Alberto D. Hetman
10-17-2008, 05:47 AM
I killed
Clark Ashton Smith
Let me explain first how I got the letter.
A few months ago I bought a book in good faith, a copy of "Out of Space and Time", but the cheap edition of Neville Spearman, 1971. I bought it from a bookseller of old books and maps of Quebec. The fellow also specialized in the buying and selling of navigational instruments such as astrolabes and spyglasses, as well as telescopes and optical accessories, from the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. As I was told, the book would come with a letter (not written by Smith) related to the death of Clark Ashton Smith. Of course, there was no envelope. Although it was dated, but two years after Smith's death, it was handwritten, and the letter was incredibly legible, unlike other letters that I have purchased in which one sometimes has to invent the words since nothing is understood. I did know that the book had belonged to a Smith’s scholar, which I considered implausible because it was the only item related to Smith that was being sold. We did not talk about names or last names. If I wanted it, the copy was still on sale; if the answer was no, there were always others interested in buying it.
Let me explain then the following interspersing at random vague impressions that suddenly come to mind.
Finally, I bought the book and the letter. Looking at the handwriting I could deduce that whoever had written the letter was an aesthete. The letters were refined, delicate, effeminate if you want, the strokes were measured, embellished beyond what it is possible, turning vulgar in authentic and unique words that one could remember forever. I would not lie by saying that one might frame the letter, hanging it on a wall next to a painting by Gainsborough, without appreciating it more than this handwritten letter. There were neither smudges, nor crossings out, in the letter. I might affirm that I perceived a distant and soft scent to eucalyptus, but this is perhaps only my imagination, the natural consequence of my obsession with the details. I read, therefore, the letter. The book, which I scarcely had a quick look at, I left it on a shelf and I have never touched it again. After reading it, I wanted to laugh to myself, but I could not. I felt remorse, or an excessive anger, but also a sincere and deep compassion. It was as if the same humanity was a mockery, a joke, but one that was not funny, and so nobody could laugh.
I read the letter again, but this time aloud.
Pacific Grove, but also from everywhere and nowhere
May 20, 1963
My name is Walmsley, Dalton Walmsley, a veteran of the World War II and now a retired sergeant from the police of Pacific Grove. I was with the Allies in the landing in Provence, then in Lyons, in 1944. I let it be known so that my story is not taken lightly. The year of Smith's death, two people turned up that week, the first one on Wednesday, two days after his death, and the other one on Friday, both claiming to have killed Clark Ashton Smith. But it is known that Smith died in his sleep. The first one was "Charlie boom boom", a mythomaniac. He had already turned himself up a half dozen times, and I have always wondered why he does it. We put him in an empty cell for one night, just to give him a decent dinner and a place to sleep. He has family in CarmelValley, to the south, and I wonder if it was not better living with them than sleeping under trucks until one day he died squashed by one.
The other did not give me his name. On having asked him wherefrom he was, since his accent was that of a foreigner, probably with Nordic blood, and the indomitable language of barbarian tongues, he told me that he was from Auburn, from everywhere and nowhere. I had never seen him before. Obviously it was not a mythomaniac since the richness of his vocabulary suggested me a wealthy man, but one of the old money. His face was covered by excessively white makeup as that of the actors of films such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. When speaking, the veins in his temple appeared to protrude from the skin or were going to burst at any moment. He said to me: "I killed the Sorcerer of Auburn. I killed Clark Ashton Smith." He said it in a cold, meditated way; probably he had already practised it several times and was reciting it by heart as others do, but with verses from the Gospels.
I noticed that the fellow knew what he was talking about, he knew Smith since he practically quoted him at every minute. It was also notable his bibliographical knowledge of Smith. As that anecdote of June 1912 in which the poet Sterling would have bought a jacket for Smith even after having paid the trip up to his home to the south of Monterrey. As he said to me he would have met him for the first time in the winter of '47. He talked about how they met, what they talked about, of his early letters, of his visits to Smith's house in Auburn; so I let him talk to verify that the information was true or if at some point he would make a mistake that would denounce him as an impostor. His information, as far as I knew, was true. He commented on the theft of the sculptures done by Smith, it was always talked about 8, among which there were mentioned two that he himself was affirming that he would have in his hands, and therefore would never have been stolen, "Thamogorgos" and "Quachil Uttaus "[1] (http://www.ligotti.net/#_ftn1). The fellow seemed honest, someone would swear that he believed what he was saying, although that glow in his eyes as mocking at everyone and everything, and that grimace upwards at the edge of the lips, made me see that he was lying, one way or another.
I interrupted him curtly in the middle of a sentence. My question was rather natural considering what the fellow told me on having begun his story. I told him: “Why did you affirm that you killed Clark Ashton Smith if you were evidently friends?” Then I outlined the smile of the idiots, that of the buffoon Juan de Calabazas in the portrait by Velásquez, perhaps believing that I had invented gunpowder.
“Do not interrupt me! ”, he said. His eyes popped out of their sockets. In these there was the look of the murderer. His was evidently a vital need, he would not leave that anything interrupted him. Taking one of his hands to the table and closing it in a fist, he laughed. Meanwhile I caressed the butt of my revolver to feel protected.
Then he continued with anecdotes of his personal life, not of Smith’s, that did not contribute absolutely anything to the story. I really did not understand why he told me all these trivial facts of his life. And without explaining why, which was in accordance with his implausible story, he said that by 1959 he stopped talking to Smith. Even in these moments that I try to remember, rubbing my temple desperately with my fingertips, I do not manage to remember it since I do not believe that he had explained it to me. His incoherent narrative, his pompous words, the too eloquent gestures of the mouth and the eyes, and that sickly obsession to rub the top teeth of the mouth with the right thumb, went hand in hand with a lack of specific data (I judged that he did it on purpose) on certain fundamental details. For example, his quotation practically by heart (I say practically because he hesitated for a few seconds) of some poems by Smith, or would he have invented them…?, did not correspond with the part in which he told me that he did not remember Smith’s address, perhaps had not he visited him in Auburn for several years?
His hate towards Smith was glimpsed in the most unusual insults. His abnormal behaviour was evident again and again when he mixed insults with the most sublime words of homage. I preferred not to interrupt him and let him finish, which he did almost in the middle of a sentence, without finishing the idea. The story itself seemed an unheard-of fragment, perhaps not yet discovered, of Joyce's Finnegas Wake. Soon he said no more and closed his eyes as if he were tired and had fallen asleep suddenly.
“And how did you kill Smith?” I interrupted him again. The fellow looked dead. A thread of saliva was falling down by the chin and was damaging his almost perfect makeup. On having seen him still, I did not know whether he was dead or alive. I touched his hand as a normal gesture to indicate him that he could continue.
Suddenly he opened the eyes again and I thought to see in these the innocence of a child. “You know that Smith died in his sleep. Or perhaps did you ignore it? So, well, I got into his dreams while he slept and killed him. I have confessed it, arrest me.” So that was the way in which he would have killed him, in his dreams. The world is full of madmen, of fellows with flimsy, fragile minds,
[...]
The letter ended abruptly in that coma, following the words "fragile minds" at the end of that sentence: "... of fellows with flimsy, fragile minds," Would anybody in his right mind believe that such facts are possible?
The end of the letter was missing, and although I considered it to be absolutely invented, I decided to investigate in the area of Pacific Grove, California, about this retired police sergeant, Dalton Walmsley. One of his sons was still alive, and while his memory was scarce, as much as his hair that was thinning on his skull, specially after suffering two strokes that left him completely paralyzed on the right side, I was able to inquire him freely about certain peculiar details of his father's life. What he told me about his father only confirmed that he had existed, gone to the World War II (some black and white photos bore witness to it), and worked for the local police for several years until he retired. He had not heard anything about these mythomaniacs. However, my surprise could not have been bigger when he said that a few years ago another person, from Quebec, had inquired about his father the same way. Of course, he did not remember who, nor when.
I doubted that the letter that was still in my hands had been written by the retired police officer. By whom, then? Probably by the fellow from Quebec, who else if not? The idea was good, but the end was missing. In any case, any end to the letter had been evidently false.
After meditating on the subject for several weeks, I finally decided to look for an amateur writer, right here, in Toronto, and entrust him with the task of finishing the letter. I also wanted a thorough review of it, polishing the details, adding others, transforming this letter in a work of art, that someone could love or kill for what these lines said, or be read again and again until boredom.
The writer, a certain Alberto D. Hetman, "D" for Daniel although the fellow wished it to be "D" for Demetrio asserting that one of his grandparents would have had that name in his life, native from the suburbs of Buenos Aires, told me that he was anxious to devote himself to the letter as soon as possible. He asked me if the end could be copied from some other literary narrative, since he had something in mind. I told him that it did not matter as long as he finished the letter.
The following night, the new letter was on my knees. That certain Hetman told me that if I wanted he could autograph it, as Clark Ashton Smith, if so I wanted, or to dedicate it with similar, or identical handwriting, although he could not promise it. The end was a copy of the story by Jorge Luis Borges, "The Plot," published in "The Maker," in 1960. He assured me that nobody would have read it: perhaps was Borges a Nobel Prize in Literature? In the story, Caesar was killed by his ward or son, saying: "Et tu, Brute?" Then, a gaucho was stabbed by his godson, saying: "Pero, ¡Ché!" In the letter, that fellow with perfectly white makeup approached Smith from behind in his dream and told him: "Hey, you, buddy!" Likewise, he was killed with a dagger. Thus, Smith died, as the other two in Borges’ story, to repeat a scene.
I asked the Argentine to sign a copy of the book "Out of Space and Time", but the Arkham House edition, of 1942. The inscription read: "To Henrietta Bailey, a serf of Tsathoggua, and then Smith’s signature. And a date, any, before Smith's death in 1961.
I sold the book to a rich fellow fallen in disgrace, who as I suspected did not bother to verify whether the letter was genuine or a fraud. He paid almost 2,500 US dollars for the book and the letter. So discounting the 450 dollars that I myself had paid for that copy of Arkham House, the difference, about two thousand dollars, was the amount that that fellow paid for the letter written by the Argentine, which was not after all but a work fiction. The other copy, the Neville Spearman’s, was not worth anything on these days. I gave it to the Argentine as a souvenir, or a token of a well done business.
I have not hesitated to call him back and offer him another job, I asked: "Can you imitate Hemingway’s handwriting?" He answered that yes. I told him to start studying the American writer. He could steal from whoever he wanted, if the many barely read, if they barely realize that it is not the sun that turns around the Earth, and that Copernicus had already risked his neck by asserting the opposite. But who cares?
[1] (http://www.ligotti.net/#_ftnref1) “The Dark Eidolon (1935)” and “The Treader of the Dust (1935)”, respectively. According to what I found out, both sculptures are considered to be nonexistent. Some have gone so far as to laugh in my face when I inquired about them.
Clark Ashton Smith
Let me explain first how I got the letter.
A few months ago I bought a book in good faith, a copy of "Out of Space and Time", but the cheap edition of Neville Spearman, 1971. I bought it from a bookseller of old books and maps of Quebec. The fellow also specialized in the buying and selling of navigational instruments such as astrolabes and spyglasses, as well as telescopes and optical accessories, from the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. As I was told, the book would come with a letter (not written by Smith) related to the death of Clark Ashton Smith. Of course, there was no envelope. Although it was dated, but two years after Smith's death, it was handwritten, and the letter was incredibly legible, unlike other letters that I have purchased in which one sometimes has to invent the words since nothing is understood. I did know that the book had belonged to a Smith’s scholar, which I considered implausible because it was the only item related to Smith that was being sold. We did not talk about names or last names. If I wanted it, the copy was still on sale; if the answer was no, there were always others interested in buying it.
Let me explain then the following interspersing at random vague impressions that suddenly come to mind.
Finally, I bought the book and the letter. Looking at the handwriting I could deduce that whoever had written the letter was an aesthete. The letters were refined, delicate, effeminate if you want, the strokes were measured, embellished beyond what it is possible, turning vulgar in authentic and unique words that one could remember forever. I would not lie by saying that one might frame the letter, hanging it on a wall next to a painting by Gainsborough, without appreciating it more than this handwritten letter. There were neither smudges, nor crossings out, in the letter. I might affirm that I perceived a distant and soft scent to eucalyptus, but this is perhaps only my imagination, the natural consequence of my obsession with the details. I read, therefore, the letter. The book, which I scarcely had a quick look at, I left it on a shelf and I have never touched it again. After reading it, I wanted to laugh to myself, but I could not. I felt remorse, or an excessive anger, but also a sincere and deep compassion. It was as if the same humanity was a mockery, a joke, but one that was not funny, and so nobody could laugh.
I read the letter again, but this time aloud.
Pacific Grove, but also from everywhere and nowhere
May 20, 1963
My name is Walmsley, Dalton Walmsley, a veteran of the World War II and now a retired sergeant from the police of Pacific Grove. I was with the Allies in the landing in Provence, then in Lyons, in 1944. I let it be known so that my story is not taken lightly. The year of Smith's death, two people turned up that week, the first one on Wednesday, two days after his death, and the other one on Friday, both claiming to have killed Clark Ashton Smith. But it is known that Smith died in his sleep. The first one was "Charlie boom boom", a mythomaniac. He had already turned himself up a half dozen times, and I have always wondered why he does it. We put him in an empty cell for one night, just to give him a decent dinner and a place to sleep. He has family in CarmelValley, to the south, and I wonder if it was not better living with them than sleeping under trucks until one day he died squashed by one.
The other did not give me his name. On having asked him wherefrom he was, since his accent was that of a foreigner, probably with Nordic blood, and the indomitable language of barbarian tongues, he told me that he was from Auburn, from everywhere and nowhere. I had never seen him before. Obviously it was not a mythomaniac since the richness of his vocabulary suggested me a wealthy man, but one of the old money. His face was covered by excessively white makeup as that of the actors of films such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. When speaking, the veins in his temple appeared to protrude from the skin or were going to burst at any moment. He said to me: "I killed the Sorcerer of Auburn. I killed Clark Ashton Smith." He said it in a cold, meditated way; probably he had already practised it several times and was reciting it by heart as others do, but with verses from the Gospels.
I noticed that the fellow knew what he was talking about, he knew Smith since he practically quoted him at every minute. It was also notable his bibliographical knowledge of Smith. As that anecdote of June 1912 in which the poet Sterling would have bought a jacket for Smith even after having paid the trip up to his home to the south of Monterrey. As he said to me he would have met him for the first time in the winter of '47. He talked about how they met, what they talked about, of his early letters, of his visits to Smith's house in Auburn; so I let him talk to verify that the information was true or if at some point he would make a mistake that would denounce him as an impostor. His information, as far as I knew, was true. He commented on the theft of the sculptures done by Smith, it was always talked about 8, among which there were mentioned two that he himself was affirming that he would have in his hands, and therefore would never have been stolen, "Thamogorgos" and "Quachil Uttaus "[1] (http://www.ligotti.net/#_ftn1). The fellow seemed honest, someone would swear that he believed what he was saying, although that glow in his eyes as mocking at everyone and everything, and that grimace upwards at the edge of the lips, made me see that he was lying, one way or another.
I interrupted him curtly in the middle of a sentence. My question was rather natural considering what the fellow told me on having begun his story. I told him: “Why did you affirm that you killed Clark Ashton Smith if you were evidently friends?” Then I outlined the smile of the idiots, that of the buffoon Juan de Calabazas in the portrait by Velásquez, perhaps believing that I had invented gunpowder.
“Do not interrupt me! ”, he said. His eyes popped out of their sockets. In these there was the look of the murderer. His was evidently a vital need, he would not leave that anything interrupted him. Taking one of his hands to the table and closing it in a fist, he laughed. Meanwhile I caressed the butt of my revolver to feel protected.
Then he continued with anecdotes of his personal life, not of Smith’s, that did not contribute absolutely anything to the story. I really did not understand why he told me all these trivial facts of his life. And without explaining why, which was in accordance with his implausible story, he said that by 1959 he stopped talking to Smith. Even in these moments that I try to remember, rubbing my temple desperately with my fingertips, I do not manage to remember it since I do not believe that he had explained it to me. His incoherent narrative, his pompous words, the too eloquent gestures of the mouth and the eyes, and that sickly obsession to rub the top teeth of the mouth with the right thumb, went hand in hand with a lack of specific data (I judged that he did it on purpose) on certain fundamental details. For example, his quotation practically by heart (I say practically because he hesitated for a few seconds) of some poems by Smith, or would he have invented them…?, did not correspond with the part in which he told me that he did not remember Smith’s address, perhaps had not he visited him in Auburn for several years?
His hate towards Smith was glimpsed in the most unusual insults. His abnormal behaviour was evident again and again when he mixed insults with the most sublime words of homage. I preferred not to interrupt him and let him finish, which he did almost in the middle of a sentence, without finishing the idea. The story itself seemed an unheard-of fragment, perhaps not yet discovered, of Joyce's Finnegas Wake. Soon he said no more and closed his eyes as if he were tired and had fallen asleep suddenly.
“And how did you kill Smith?” I interrupted him again. The fellow looked dead. A thread of saliva was falling down by the chin and was damaging his almost perfect makeup. On having seen him still, I did not know whether he was dead or alive. I touched his hand as a normal gesture to indicate him that he could continue.
Suddenly he opened the eyes again and I thought to see in these the innocence of a child. “You know that Smith died in his sleep. Or perhaps did you ignore it? So, well, I got into his dreams while he slept and killed him. I have confessed it, arrest me.” So that was the way in which he would have killed him, in his dreams. The world is full of madmen, of fellows with flimsy, fragile minds,
[...]
The letter ended abruptly in that coma, following the words "fragile minds" at the end of that sentence: "... of fellows with flimsy, fragile minds," Would anybody in his right mind believe that such facts are possible?
The end of the letter was missing, and although I considered it to be absolutely invented, I decided to investigate in the area of Pacific Grove, California, about this retired police sergeant, Dalton Walmsley. One of his sons was still alive, and while his memory was scarce, as much as his hair that was thinning on his skull, specially after suffering two strokes that left him completely paralyzed on the right side, I was able to inquire him freely about certain peculiar details of his father's life. What he told me about his father only confirmed that he had existed, gone to the World War II (some black and white photos bore witness to it), and worked for the local police for several years until he retired. He had not heard anything about these mythomaniacs. However, my surprise could not have been bigger when he said that a few years ago another person, from Quebec, had inquired about his father the same way. Of course, he did not remember who, nor when.
I doubted that the letter that was still in my hands had been written by the retired police officer. By whom, then? Probably by the fellow from Quebec, who else if not? The idea was good, but the end was missing. In any case, any end to the letter had been evidently false.
After meditating on the subject for several weeks, I finally decided to look for an amateur writer, right here, in Toronto, and entrust him with the task of finishing the letter. I also wanted a thorough review of it, polishing the details, adding others, transforming this letter in a work of art, that someone could love or kill for what these lines said, or be read again and again until boredom.
The writer, a certain Alberto D. Hetman, "D" for Daniel although the fellow wished it to be "D" for Demetrio asserting that one of his grandparents would have had that name in his life, native from the suburbs of Buenos Aires, told me that he was anxious to devote himself to the letter as soon as possible. He asked me if the end could be copied from some other literary narrative, since he had something in mind. I told him that it did not matter as long as he finished the letter.
The following night, the new letter was on my knees. That certain Hetman told me that if I wanted he could autograph it, as Clark Ashton Smith, if so I wanted, or to dedicate it with similar, or identical handwriting, although he could not promise it. The end was a copy of the story by Jorge Luis Borges, "The Plot," published in "The Maker," in 1960. He assured me that nobody would have read it: perhaps was Borges a Nobel Prize in Literature? In the story, Caesar was killed by his ward or son, saying: "Et tu, Brute?" Then, a gaucho was stabbed by his godson, saying: "Pero, ¡Ché!" In the letter, that fellow with perfectly white makeup approached Smith from behind in his dream and told him: "Hey, you, buddy!" Likewise, he was killed with a dagger. Thus, Smith died, as the other two in Borges’ story, to repeat a scene.
I asked the Argentine to sign a copy of the book "Out of Space and Time", but the Arkham House edition, of 1942. The inscription read: "To Henrietta Bailey, a serf of Tsathoggua, and then Smith’s signature. And a date, any, before Smith's death in 1961.
I sold the book to a rich fellow fallen in disgrace, who as I suspected did not bother to verify whether the letter was genuine or a fraud. He paid almost 2,500 US dollars for the book and the letter. So discounting the 450 dollars that I myself had paid for that copy of Arkham House, the difference, about two thousand dollars, was the amount that that fellow paid for the letter written by the Argentine, which was not after all but a work fiction. The other copy, the Neville Spearman’s, was not worth anything on these days. I gave it to the Argentine as a souvenir, or a token of a well done business.
I have not hesitated to call him back and offer him another job, I asked: "Can you imitate Hemingway’s handwriting?" He answered that yes. I told him to start studying the American writer. He could steal from whoever he wanted, if the many barely read, if they barely realize that it is not the sun that turns around the Earth, and that Copernicus had already risked his neck by asserting the opposite. But who cares?
[1] (http://www.ligotti.net/#_ftnref1) “The Dark Eidolon (1935)” and “The Treader of the Dust (1935)”, respectively. According to what I found out, both sculptures are considered to be nonexistent. Some have gone so far as to laugh in my face when I inquired about them.