her amazement it is
her secret friend. What hurts her most is that she is the un-
knowing informant that led to his apprehension by the police.
Her mother tells her that this thief is a bad guy who deserves
his downfall. Ying-tzu refuses to accept this view; she has her
own interpretation. She recalls teaching this stranger friend
to recite a passage from her textbook, “‘Let us go and see the
sea! Let us go and see the sea! … The golden-red sun rises
up from the sea .…’ Couldn’t I now say that ‘The golden-red
sun falls from the sky’?” (p. 113) Moreover, “‘… it also rises
up in the blue sky .…’” (p. 117) Ying-tzu murmurs, “Yes, one
day I will write a book to distinguish the sea from the sky and
to tell the difference between good people and bad people,
between crazy people and thieves. But at that moment, I
couldn’t tell one thing from another.” (p. 113) Growing up
means to learn to differentiate good from evil, right from
wrong. Yet Ying-tzu begins to understand that it is in fact not
that easy to distinguish the good from the bad.
The story of Lan I-niang describes how sensitive the eight-
year old Ying-tzu is to man-and-woman relationship. Excep-
tionally precocious in this regard, she serves as a go-between
 Introduction | xvii

for Lan I-niang and Uncle Te-hsien. Thus she also succeeds in
preventing her parents’ potential marital crisis. Lan I-niang is
the ex-concubine of her father’s friend. Out of sympathy her
father agrees to let her stay in the house despite her mother’s
reluctance. One day Ying-tzu sees her father holding Lan
I-niang’s hand and realizes that her father intends to cheat on
her mother. She used to like Lan I-niang, but now her attitudes
change drastically, “… the moment I saw Papa and Lan I-niang,
I felt that Mama was being wronged.… My fondness for Lan
I-niang diminished. I was filled with hate and fear.” Such
succinct sentences are especially effective in conveying the little
girl’s emotional ups and downs. Uncle Te-hsien is another per-
son whom her father shelters. It is said that he is a revolutionary
youth who came to hide from the ongoing political persecu-
tion. He, too, is not a welcomed guest. Little Ying-tzu has a plan
in her mind. She speaks well of Uncle Te-hsien in front of Lan
I-niang, and tells Uncle Te-hsien that Lan I-niang likes him. She
carries love letters back and forth for them and sets up opportu-
nities for them to meet alone. This obviously blocks her father’s
advances on Lan I-niang. Finally, things develop as planned. Lan
I-niang and Uncle Te-hsien takes a trip to Shanghai together.
None of the adults in the house knows that this was Ying-tzu’s
doing. A child’s intelligence ought not to be taken lightly.
“Donkey Rolls” tells the story of Ying-tzu’s younger
brother’s wet-nurse Sung Ma, who is helping the family take
care of the children. She nursed her younger brother and
then her younger sister, while four years passed. She used to
have two children of her own. One had drowned in the river
 xviii | Memories of Peking

one or two years ago, while the other had been given to a
coach driver at the Ha-te City Gate by her good-for-nothing
husband the day Sung Ma came to work for the family. Little
Ying-tzu searches for the child aimlessly with Sung Ma outside
the Ha-te City Gate. They have asked around in all the coach
companies in Peking, but nothing turns up. At last, Sung Ma
rides back home on a donkey with her husband. This is the
first time Ying-tzu learns something about poverty: it can
lead to family separation. Sung Ma’s husband, who shows
up to see his wife twice a year, always brings along with him
a donkey. It always rolls in their yard and tramples the grass
and flowers that her father has grown. The donkey with the
jingling bells on its neck finally takes Sung Ma away.
“Papa’s Flowers Have Fallen” describes the time when the
twelve-year-old Ying-tzu, just graduating from primary school
with the diploma still in her hand, learns of her father’s death.
She shows a self-restraint that is much more mature than her
age. She says, “My skinny sister was fighting with Yen-yen
over a toy; Little Brother was pouring sand into a bottle. Yes,
among all of us, I was a small grown-up.” (p. 200) The stories
of Memories of Peking: South Side Stories record the process
through which little Ying-tzu learns the meaning of being
an “adult.” Through the experiences of the joy of life and
the sorrow of death and separation, she bids farewell to her
childhood.
In the narrative of Memories of Peking: South Side Stories
scenes of folk customs in the old capital abound. These in-
clude the sliced cake peddler (p. 134), the neighborhood near
 Introduction | xix

the Hu-fang-ch’iao Road, the evening performance of the Fu-

lien-ch’eng Chinese Opera Training School (p. 135), the Lan-
tern Festival on the fifteenth of the seventh moon (p. 151), the
junkman (p. 165), and the donkey rolls (a kind of local snack,
p. 180). It conveys an old Peking flavor. Also, the stories are
set in a vividly described historical background. For instance,
the narrative of “Lan I-niang” begins with the execution of
bandits and revolutionary youths, which instantly reminds the
reader of the historical context. The story of Lan I-niang and
Uncle Te-hsien is also a kind of “revolutionary love affair.”
Besides the stories reminiscent of Peking, Lin Hai-yin
also wrote stories that describe women caught between the
old and the new during the the May Fourth period, who
struggled silently between traditional moral codes and the
aspirations of the self. Heroines in such stories as “Candles”
(Chu; 1965), “Sacrifice” (Hsün; 1956), and “The Pleated Skirt
with a Golden Fish Pattern” (Chin li-yü te pai-che-ch’ün;
1963) are all oppressed one way or another. One pretends to
be sick until the end of her life out of jealousy for her hus-
band’s taking a concubine. Another woman has suppressed
her sexual desire for decades since her husband’s death in her
youth. Still another woman, a concubine waiting patiently
for her son’s wedding to come, the only occasion when she is
allowed to wear a pleated skirt that represents the status of
a formal wife, is eventually deprived of that opportunity be-
cause it is out of fashion in the republican years. Most of Lin’s
stories describe experiences in Taiwan, and many of them tell
stories of couples who, separated from their original spouses
 xx | Memories of Peking

during the Civil War in China, meet each other in Taiwan

and get married. These stories include the short story “The
Crab Pastry” (Hsieh-k’o huang; 1957), the novel A Late Sunny
Day (Wan-ch’ing; 1965), and the short story “The Core of the
Candle” (Chu-hsin; 1965), all of which, though by no means
meant to be littérature engagée, nevertheless reveal the political
uphevals of the times. Indeed, although women writers at the
time mostly took love, marriage, and daily minutiae as their
subject matter, they were not cooped up in an ivory tower.
One may as well say that, from the positions manifested in
their petits récits of personal loves and hates, they provided
a perspective distinct from, yet parallel to that of the grands
récits of national discourse. Lin also wrote about the “new
women” in post-war Taiwan. Her novels Hsiao-yün (Hsiao-
yün; 1959), Meng-chu’s Journey (Meng-chu te lü-ch’eng; 1967)
and Spring Breeze (Ch’un-feng; 1967) are examples. If we
appraise these works from a feminist perspective, we can see
Lin’s stand on issues of the two sexes. These three works are
all about triangular love affairs, and it is always the women
in rivalry who engage in negotiations to achieve a solution.
As a rule, the “third party” always gives way and withdraws
from the affair. Does this imply the value of “sisterhood,” or
the “conservatism” of women writers in the sixties? Looking
from the feminist point of view, we can possibly find new
interpretations.
Lin Hai-yin’s achievements as an editor, writer, and publish-
er were unmatched in Taiwan literature. Thanks to her formal
education in Peking and her unique sensibility to language,
 Introduction | xxi

she was able to act as a leader whose seminal efforts played

a crucial role at a time when Mandarin Chinese became the
official language in Taiwan. Only when Taiwanese transcend
the boundaries and visions of an insulated islander can they
make significant contributions. All Taiwanese men of letters
who were able to leave an impact on local culture were those
who went beyond the island’s cultural boundaries. Chang
Wo-chün’s introduction of the May Fourth New Literature
Movement to the island triggered the New Literature Move-
ment in Taiwan. Yang K’uei’s advocacy of the international
proletariat literature helped usher in Taiwan’s Proletariat
Literature Movement. Taiwanese writers under the Japanese
rule, though acculturated in either Chinese or Japanese culture,
still retained their Taiwanese identity. The so-called “local
identity” is often an immediate response vis-à-vis foreign
cultures. Only when one trespasses “local” boundaries and
then comes back can one rejuvenate local values.

Peng Hsiao-yen
Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy
Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Translated by Steven K. Luk

The Chinese University Press
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
2002
This page intentionally left blank
TRANSLATORS’
INTRODUCTION

This is a unique collection of short stories that can

also be read as a lyrical novel. Knitting all these
childhood memories together into an impressive
whole is the voice of a girl, Ying-tzu. It begins in
the year 1926, when she is seven years old, and
continues till she is thirteen. The progressive
development of the stories runs parallel with the
growth of the girl’s understanding of life. Family
events form the frame of the narrative, yet it is her
keen observation of people and things around
her that give it flesh and blood. The book was an
instant success and has gone beyond its thirtieth
printing since its first appearance in 1960.
Though the little girl’s range of observation
covers only the southern corner of the city,
these stories have captured the readers’ imag-
ination. To many readers, it also seems that
 xxiv | Memories of Peking

what is most prominent is not only the characters, but that

particular period of time and the vast metropolis of Peking,
the fabulous capital of China.
The author is well known for her intuitive perception and
quick witted humor, and both these qualities appear in all the
stories. In “Hui-an Hostel,” the first story in this collection,
Ying-tzu sounds uncertain, her groping perception shadowed
by a feeling of bewilderment. This bewilderment appears
again in “Let Us Go and See the Sea,” a story based on the
delicate line between innocence and guilt, and the difficulty
for a child to fully apprehend the fine line dividing “the bad”
from “the good.” In “Lan I-niang,” Ying-tzu becomes more
aware of the undercurrents within the relationships of the
adult world and precociously manipulates events to protect
her mother. “Donkey Rolls” is the only story in which the
main character is not the child but Sung Ma, the illiterate
wet nurse who appears in all the five stories with an earthy
wisdom and dignity all her own.
In the afterword of her last and newest Chinese edition
(1988) of this collection, the author herself says, “At the end
of every story, the person I cared for would leave me, until in
the last one, ‘Papa’s Flowers Have Fallen,’ even my beloved
father left us.” It is the impact of this constant loss that
arouses the child’s awareness of the uncertainties of human
relationships, even of life itself, catapulting the child away
from childhood joys into the sorrows of the adult world.
Lin Hai-yin, one of the foremost women writers in Tai-
wan, is the daughter of a native of Miaoli, a city in the center
 Translator's Introduction | xxv

of the island. She grew up in the great city of Peking and has
considered it her second home. In the winter of 1948, she
returned to Taiwan and has been pursuing a successful career
as a writer and publisher. Her creative works include many
volumes of essays, three novels, and four collections of short
stories. Without her official consent, Memories of Peking: South
Side Stories was made into a movie in Shanghai in 1982, and
has won quite a few prizes in international competitions. (The
name of the movie is Memories of Beijing.)
This collection has been a cooperative venture by the two
translators. The primary division of labor was as follows: Nancy
C. Ing translated “Winter Sun, Childhood Years, the Camel
Caravan,” “Hui-an Hostel,” “Let Us Go and See the Sea” and “Lan
I-niang”; Chi Pang-yuan translated “Donkey Rolls” and “Papa’s
Flowers Have Fallen.”
We wish to express our sincere appreciation to Mr. Charles
Fosselman for his suggestions and editorial advice.
We are indeed happy to be able to present the English
version of Memories of Peking: South Side Stories, for we truly
feel this book is not only an outstanding achievement in the
Chinese literary world, but also a sensitive insight into a tradi-
tional Chinese family and society of the past that may never
be recaptured again.

Taipei, 1989
This page intentionally left blank
Winter Sun,
Childhood Years,
the Camel Caravan
This page intentionally left blank
The camel caravan came, stopping outside our front gate.
The camels stood there in a long line, silently waiting to
do man’s bidding. The weather was cold and dry. The herds-
man pulled off his felt cap and a white cloud of steam rose
from his bald pate, slowly merging into the cold air.
Papa was bargaining with him. Over the twin humps of
each camel were two sacks of coal. I wondered if they were
full of “South Mountain” coal or the kind they refer to as “Dark
Gold Black Jade”? I often saw these names written in large black
characters on the white wall of the coal shop on Shun-ch’eng
Street. But the herdsman said that they and the camels had
brought it all the way from Men-t’ou-kou, step by step.
Another herdsman was feeding the camels. Bending their
forelegs, they knelt on the ground, their rear ends jutting
straight up behind them.
Papa had finished bargaining with them. The herdsmen
unloaded the coal, the camels ate.
 4 | Memories of Peking

I stood right in front of the camels, watching them

munch straw. They had such ugly faces, such long teeth, and
they munched so slowly and calmly. As they chewed, their
upper teeth interlocked with their lower ones, grinding back
and forth as clouds of warm vapor spewed from their huge
nostrils and white foam covered their beards. I stared at them,
mesmerized, and my own mouth also began to move.
My teacher had told me that I should learn from the
camels’ impassive forbearance. They were never in a hurry,
walking and chewing slowly, they would always arrive at their
destination, always eat until they were full. Maybe they were
by nature slow, for whenever they had to run a few steps to
avoid passing vehicles, their movements were most ungainly.
One would know whenever the camel caravan was
approaching, for the lead camel would always have a bell tied
around his long neck. With each step he took, it would ring
out with a “tang ... tang ... tang.”
“Why do they have to have a bell?” I always questioned
anything I did not understand.
Papa told me that camels were afraid of wolves because
they were often bitten by them. The herdsmen tied the bell
on so that when the wolves heard it tinkling, they would
know that there were men around to protect the camels and
would not dare attack.
However, my child’s mind perceived things differently
from the grown-ups. I said to Papa,
“That’s not so, Papa! As they walk over the shifting sand
on their soft padded feet, there is not a single sound. Didn’t
 Winter Sun, Childhood Years, the Camel Caravan | 5

you say that they can walk for three nights without drinking
any water, only silently chewing on the cud that was regurgi-
tated from their stomachs? It must be that the camel herdsmen
can’t stand the loneliness of those long treks so they tie the
bells on so as to make the journey a little more cheerful.”
Papa thought a while, then laughed as he said,
“Maybe your way of thinking is more appealing.”
Winter was almost over, spring was near, and the sun was
especially warm; warm enough for people to take off their
cotton-padded jackets. Had not the camels also begun taking
off their old camel-hair coats? Clots of hair were falling off
their bodies, hanging loosely under their bellies. I really
wanted to take a pair of scissors and cut them off. They were
indeed messy-looking. The herdsmen had also taken off their
furry sheepskin coats, slinging them over the smaller hump
on the camels’ backs. The sacks were all empty since all the
“Dark Gold Black Jade” had been sold, and as they walked
with lighter steps, the sound of the bells was crisper than
before.
Summer came and not even the shadow of a camel could
be seen. I asked Mama,
“Where do they go in summer?”
“Who?”
“The camels!”
Mama could not answer the question, so she exclaimed,
“Always questions, questions! What a child!”
Summer had gone, autumn was over, winter had arrived
and the camel caravan was back again; but childhood had
 6 | Memories of Peking

passed away, never to return. And I would never again be so

silly as to imitate the camels’ chewing under the winter sun.
But how I miss the people and places of those childhood
years spent in the south side of the city of Peking! I said to
myself, go ahead and write it all down. Let the reality of
childhood days pass away, but keep the spirit of childhood
forever alive.
Thus I have written this collection, Memories of Peking:
South Side Stories.
Silently I reminisce, slowly I begin to write. I see the car-
avan of camels approaching under the winter sun, I hear the
pleasing tinkle of the bells, and childhood days return once
again into my heart.

October 1960
Hui-an Hostel
This page intentionally left blank
 1
......

The sun filtered through the large glass windows, shining on

the white papered wall, the three-drawered table, and on to my
little bed. I was awake, but still lying in bed watching the tiny
specks of dust dancing in the rays of sunlight. Sung Ma came
to dust the window sill and the table. The swift movements of
the feather duster stirred up more dust than ever, all dancing in
the shaft of sunlight. I quickly pulled up the quilt to cover my
face, for fear that the dust would make me cough.
Sung Ma’s feather duster reached the railing of my bed,
tapping briskly over every nook and corner. I wanted to scold
her but she spoke first,
“Haven’t you slept enough yet?”And with that she pulled
away my quilt, revealing me in my flannel pajamas so that
I immediately sneezed twice. She forced me to get up and
dressed me. My flowered cotton twill padded jacket and trousers
were all brand new; the trouser legs were funny for they were so
heavily padded with cotton wool they could stand up all by
themselves.
 10 | Memories of Peking

Mama was sitting beside the stove combing her hair.

Bending over slightly, she drew a handful of hair from the
back of her neck over her shoulders, and using a fine-toothed
comb, she began slowly combing over and over again. There
was a bottle of rose-colored hair oil sitting on the stove for
it was so cold that the oil would freeze and had to be melted
before it could be used.
It was very bright outside. Perched on the bare tree branch
were several little birds who were unafraid of the cold. I won-
dered to myself, when would the tree be covered with leaves
again? This was our first winter in Peking.
Mama still could not speak Pekingese very well. She was
telling Sung Ma what to buy at the market today and she
could not say, “Buy one catty of pork, not too fat.” What she
said sounded like, “Buy one catty of bark not to fly.”
After Mama finished combing her hair, she smeared the
leftover oil on her hands over my hair, plaiting it into two
pigtails. I saw Sung Ma preparing to go out with a basket in
her hand and hurriedly called after her,
“Sung Ma, I’ll go with you to the marketplace.”
“You’re not afraid of that mad woman at Hui-an Hostel?”
Sung Ma asked.
Sung Ma was a native of Shun-yi county and could not
speak Pekingese very well. So she pronounced it “Hui-nan Hos-
tel,” Mama said “Huei-wa Hostel,” Papa said “Fei-an Hostel,”1

1 Her original dialect was Fukienese. His original dialect was Hakka. So
they often could not pronounce Pekingese correctly.
 Hui-an Hostel | 11

I said “Hui-an Hostel” like the other children in our hu-t’ung.2

I didn’t know which was actually correct.
Why should I be afraid of the mad woman at Hui-an Hostel?
Yesterday she even smiled at me! That smile of hers was really
appealing, if it were not for Mama holding tightly on to my
hand I would have walked over and talked to her.
The Hui-an Hostel was the first building along this hu-
t’ung of ours. Above the three stone steps were a pair of large
black doors, over which hung a horizontal tablet inscribed
with four characters “Hui-an County Hostel” which Papa
had taught me to read “Fei-an Hostel”when we were walking
past it. Papa had said that those who lived inside there were
all students from “Fei-an,” who were studying at a university,
just like Younger Uncle.
“Also in Peking University?” I asked Papa.
“There’re plenty of universities in Peking, there’s Ching
Hua University, Yenching University ...”
“Can I go into Fei-an ... no, Hui-an Hostel to play with the
younger uncles?”
“Can’t do that! Can’t do that!” I knew no matter what I
asked, Papa would always use this Hakka expression to refuse
me. I thought to myself that the day will come when I would
climb those three steps and walk through those pitch black
doors.
I had seen the mad woman of Hui-an Hostel several times.
Each time, if she happened to be standing by the door, Sung

2 Lanes or alleyways in Peking are called hu-t’ung.

 12 | Memories of Peking

Ma or Mama would quickly grab my hand tightly, whisper-

ing,“Mad woman!” and we would walk by, staying close to
the wall. If I wanted to turn my head and look back, they
would tug at my arm to stop me from doing so. Actually, she
was but a girl with a long braid, just like any of the other girls
in the neighborhood! She always leaned against the doorway
watching people pass by.
Yesterday, I went with Mama to Fu-chao-lou store on Lo-
ma-shih Road. Mama was going to buy duck egg powder for
her face and I loved to eat the eight-flavored preserved plums
that were sold there. We came back by way of Lo-ma-shih
Road, passing through two other hu-t’ungs to the well house
at Ch’un-shu Hu-t’ung, which was diagonally opposite to the
hu-t’ung where we lived. As soon as we entered our hu-t’ung
I saw the mad girl of Hui-an Hostel. She was wearing a
maroon-colored padded gown and black cotton-wool padded
shoes, a row of bangs covered her forehead and a piece of
bright red wool was tied around the ends of her long thick
braid which she pulled from back over her shoulder, toying
with it as she stared vacantly at the acacia tree in the garden
of the house across the street. Several crows were perched on
the dried branches and there was no one in the hu-t’ung.
Mama was muttering to herself as she walked with her
head lowered, most probably trying to figure out how much
she had spent shopping that day so she could give an account
to Papa who was always anxious to know about everything
regarding household matters. Thus she didn’t even notice that
we had already reached “Huei-wa Hostel.” I followed behind
her, keeping my eyes on the mad girl, and even forgot to keep
 Hui-an Hostel | 13

on walking. At that moment, the girl’s eyes shifted from the

acacia tree and fell on me. Her eyes stared unmovingly at me
as if searching for something in my face. Her face was pale,
with a bluish tint, the tip of her nose was a little red, most
probably chilled by the cold wind; her chin was pointed and
her thin lips were tightly pressed together. Suddenly, her lips
moved, her eyelids fluttered with the hint of a smile, as if
she wanted to say something; and the hand that was playing
with her braid stretched out toward me, gesturing for me to
go to her. Not knowing why, I shivered, then I began walking
toward her beckoning hand and smile. But Mama turned her
head, suddenly grabbing hold of me.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Uh?” I was somewhat confused. Mama glanced at the
mad girl and said,
“Why are you shivering? Are you scared––do you want to
go to the toilet? Let’s hurry home!” Mama pulled tightly at
my hand.
Arriving home, I still kept thinking of the way she looked.
Wasn’t her smile intriguing? If I talked to her and said, “Hey!”
what would she do? I was in a daze, wondering, too listless
to eat my dinner. Actually I had eaten too many preserved
plums. But after dinner, Mama said to Sung Ma,
“Ying-tzu must have been frightened.” Then she prepared
a bowl of sugared water for me to drink and ordered me to
go to bed and sleep.
My hair had already been braided and I ran out to go
marketing with Sung Ma. She walked in front and I followed
behind. Her ugly black cotton padded trousers, so thick and
 14 | Memories of Peking

baggy, were tied up tightly at the ankles. People told Mama

that the maid servants in Peking knew how to steal things,
that when they stole rice, they would pour it into their trou-
ser legs and since they were tightly tied up, the rice would not
trickle out. I wondered, were Sung Ma’s baggy trouser legs
filled with our white rice?
As we passed by Hui-an Hostel, I glanced toward it. The
black doors were open wide and in the doorway was a coal
stove. The mad girl’s father and mother were cooking
something on the stove. Everyone called the girl’s father, Lao
Wang.3 He was the gatekeeper for Hui-an Hostel and they
lived in the room nearest to the street. Although Sung Ma
would not let me look at the mad girl, I knew that she herself
also liked to look at her, and ask about her. It was just that
she did not want me to see nor to listen to what was being
said. At that very moment, Sung Ma was also peering at Hui-
an Hostel when the mother happened to lift her head. Both
of them almost simultaneously greeted one another saying,
“Have you eaten yet?” Papa said that the people in Peking had
nothing to do all day so every time they meet anyone they
would ask if they had eaten or not.
Coming out of the alley, a few steps southward was the
well house. Water was all over the road and certain spots were
covered with a thin layer of ice. The wheelbarrows filled with
water came and went, one after another. The wheelbarrow

3 “Lao”means old. It is often used together with surnames as a familiar

way of addressing male associates.
 Hui-an Hostel | 15

men pushed along, swaying from side to side, the wheels

squeaking so shrilly that I wanted to muffle up my ears!
There were two people who were drawing water from the
deep well and pouring it into a huge trough, then the wheel-
barrow pushers would draw the water from the trough into
their barrows to deliver to each household. A friend of mine,
Niu-erh, who was just my height, lived near the well house. I
stopped by the well and said to Sung Ma,
“Sung Ma, you go do your marketing while I wait for Niu-erh.”
The first time I saw Niu-erh was at the sundries store.
Holding a bowl in each hand, she gave them a large coin to
buy soy sauce, vinegar and scallions. The shop attendant was
teasing her, “Niu-erh, sing something then I’ll let you go!”
Tears filled Niu-erh’s eyes and her hands were shaking, almost
spilling the vinegar. Filled with angry resentment, I made my
way to her side and with arms akimbo, I demanded, “Why
should she?”
And that was how I got to know Niu-erh.
Niu-erh had only one braid, brown and short, like the
tail of the little puppy that Mama bought for me at the Earth
God Temple. The second time I saw Niu-erh was when I was
standing beside the well, watching the people drawing water.
She came over silently to stand beside me and we smiled at
each other, not knowing what to say. After a while, I could
not help reaching out to touch her little brown pigtail; she
smiled at me again and, pointing behind, said in a low voice,
“You live in that hu-t’ung?”
“Yeah.”
 16 | Memories of Peking

“Which door?”
I stuck out my hand and counted,“One, two, three, four—
the fourth door. Come and play with me.”
She shook her head, “There’s a mad person in your alley,
Mama won’t let me go.”
“What are you afraid of ? She won’t eat people.”
Smiling, she still shook her head.
When Niu-erh smiled, two dimples appeared under her
eyes on both sides of her nose, really pretty, but Sung Ma
actually had said to the keeper of the sundries store,
“This child is real pretty, but appears somewhat ill-starred.
Her eyes are too transparently bright, always seeming to be
filled with water. Look, there are two tear-dimples under her
eyes.”
But I really liked her. I liked her gentleness, not like me
when I am impatient and Sung Ma always scolds, “Jumping
up and down again? Jumping again? Little thunder!” That day,
after she had stood beside me for a little while, she said softly,
“My dad is waiting for me to practice my singing. See you
tomorrow!”
I had met Niu-erh several times beside the well house and
whenever I caught sight of her red cotton-padded jacket and
trousers approaching, I felt a surge of happiness. But today, I
waited for a long time without seeing her. I was very disap-
pointed, I even hid a package of preserved plums in the pocket
of my sweater to give her. I stuck my hand in to feel it. It was
warm and sticky, the paper wrapping had been torn. I thought,
when Sung Ma does the washing, I will certainly get a scolding.
 Hui-an Hostel | 17

I felt very bored and started to walk back home. I wanted

to tell Niu-erh a good idea of mine when I saw her today; she
could take the Horizontal Hu-t’ung to reach our home so she
would not need to pass Hui-an Hostel and be afraid of seeing
the mad girl.
I was thinking with my head lowered, and found I had
reached the door of Hui-an Hostel.
“Hey!”
I was startled! It was the mad girl, biting her lower lip
as she smiled at me. Her eyes were transparently clear and
when she smiled, it was as Sung Ma had said, there were two
dimples! I wanted to take a better look at her, as I had longed
to for quite some time. Involuntarily, I began to walk up the
stairs, drawn by her eyes. The sun shone on her face and
brightened her usual pallid cheeks. The hand that was stuck
in the pocket of her padded jacket stretched out to hold my
hand, so warm, so soft. At that moment, I looked around the
Hu-t’ung and there was not a single soul walking by. Strange,
it was not the mad girl that I was afraid of now, but that peo-
ple would see me holding hands with her.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Uh ... six years old.”
“Six!” She exclaimed in surprise, then bending her head,
she suddenly pulled up my braids and looked at my neck,
searching for something. “No.” She murmured to herself,
then asked me,
 18 | Memories of Peking

“Have you seen our Hsiao Kuei-tzu?”4

“Hsiao Kuei-tzu?” I didn’t understand what she was saying.
Then her mother came out of the door, frowning as she
anxiously said,
“Hsiu-chen, don’t scare the little girl!” then turning to me,
“Don’t listen to her nonsense! Go home, your ma will worry
about you. Well ... do you hear?” As she talked, she waved her
hand, telling me to go back.
I lifted my head to look at the mad girl, now I knew that
her name was Hsiu-chen. She held my hand, swaying it gently
without letting me go. Her smile bolstered my courage and I
said to the older woman.
“No!”
“Little southern barbarian!” Hsiu-chen’s mother also began
to smile, gently tapping me on the forehead with the tip of her
finger. This must be a derogative term, just like the way Papa
would often remark to Mama, “Those northern devils.”
“It doesn’t matter if you play here, but when somebody
from your family comes looking for you, don’t blame our girl
and say she had beckoned you to come in.”
“I won’t say that!” Why should she have to tell me that?
I knew very well what can be said and what cannot be said.
Mama had ordered a gold bracelet made and hid it in a small
jewelry box, I would never tell Papa that.

4 “Hsiao”means little, often used before a name in addressing younger

people or children.
 Hui-an Hostel | 19

“Come!” Hsiu-chen pulled me through the entrance. I

thought we were going inside to the inner courtyard to play
with those young uncles from the universities, but she took
me into the gatehouse where they lived.
Their home was not as bright as ours, the glass-paned
window was very small and there was a large k’ang5 alongside
the window, in the middle of which was a low table, piled
with needlework and a sewing box. Hsiu-chen picked up an
unfinished garment and measured it against me, then joyfully
said to her mama who had just walked in to the room,
“Ma, look, what did I say, it fits just right! Now to open
the neckline.” Saying this, she picked up a string and meas-
ured my neck with it. I let her do what she wanted, while I
kept my eyes on the picture on the wall, a plump fair-skinned
baby without any clothes on, holding a big gold nugget, rid-
ing a huge red fish.
Hsiu-chen, circling around until she was standing in front
of me, saw me with my head tilted up and following my gaze,
she also looked at the picture, and very matter-of-factly said,
“If you wish to look, go up on the k’ang and see how fat
our Hsiao Kuei-tzu is, she was only eight months old then,
riding around the room on the big red fish, playing so hard
she wouldn’t even eat, really naughty ...”
“All right, that’s enough! No sense of shame!” Hsiu-chen
was happily talking away and I was listening, somewhat con-
fused, when Lao Wang came in and interrupted impatiently

5 A bed made of bricks that can be heated with a banked fire inside.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
flickering flame, before an image of the Virgin. At sight of it she
repressed a sob.
“You see, my child,” said the Mother Superior poetically, “it must
have been waiting for you. Anyhow it is empty. Perhaps it may have
known you were coming.”
She spoke softly so that the long rows of sleepers might not be
disturbed, then proceeded to turn down the coverlets.
“Oh, Mother,” Madeleine suddenly whispered softly as she stood
by the bed, “won’t you let me stay always? I never want to go out
any more. I have had such a hard time. I will work so hard for you if
you will let me stay!”
The experienced Sister looked at her curiously. Never before had
she heard such a plea.
“Why, yes, my child,” she said. “If you wish to stay I’m sure it can
be arranged. It is not as we usually do, but you are not the only one
who has gone out in the past and come back to us. I am sure God
and the Blessed Virgin will hear your prayer for whatever is right. But
now go to bed and sleep. You need rest. I can see that. And to-
morrow, or any time, or never, as you choose, you may tell me what
has happened.”
She urged her very gently to enter and then tucked the covers
about her, laying finally a cool, wrinkled hand on her forehead. For
answer Madeleine seized and put it to her lips, holding it so.
“Oh, Mother,” she sobbed as the Sister bent over her, “don’t ever
make me go out in the world again, will you? You won’t, will you? I’m
so tired! I’m so tired!”
“No dear, no,” soothed the Sister, “not unless you wish it. And now
rest. You need never go out in the world again unless you wish.”
And withdrawing the hand from the kissing lips, she tiptoed silently
from the room.
 II
THE HAND

D AVIDSON could distinctly remember that it was between two

and three years after the grisly event in the Monte Orte range—
the sickening and yet deserved end of Mersereau, his quondam
partner and fellow adventurer—that anything to be identified with
Mersereau’s malice toward him, and with Mersereau’s probable
present existence in the spirit world, had appeared in his life.
He and Mersereau had worked long together as prospectors,
investors, developers of property. It was only after they had struck it
rich in the Klondike that Davidson had grown so much more apt and
shrewd in all commercial and financial matters, whereas Mersereau
had seemed to stand still—not to rise to the splendid opportunities
which then opened to him. Why, in some of those later deals it had
not been possible for Davidson even to introduce his old partner to
some of the moneyed men he had to deal with. Yet Mersereau had
insisted, as his right, if you please, on being “in on” everything—
everything!
Take that wonderful Monte Orte property, the cause of all the
subsequent horror. He, Davidson—not Mersereau—had discovered
or heard of the mine, and had carried it along, with old Besmer as a
tool or decoy—Besmer being the ostensible factor—until it was all
ready for him to take over and sell or develop. Then it was that
Mersereau, having been for so long his partner, demanded a full half
—a third, at least—on the ground that they had once agreed to work
together in all these things.
Think of it! And Mersereau growing duller and less useful and
more disagreeable day by day, and year by year! Indeed, toward the
last he had threatened to expose the trick by which jointly, seven
years before, they had possessed themselves of the Skyute Pass
Mine; to drive Davidson out of public and financial life, to have him
arrested and tried—along with himself, of course. Think of that!
But he had fixed him—yes, he had, damn him! He had trailed
Mersereau that night to old Besmer’s cabin on the Monte Orte, when
Besmer was away. Mersereau had gone there with the intention of
stealing the diagram of the new field, and had secured it, true
enough. A thief he was, damn him. Yet, just as he was making safely
away, as he thought, he, Davidson, had struck him cleanly over the
ear with that heavy rail-bolt fastened to the end of a walnut stick, and
the first blow had done for him.
Lord, how the bone above Mersereau’s ear had sounded when it
cracked! And how bloody one side of that bolt was! Mersereau
hadn’t had time to do anything before he was helpless. He hadn’t
died instantly, though, but had turned over and faced him, Davidson,
with that savage, scowling face of his and those blazing, animal
eyes.
Lying half propped up on his left elbow, Mersereau had reached
out toward him with that big, rough, bony right hand of his—the right
with which he always boasted of having done so much damage on
this, that, and the other occasion—had glared at him as much as to
say:
“Oh, if I could only reach you just for a moment before I go!”
Then it was that he, Davidson, had lifted the club again. Horrified
as he was, and yet determined that he must save his own life, he
had finished the task, dragging the body back to an old fissure
behind the cabin and covering it with branches, a great pile of pine
fronds, and as many as one hundred and fifty boulders, great and
small, and had left his victim. It was a sickening job and a sickening
sight, but it had to be.
Then, having finished, he had slipped dismally away, like a jackal,
thinking of that hand in the moonlight, held up so savagely, and that
look. Nothing might have come of that either, if he hadn’t been
inclined to brood on it so much, on the fierceness of it.
 No, nothing had happened. A year had passed, and if anything
had been going to turn up it surely would have by then. He,
Davidson, had gone first to New York, later to Chicago, to dispose of
the Monte Orte claim. Then, after two years, he had returned here to
Mississippi, where he was enjoying comparative peace. He was
looking after some sugar property which had once belonged to him,
and which he was now able to reclaim and put in charge of his sister
as a home against a rainy day. He had no other.
But that body back there! That hand uplifted in the moonlight—to
clutch him if it could! Those eyes.

II—June, 1905

Take that first year, for instance, when he had returned to

Gatchard in Mississippi, whence both he and Mersereau had
originally issued. After looking after his own property he had gone
out to a tumble-down estate of his uncle’s in Issaqueena County—a
leaky old slope-roofed house where, in a bedroom on the top floor,
he had had his first experience with the significance or reality of the
hand.
Yes, that was where first he had really seen it pictured in that
curious, unbelievable way; only who would believe that it was
Mersereau’s hand? They would say it was an accident, chance, rain
dropping down. But the hand had appeared on the ceiling of that
room just as sure as anything, after a heavy rain-storm—it was
almost a cyclone—when every chink in the old roof had seemed to
leak water.
During the night, after he had climbed to the room by way of those
dismal stairs with their great landing and small glass oil-lamp he
carried, and had sunk to rest, or tried to, in the heavy, wide, damp
bed, thinking, as he always did those days, of the Monte Orte and
Mersereau, the storm had come up. As he had listened to the wind
moaning outside he had heard first the scratch, scratch, scratch, of
some limb, no doubt, against the wall—sounding, or so it seemed in
his feverish unrest, like some one penning an indictment against him
with a worn, rusty pen.
 And then, the storm growing worse, and in a fit of irritation and
self-contempt at his own nervousness, he had gone to the window,
but just as lightning struck a branch of the tree nearest the window
and so very near him, too—as though some one, something, was
seeking to strike him—(Mersereau?) and as though he had been
lured by that scratching. God! He had retreated, feeling that it was
meant for him.
But that big, knotted hand painted on the ceiling by the dripping
water during the night! There it was, right over him when he awoke,
outlined or painted as if with wet, gray whitewash against the
wretched but normally pale-blue of the ceiling when dry. There it was
—a big, open hand just like Mersereau’s as he had held it up that
night—huge, knotted, rough, the fingers extended as if tense and
clutching. And, if you will believe it, near it was something that
looked like a pen—an old, long-handled pen—to match that scratch,
scratch, scratch!
“Huldah,” he had inquired of the old black mammy who entered in
the morning to bring him fresh water and throw open the shutters,
“what does that look like to you up there—that patch on the ceiling
where the rain came through?”
He wanted to reassure himself as to the character of the thing he
saw—that it might not be a creation of his own feverish imagination,
accentuated by the dismal character of this place.
“’Pears t’ me mo’ like a big han’ ’an anythin’ else, Marse Davi’son,”
commented Huldah, pausing and staring upward. “Mo’ like a big fist,
kinda. Dat air’s a new drip come las’ night, I reckon. Dis here ole
place ain’ gonna hang togethah much longah, less’n some repairin’
be done mighty quick now. Yassir, dat air’s a new drop, sho’s yo’
bo’n, en it come on’y las’ night. I hain’t never seed dat befo’.”
And then he had inquired, thinking of the fierceness of the storm:
“Huldah, do you have many such storms up this way?”
“Good gracious, Marse Davi’son, we hain’t seed no sech blow en
—en come three years now. I hain’t seed no sech lightnin’ en I doan’
know when.”
 Wasn’t that strange, that it should all come on the night, of all
nights, when he was there? And no such other storm in three years!
Huldah stared idly, always ready to go slow and rest, if possible,
whereas he had turned irritably. To be annoyed by ideas such as
this! To always be thinking of that Monte Orte affair! Why couldn’t he
forget it? Wasn’t it Mersereau’s own fault? He never would have
killed the man if he hadn’t been forced to it.
And to be haunted in this way, making mountains out of mole-hills,
as he thought then! It must be his own miserable fancy—and yet
Mersereau had looked so threateningly at him. That glance had
boded something; it was too terrible not to.
Davidson might not want to think of it, but how could he stop?
Mersereau might not be able to hurt him any more, at least not on
this earth; but still, couldn’t he? Didn’t the appearance of this hand
seem to indicate that he might? He was dead, of course. His body,
his skeleton, was under that pile of rocks and stones, some of them
as big as wash-tubs. Why worry over that, and after two years? And
still—
That hand on the ceiling!

III—December, 1905

Then, again, take that matter of meeting Pringle in Gatchard just at

that time, within the same week. It was due to Davidson’s sister. She
had invited Mr. and Mrs. Pringle in to meet him one evening, without
telling him that they were spiritualists and might discuss spiritualism.
Clairvoyance, Pringle called it, or seeing what can’t be seen with
material eyes, and clairaudience, or hearing what can’t be heard with
material ears, as well as materialization, or ghosts, and table-
rapping, and the like. Table-rapping—that damned tap-tapping that
he had been hearing ever since!
It was Pringle’s fault, really. Pringle had persisted in talking. He,
Davidson, wouldn’t have listened, except that he somehow became
fascinated by what Pringle said concerning what he had heard and
seen in his time. Mersereau must have been at the bottom of that,
too.
At any rate, after he had listened, he was sorry, for Pringle had
had time to fill his mind full of those awful facts or ideas which had
since harassed him so much—all that stuff about drunkards,
degenerates, and weak people generally being followed about by
vile, evil spirits and used to effect those spirits’ purposes or desires
in this world. Horrible!
Wasn’t it terrible? Pringle—big, mushy, creature that he was, sickly
and stagnant like a springless pool—insisted that he had even seen
clouds of these spirits about drunkards, degenerates, and the like, in
street-cars, on trains, and about vile corners at night. Once, he said,
he had seen just one evil spirit—think of that!—following a certain
man all the time, at his left elbow—a dark, evil, red-eyed thing, until
finally the man had been killed in a quarrel.
Pringle described their shapes, these spirits, as varied. They were
small, dark, irregular clouds, with red or green spots somewhere for
eyes, changing in form and becoming longish or round like a jellyfish,
or even like a misshapen cat or dog. They could take any form at will
—even that of a man.
Once, Pringle declared, he had seen as many as fifty about a
drunkard who was staggering down a street, all of them trying to
urge him into the nearest saloon, so that they might re-experience in
some vague way the sensation of drunkenness, which at some time
or other they themselves, having been drunkards in life, had
enjoyed!
It would be the same with a drug fiend, or indeed with any one of
weak or evil habits. They gathered about such an one like flies, their
red or green eyes glowing—attempting to get something from them,
perhaps, if nothing more than a little sense of their old earth-life.
The whole thing was so terrible and disturbing at the time,
particularly that idea of men being persuaded or influenced to
murder, that he, Davidson, could stand it no longer, and got up and
left. But in his room upstairs he meditated on it, standing before his
mirror. Suddenly—would he ever forget it—as he was taking off his
collar and tie, he had heard that queer tap, tap, tap, right on his
dressing-table or under it, and for the first time, which Pringle said,
ghosts made when table-rapping in answer to a call, or to give
warning of their presence.
Then something said to him, almost as clearly as if he heard it:
“This is me, Mersereau, come back at last to get you!
Pringle was just an excuse of mine to let you know I was
coming, and so was that hand in that old house, in
Issaqueena County. It was mine! I will be with you from
now on. Don’t think I will ever leave you!”
It had frightened and made him half sick, so wrought up was he.
For the first time he felt cold chills run up and down his spine—the
creeps. He felt as if some one were standing over him—Mersereau,
of course—only he could not see or hear a thing, just that faint tap at
first, growing louder a little later, and quite angry when he tried to
ignore it.
People did live, then, after they were dead, especially evil people
—people stronger than you, perhaps. They had the power to come
back, to haunt, to annoy you if they didn’t like anything you had done
to them. No doubt Mersereau was following him in the hope of
revenge, there in the spirit world, just outside this one, close at his
heels, like that evil spirit attending the other man whom Pringle had
described.

IV—February, 1906

Take that case of the hand impressed on the soft dough and
plaster of Paris, described in an article that he had picked up in the
dentist’s office out there in Pasadena—Mersereau’s very hand, so
far as he could judge. How about that for a coincidence, picking up
the magazine with that disturbing article about psychic
materialization in Italy, and later in Berne, Switzerland, where the
scientists were gathered to investigate that sort of thing? And just
when he was trying to rid himself finally of the notion that any such
thing could be!
 According to that magazine article, some old crone over in Italy—
spiritualist, or witch, or something—had got together a crowd of
experimentalists or professors in an abandoned house on an almost
deserted island off the coast of Sardinia. There they had conducted
experiments with spirits, which they called materialization, getting the
impression of the fingers of a hand, or of a whole hand and arm, or
of a face, on a plate of glass covered with soot, the plate being
locked in a small safe on the center of a table about which they sat!
He, Davidson, couldn’t understand, of course, how it was done,
but done it was. There in that magazine were half a dozen pictures,
reproductions of photographs of a hand, an arm and a face—or a
part of one, anyhow. And if they looked like anything, they looked
exactly like Mersereau’s! Hadn’t Pringle, there in Gatchard, Miss.,
stated spirits could move anywhere, over long distances, with the
speed of light. And would it be any trick for Mersereau to appear
there at Sardinia, and then engineer this magazine into his presence,
here in Los Angeles? Would it? It would not. Spirits were free and
powerful over there, perhaps.
There was not the least doubt that these hands, these partial
impressions of a face, were those of Mersereau. Those big knuckles!
That long, heavy, humped nose and big jaw! Whose else could they
be?—they were Mersereau’s, intended, when they were made over
there in Italy, for him, Davidson, to see later here in Los Angeles.
Yes, they were! And looking at that sinister face reproduced in the
magazine, it seemed to say, with Mersereau’s old coarse sneer:
“You see? You can’t escape me! I’m showing you how
much alive I am over here, just as I was on earth. And I’ll
get you yet, even if I have to go farther than Italy to do it!”
It was amazing, the shock he took from that. It wasn’t just that
alone, but the persistence and repetition of this hand business. What
could it mean? Was it really Mersereau’s hand? As for the face, it
wasn’t all there—just the jaw, mouth, cheek, left temple, and a part of
the nose and eye; but it was Mersereau’s, all right. He had gone
clear over there into Italy somewhere, in a lone house on an island,
to get this message of his undying hate back to him. Or was it just
spirits, evil spirits, bent on annoying him because he was nervous
and sensitive now?

V—October, 1906

Even new crowded hotels and new buildings weren’t the protection
he had at first hoped and thought they would be. Even there you
weren’t safe—not from a man like Mersereau. Take that incident
there in Los Angeles, and again in Seattle, only two months ago
now, when Mersereau was able to make that dreadful explosive or
crashing sound, as if one had burst a huge paper bag full of air, or
upset a china-closet full of glass and broken everything, when as a
matter of fact nothing at all had happened. It had frightened him
horribly the first two or three times, believing as he did that
something fearful had happened. Finding that it was nothing—or
Mersereau—he was becoming used to it now; but other people,
unfortunately, were not.
He would be—as he had been that first time—sitting in his room
perfectly still and trying to amuse himself, or not to think, when
suddenly there would be that awful crash. It was astounding! Other
people heard it, of course. They had in Los Angeles. A maid and a
porter had come running the first time to inquire, and he had had to
protest that he had heard nothing. They couldn’t believe it at first,
and had gone to other rooms to look. When it happened the second
time, the management had protested, thinking it was a joke he was
playing; and to avoid the risk of exposure he had left.
After that he could not keep a valet or nurse about him for long.
Servants wouldn’t stay, and managers of hotels wouldn’t let him
remain when such things went on. Yet he couldn’t live in a house or
apartment alone, for there the noises and atmospheric conditions
would be worse than ever.

VI—June, 1907

Take that last old house he had been in—but never would be in
again!—at Anne Haven. There he actually visualized the hand—a
thing as big as a washtub at first, something like smoke or shadow in
a black room moving about over the bed and everywhere. Then, as
he lay there, gazing at it spellbound, it condensed slowly, and he
began to feel it. It was now a hand of normal size—there was no
doubt of it in the world—going over him softly, without force, as a
ghostly hand must, having no real physical strength, but all the time
with a strange, electric, secretive something about it, as if it were not
quite sure of itself, and not quite sure that he was really there.
The hand, or so it seemed—God!—moved right up to his neck and
began to feel over that as he lay there. Then it was that he guessed
just what it was that Mersereau was after.
It was just like a hand, the fingers and thumb made into a circle
and pressed down over his throat, only it moved over him gently at
first, because it really couldn’t do anything yet, not having the
material strength. But the intention! The sense of cruel, savage
determination that went with it!
And yet, if one went to a nerve specialist or doctor about all this,
as he did afterward, what did the doctor say? He had tried to
describe how he was breaking down under the strain, how he could
not eat or sleep on account of all these constant tappings and
noises; but the moment he even began to hint at his experiences,
especially the hand or the noises, the doctor exclaimed:
“Why, this is plain delusion! You’re nervously run down, that’s all
that ails you—on the verge of pernicious anemia, I should say. You’ll
have to watch yourself as to this illusion about spirits. Get it out of
your mind. There’s nothing to it!”
Wasn’t that just like one of these nerve specialists, bound up in
their little ideas of what they knew or saw, or thought they saw?

VII—November, 1907

And now take this very latest development at Battle Creek recently
where he had gone trying to recuperate on the diet there. Hadn’t
Mersereau, implacable demon that he was, developed this latest
trick of making his food taste queer to him—unpalatable, or with an
odd odor?
 He, Davidson, knew it was Mersereau, for he felt him beside him
at the table whenever he sat down. Besides, he seemed to hear
something—clairaudience was what they called it, he understood—
he was beginning to develop that, too, now! It was Mersereau, of
course, saying in a voice which was more like a memory of a voice
than anything real—the voice of some one you could remember as
having spoken in a certain way, say, ten years or more ago:
“I’ve fixed it so you can’t eat any more, you—”
There followed a long list of vile expletives, enough in itself to
sicken one.
Thereafter, in spite of anything he could do to make himself think
to the contrary, knowing that the food was all right, really, Davidson
found it to have an odor or a taste which disgusted him, and which
he could not overcome, try as he would. The management assured
him that it was all right, as he knew it was—for others. He saw them
eating it. But he couldn’t—had to get up and leave, and the little he
could get down he couldn’t retain, or it wasn’t enough for him to live
on. God, he would die, this way! Starve, as he surely was doing by
degrees now.
And Mersereau always seeming to be standing by. Why, if it
weren’t for fresh fruit on the stands at times, and just plain, fresh-
baked bread in bakers’ windows, which he could buy and eat quickly,
he might not be able to live at all. It was getting to that pass!

VIII—August, 1908

That wasn’t the worst, either, bad as all that was. The worst was
the fact that under the strain of all this he was slowly but surely
breaking down, and that in the end Mersereau might really succeed
in driving him out of life here—to do what, if anything, to him there?
What? It was such an evil pack by which he was surrounded, now,
those who lived just on the other side and hung about the earth, vile,
debauched creatures, as Pringle had described them, and as
Davidson had come to know for himself, fearing them and their ways
so much, and really seeing them at times.
 Since he had come to be so weak and sensitive, he could see
them for himself—vile things that they were, swimming before his
gaze in the dark whenever he chanced to let himself be in the dark,
which was not often—friends of Mersereau, no doubt, and inclined to
help him just for the evil of it.
For this long time now Davidson had taken to sleeping with the
light on, wherever he was, only tying a handkerchief over his eyes to
keep out some of the glare. Even then he could see them—queer,
misshapen things, for all the world like wavy, stringy jellyfish or coils
of thick, yellowish-black smoke, moving about, changing in form at
times, yet always looking dirty or vile, somehow, and with those
queer, dim, reddish or greenish glows for eyes. It was sickening!

IX—October, 1908

Having accomplished so much, Mersereau would by no means be

content to let him go. Davidson knew that! He could talk to him
occasionally now, or at least could hear him and answer back, if he
chose, when he was alone and quite certain that no one was
listening.
Mersereau was always saying, when Davidson would listen to him
at all—which he wouldn’t often—that he would get him yet, that he
would make him pay, or charging him with fraud and murder.
“I’ll choke you yet!” The words seemed to float in from somewhere,
as if he were remembering that at some time Mersereau had said
just that in his angry, savage tone—not as if he heard it; and yet he
was hearing it of course.

“I’ll choke you yet! You can’t escape! You may think you’ll die a
natural death, but you won’t, and that’s why I’m poisoning your food
to weaken you. You can’t escape! I’ll get you, sick or well, when you
can’t help yourself, when you’re sleeping. I’ll choke you, just as you
hit me with that club. That’s why you’re always seeing and feeling
this hand of mine! I’m not alone. I’ve nearly had you many a time
already, only you have managed to wriggle out so far, jumping up,
but some day you won’t be able to—see? Then—”

The voice seemed to die away at times, even in the middle of a

sentence, but at the other times—often, often—he could hear it
completing the full thought. Sometimes he would turn on the thing
and exclaim:
“Oh, go to the devil!” or, “Let me alone!” or, “Shut up!” Even in a
closed room and all alone, such remarks seemed strange to him,
addressed to a ghost; but he couldn’t resist at times, annoyed as he
was. Only he took good care not to talk if any one was about.
It was getting so that there was no real place for him outside of an
asylum, for often he would get up screaming at night—he had to, so
sharp was the clutch on his throat—and then always, wherever he
was, a servant would come in and want to know what was the
matter. He would have to say that it was a nightmare—only the
management always requested him to leave after the second or third
time, say, or after an explosion or two. It was horrible!
He might as well apply to a private asylum or sanatorium now,
having all the money he had, and explain that he had delusions—
delusions! Imagine!—and ask to be taken care of. In a place like that
they wouldn’t be disturbed by his jumping up and screaming at night,
feeling that he was being choked, as he was, or by his leaving the
table because he couldn’t eat the food, or by his talking back to
Mersereau, should they chance to hear him, or by the noises when
they occurred.
They could assign him a special nurse and a special room, if he
wished—only he didn’t wish to be too much alone. They could put
him in charge of some one who would understand all these things, or
to whom he could explain. He couldn’t expect ordinary people, or
hotels catering to ordinary people, to put up with him any more.
Mersereau and his friends made too much trouble.
 He must go and hunt up a good place somewhere where they
understood such things, or at least tolerated them, and explain, and
then it would all pass for the hallucinations of a crazy man,—though,
as a matter of fact, he wasn’t crazy at all. It was all too real, only the
average or so-called normal person couldn’t see or hear as he could
—hadn’t experienced what he had.

X—December, 1908

“The trouble is, doctor, that Mr. Davidson is suffering from the
delusion that he is pursued by evil spirits. He was not committed
here by any court, but came of his own accord about four months
ago, and we let him wander about here at will. But he seems to be
growing worse, as time goes on.
“One of his worst delusions, doctor, is that there is one spirit in
particular who is trying to choke him to death. Dr. Major, our
superintendent, says he has incipient tuberculosis of the throat, with
occasional spasmodic contractions. There are small lumps or
calluses here and there as though caused by outside pressure and
yet our nurse assures us that there is no such outside irritation. He
won’t believe that; but whenever he tries to sleep, especially in the
middle of the night, he will jump up and come running out into the
hall, insisting that one of these spirits, which he insists are after him,
is trying to choke him to death. He really seems to believe it, for he
comes out coughing and choking and feeling at his neck as if some
one has been trying to strangle him. He always explains the whole
matter to me as being the work of evil spirits, and asks me to not pay
any attention to him unless he calls for help or rings his call-bell; and
so I never think anything more of it now unless he does.
“Another of his ideas is that these same spirits do something to his
food—put poison in it, or give it a bad odor or taste, so that he can’t
eat it. When he does find anything he can eat, he grabs it and almost
swallows it whole, before, as he says, the spirits have time to do
anything to it. Once, he says, he weighed more than two hundred
pounds, but now he only weighs one hundred and twenty. His case
is exceedingly strange and pathetic, doctor!
 “Dr. Major insists that it is purely a delusion, that so far as being
choked is concerned, it is the incipient tuberculosis, and that his
stomach trouble comes from the same thing; but by association of
ideas, or delusion, he thinks some one is trying to choke him and
poison his food, when it isn’t so at all. Dr. Major says that he can’t
imagine what could have started it. He is always trying to talk to Mr.
Davidson about it, but whenever he begins to ask him questions, Mr.
Davidson refuses to talk, and gets up and leaves.
“One of the peculiar things about his idea of being choked, doctor,
is that when he is merely dozing he always wakes up in time, and
has the power to throw it off. He claims that the strength of these
spirits is not equal to his own when he is awake, or even dozing, but
when he’s asleep their strength is greater and that then they may
injure him. Sometimes, when he has had a fright like this, he will
come out in the hall and down to my desk there at the lower end,
and ask if he mayn’t sit there by me. He says it calms him. I always
tell him yes, but it won’t be five minutes before he’ll get up and leave
again, saying that he’s being annoyed, or that he won’t be able to
contain himself if he stays any longer, because of the remarks being
made over his shoulder or in his ear.
“Often he’ll say: ‘Did you hear that, Miss Liggett? It’s astonishing,
the low, vile things that man can say at times!’ When I say, ‘No, I
didn’t hear,’ he always says, ‘I’m so glad!’”
“No one has ever tried to relieve him of this by hypnotism, I
suppose?”
“Not that I know of, doctor. Dr. Major may have tried it. I have only
been here three months.”
“Tuberculosis is certainly the cause of the throat trouble, as Dr.
Major says, and as for the stomach trouble, that comes from the
same thing—natural enough under the circumstances. We may have
to resort to hypnotism a little later. I’ll see. In the meantime you’d
better caution all who come in touch with him never to sympathize,
or even to seem to believe in anything he imagines is being done to
him. It will merely encourage him in his notions. And get him to take
his medicine regularly; it won’t cure, but it will help. Dr. Major has
asked me to give especial attention to his case, and I want the
conditions as near right as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”

XI—January, 1909

The trouble with these doctors was that they really knew nothing of
anything save what was on the surface, the little they had learned at
a medical college or in practise—chiefly how certain drugs, tried by
their predecessors in certain cases, were known to act. They had no
imagination whatever, even when you tried to tell them.
Take that latest young person who was coming here now in his
good clothes and with his car, fairly bursting with his knowledge of
what he called psychiatrics, looking into Davidson’s eyes so hard
and smoothing his temples and throat—massage, he called it—
saying that he had incipient tuberculosis of the throat and stomach
trouble, and utterly disregarding the things which he, Davidson,
could personally see and hear! Imagine the fellow trying to persuade
him, at this late date, that all that was wrong with him was
tuberculosis, that he didn’t see Mersereau standing right beside him
at times, bending over him, holding up that hand and telling him how
he intended to kill him yet—that it was all an illusion!
Imagine saying that Mersereau couldn’t actually seize him by the
throat when he was asleep, or nearly so, when Davidson himself,
looking at his throat in the mirror, could see the actual finger prints,—
Mersereau’s,—for a moment or so afterward. At any rate, his throat
was red and sore from being clutched, as Mersereau of late was
able to clutch him! And that was the cause of these lumps. And to
say, as they had said at first, that he himself was making them by
rubbing and feeling his throat, and that it was tuberculosis!
Wasn’t it enough to make one want to quit the place? If it weren’t
for Miss Liggett and Miss Koehler, his private nurse, and their
devoted care, he would. That Miss Koehler was worth her weight in
gold, learning his ways as she had, being so uniformly kind, and
bearing with his difficulties so genially. He would leave her something
in his will.
 To leave this place and go elsewhere, though, unless he could
take her along, would be folly. And anyway, where else would he go?
Here at least were other people, patients like himself, who could
understand and could sympathize with him,—people who weren’t
convinced as were these doctors that all that he complained of was
mere delusion. Imagine! Old Rankin, the lawyer, for instance, who
had suffered untold persecution from one living person and another,
mostly politicians, was convinced that his, Davidson’s, troubles were
genuine, and liked to hear about them, just as did Miss Koehler.
These two did not insist, as the doctors did, that he had slow
tuberculosis of the throat, and could live a long time and overcome
his troubles if he would. They were merely companionable at such
times as Mersereau would give him enough peace to be sociable.
The only real trouble, though, was that he was growing so weak
from lack of sleep and food—his inability to eat the food which his
enemy bewitched and to sleep at night on account of the choking—
that he couldn’t last much longer. This new physician whom Dr.
Major had called into consultation in regard to his case was insisting
that along with his throat trouble he was suffering from acute
anemia, due to long undernourishment, and that only a solution of
strychnin injected into the veins would help him. But as to Mersereau
poisoning his food—not a word would he hear. Besides, now that he
was practically bedridden, not able to jump up as freely as before, he
was subject to a veritable storm of bedevilment at the hands of
Mersereau. Not only could he see—especially toward evening, and
in the very early hours of the morning—Mersereau hovering about
him like a black shadow, a great, bulky shadow—yet like him in
outline, but he could feel his enemy’s hand moving over him. Worse,
behind or about him he often saw a veritable cloud of evil creatures,
companions or tools of Mersereau’s, who were there to help him and
who kept swimming about like fish in dark waters, and seemed to
eye the procedure with satisfaction.
When food was brought to him, early or late, and in whatever form,
Mersereau and they were there, close at hand, as thick as flies,
passing over and through it in an evident attempt to spoil it before he
could eat it. Just to see them doing it was enough to poison it for
him. Besides, he could hear their voices urging Mersereau to do it.
“That’s right—poison it!”
“He can’t last much longer!”
“Soon he’ll be weak enough so that when you grip him he will
really die!”
It was thus that they actually talked—he could hear them.
He also heard vile phrases addressed to him by Mersereau, the
iterated and reiterated words “murderer” and “swindler” and “cheat,”
there in the middle of the night. Often, although the light was still on,
he saw as many as seven dark figures, very much like Mersereau’s,
although different, gathered close about him,—like men in
consultation—evil men. Some of them sat upon his bed, and it
seemed as if they were about to help Mersereau to finish him,
adding their hands to his.
Behind them again was a complete circle of all those evil,
swimming things with green and red eyes, always watching—
helping, probably. He had actually felt the pressure of the hand to
grow stronger of late, when they were all there. Only, just before he
felt he was going to faint, and because he could not spring up any
more, he invariably screamed or gasped a choking gasp and held his
finger on the button which would bring Miss Koehler. Then she would
come, lift him up, and fix his pillows. She also always assured him
that it was only the inflammation of his throat, and rubbed it with
alcohol, and gave him a few drops of something internally to ease it.
After all this time, and in spite of anything he could tell them, they
still believed, or pretended to believe, that he was suffering from
tuberculosis, and that all the rest of this was delusion, a phase of
insanity!
And Mersereau’s skeleton still out there on the Monte Orte!
And Mersereau’s plan, with the help of others, of course, was to
choke him to death, there was no doubt of that now; and yet they
would believe after he was gone that he had died of tuberculosis of
the throat. Think of that.

XII—Midnight of February 10, 1909

The Ghost of Mersereau (bending over Davidson): “Softly!

Softly! He’s quite asleep! He didn’t think we could get him—that I
could! But this time,—yes. Miss Koehler is asleep at the end of the
hall and Miss Liggett can’t come, can’t hear. He’s too weak now. He
can scarcely move or groan. Strengthen my hand, will you! I will grip
him so tight this time that he won’t get away! His cries won’t help him
this time! He can’t cry as he once did! Now! Now!”
A Cloud of Evil Spirits (swimming about): “Right! Right! Good!
Good! Now! Ah!”
Davidson (waking, choking, screaming, and feebly striking out):
“Help! Help! H-e-l-p! Miss—Miss—H—e—l—p!”
Miss Liggett (dozing heavily in her chair): “Everything is still. No
one restless. I can sleep.” (Her head nods.)
The Cloud of Evil Spirits: “Good! Good! Good! His soul at last!
Here it comes! He couldn’t escape this time! Ah! Good! Good! Now!”
Mersereau (to Davidson): “You murderer! At last! At last!”

XIII—3 A.M. of February 17, 1909

Miss Koehler (at the bedside, distressed and pale): “He must
have died some time between one and two, doctor. I left him at one
o’clock, comfortable as I could make him. He said he was feeling as
well as could be expected. He’s been very weak during the last few
days, taking only a little gruel. Between half past one and two I
thought I heard a noise, and came to see. He was lying just as you
see here, except that his hands were up to his throat, as if it were
hurting or choking him. I put them down for fear they would stiffen
that way. In trying to call one of the other nurses just now, I found
that the bell was out of order, although I know it was all right when I