‘I assure you, not in the least, sir,’ I said. ‘I was only about to remark that you seem to have travelled greatly. You say that you have seen me in London, in San Francisco, and so forth——’
‘– Why not, Mr Bierce? Necessarily so, sir. You may have observed that we live, here, in something of a civilised way. You took (and I hope you enjoyed it) champagne, for example, with your meal. Where does it come from? Necessarily, France. How do I get it? Very simple; I exchange gold, of which I have an immense supply. There you have it.’
‘But, my dear sir, you are a man of the world. It seems to me,’ said I, ‘that you speak every language fluently – even including languages I have never heard spoken.’
‘Oh, I move, here and there as necessity dictates. But this is my home. Not only do I speak languages, Mr Bierce – I speak accents and dialects.’ Then he made a chewing motion with his jaws, let the right-hand side of his mouth droop loosely, and spoke in the accents of a Calaveres prospector and pretended to spit as he said: ‘Mr Ambrose Bierce, sir! Me and my folks sure would admire to have you for supper!’
I replied, in the same intonation: ‘Yes sir, you bet!’
We shook hands in the California style. His handshake was exploratory – he seemed to be feeling my hand joint by joint. Said he: ‘But we were speaking of rheumatism. We can first alleviate, then cure that. Nothing simpler, if you overcome your modesty.’
‘My modesty apart,’ said I, ‘what is your process?’
My host said: ‘There are two processes. The preliminary process is a form of massage. You have been massaged, no doubt, by shampooers in Turkish baths and Hummumms in various cities. But only by ten fingers. Now my masseuses have seventy fingers. That is to say, there are seven of them. Each takes a joint, a muscle, or a place where certain nerves cross. The seven women – I am sorry, but only women can do it – work at the same time, in perfect co-ordination. They were trained from childhood, bred to the business. They will prepare you for the second treatment, which is sonic.’
‘Sonic? That, sir, should pertain to sound.’
‘Just so, Mr Bierce. My masseuses will prepare you for the sound treatment that will take away the crystals that come between certain joints and fibres, and make you uncomfortable. With all your perspicacity you do not understand? Here, I’ll demonstrate.’
This extraordinary man now picked up a crystal water glass, and threw it down. It bounced – while I winced – and rocked itself still, undamaged. He picked it up and set it on the low table, saying: ‘To all intents and purposes, Mr Bierce, apart from a sudden shock this crystal is indestructible. But observe me closely.’ While I watched, he rang the glass with a fingernail. It gave out a gloriously melodious note, somewhere in the scale of D major. He listened intently; then, filling his lungs, which were the enormous lungs of the man who lives in the rarefied air of the uplands, he sang into the glass precisely the same note as it had sounded. Only that one note, and he sang it with tremendous volume and power. The glass quivered, appeared to dance – then suddenly burst asunder, fell to pieces.
He said: ‘One must take into consideration the natural cohesion of particles. The particles, or atoms, of all matter, living or dead, are obedient to certain natural laws of cohesion. They respond to their own vibrations, Mr Bierce. By means of sound, and sound alone, I could – for example – have made that glass very light or very heavy. And when you are relaxed, almost inert, I will find the right vibration and, by the proper application of sound, I will break the tiny nodules and disperse the antagonistic acids that cause you so much pain … with your permission, let it be understood – not without your permission.’
‘If you can rid me, sir, of these aches and pains as you have rid me of this asthmatic attack, you have my permission to do anything.’
He rang the little golden bell. A manservant came in, immediately, to whom he gave an order in that tantalisingly familiar yet utterly foreign tongue of the household. Then he said to me, in his impeccable English: ‘I must ask you, if you will be so kind, to remove your robe. I may say, by the bye, that the clothes in which you came have been cleaned and mended, so that they are as good as new; your boots likewise. They are in the cupboard by the door, together with your gun, your revolver, and your machete. Understand me: it is my desire that you be perfectly content. You have only to express a wish and it will be granted…. You may think this odd, Mr Bierce?’
‘Delightfully so,’ I said.
‘Yes, by common standards it is. But I am of the Old People, and we live by the spirit of the great. I have sent out messages, north, south, east and west, to my scattered family. They will assemble here in a month, and then——’
But then eight women came into the room. An anthropologist would have been hard put to it to define their race. Presumably their heads had been bound at birth, because their skulls were curiously conical. Their faces were of the neutral colour of weak coffee, and quite expressionless. While I lay on the bed, seven of them took positions around me. The eighth carried a golden bowl of some kind of aromatic oil, which she offered to the others who steeped their hands in it.
Then began the massage as my host had explained it – inch by inch, line by line, nerve by nerve and muscle by muscle – seventy skilled fingers working in perfect co-ordination. There used to be a masseur with a red beard in the Turkish bath at Covent Garden whom I regarded as a master of his profession. He could take away indigestion, muscular pains, or a headache simply by the application of his supple and intelligent hands. His name was Jim. Any one of these seven women was worth ten Jims. I had been tolerably comfortable before they went to work. But they brought to me a sense of tranquillity of which I should never have thought myself capable.
I fell asleep while they were still working. How long they worked I do not know, but the sun was setting when I awoke, and I was hungry and thirsty again. I rang my little bell and the two men who had previously attended me, came in again, this time with a larger table which they set for two. Now, my host dined with me, anticipating my every want. ‘With this meal,’ he explained, ‘you may eat only white meats – merely poultry of various sorts, unborn veal, fish, omelettes, etcetera. Hence, only white wine. Because, after an hour for digestion and a good cigar, you must come with me and we will complete the treatment. There will be no more rheumatism, no more arthritis, no more gout. Believe me, Mr Bierce, we live by the spirit here and once purged of pain and hate, relieved of the necessity to earn a living, yours is the greatest spirit of the age and I want you to become one of us. We will make you perfect.’
It was in my heart to say that I did not want to be perfect; that perfection was for saints and gods, and I had no ambition in that direction; for they used to call me ‘Bitter’ Bierce, not without reason. Certain souls thrive on bitter fruit; only fools love sugar, only madmen hope for perfection. But I was too comfortable to argue the point, and my host had been somewhat more than kind to me. I may have been born a farmer’s boy, but I have some of the instincts of a gentleman.