"Old Acquaintance" (1941)

It was nice to run across another story I like by John Collier, whose Fancies and Goodnights collection has been consistently disappointing for me since "Witch's Money." It's a good way to do a ghost story, placing it in the context of a loveless marriage that is finally ending after 20 years when the wife dies. A backstory comes swirling in about the friendship of the husband, wife, and a second man, Robert. They partied a lot, in the modern parlance. Their time was the Roaring '20s. The woman chose between them but came to regret her choice. Judging from the behavior we see of her husband it's not hard to understand why. She dies in their hotel room. He decides not to let anyone know until later. He is actually elated about the death and wants to hide it as an impropriety. He had nothing to do with her fatal illness. But he's happy it happened and she is finally gone. This all takes place in Paris—further artifact of the Jazz Age. Our guy goes to a modest café for a drink, where he is astonished to find his wife, "apparently in the best of health." She doesn't have much to say to him but she's pounding down drinks and seem equable enough. Then they run into Robert and it's like old times again. It's amazing and it barely makes sense, but they carouse the night away. The story was probably even more poignant in 1941, when Paris was occupied, but it's still pretty poignant even so. Then our guy passes out and does not wake until the next morning, when he is alone. His wife's body is gone from the hotel room. The concierge tells him his wife can't be dead because she saw her, adding (for a second time in the story), "but Madame was from Angers. You know the proverb." I wish I did! Internet searches just give me stuff about anger management. Anyway, our guy, still seemingly obtuse, seems to think Robert has something to do with this strange situation. He decides to report it to the police but on the way there he sees his wife and Robert again in a cab, "locked in each other's arms, scandalously drunk, and quite oblivious of his existence." He jumps in another cab and orders it to follow them. When his cab finally catches up to it it's just an elderly gentleman, "probably an ambassador," who gets out of the cab. Our guy soon learns that Robert died less than three months earlier. So that's that—they're ghosts now. I like the feeling of the reunion with Robert. Again, there is a lot of nostalgia and sense of lost opportunities that drive this story. I like the treatment of the husband too. He's a terrible person, revealed in a number of ways subtle and overt, but he seems to have little awareness himself of how awful he is.

John Collier, Fancies and Goodnights
Story not available online.

"Witch's Money" (1939)

Story by John Collier not available online.

John Collier was a British story writer admired by Ray Bradbury, Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, Paul Theroux, and many others. He won an International Fantasy Award for his 1951 collection, Fancies and Goodnights. Not surprisingly, there's an air of the horror story here—which has nothing to do with the supernatural, only human stupidity verging on depravity. In the small and remote Spanish village where the story takes place, an arrogant American bohemian appears one day. The story is told third-person from the point of view of a lifelong village resident, Foiral, who instantly decides the American is a lunatic, but a different kind of lunatic, one he hasn't seen before. The American exclaims over the aesthetic points of the village, which are too familiar to Foiral to mean much. Then the American wants to rent Foiral's second home, which is vacant and untended. Foiral loses patience with the madman quickly, turning him down. Then the American offers to buy it, offers to pay too much, and produces cash to hold as security. This changes everything. When the American returns a week or two later, he pays Foiral the balance with a check. Foiral is naïve of such things, but humors the American. Later, he asks for the money in cash. The American is brusque and dismissive, telling Foiral to go to a bank and cash the check himself. This requires a daylong journey and Foiral, who is confused by the bank procedures, ends up opening a checking account. A week later he takes another day to travel to the bank, where he closes the account. The bank withholds a nominal fee, as banks will do. This enrages Foiral, who asks the American for the amount of the fee. Again the American rudely brushes off Foiral. Foiral and his friends conspire to steal the American's checkbook and they do what must be done to get it. Once they are in possession of it, they believe themselves wealthy and begin to spend and borrow money liberally. The story ends as the group takes yet another day to travel to the bank to convert the checkbook into cash. The last scene is the doomed and foolish group entering the bank. This story reminds me of Paul Bowles stories, probably because of the exotic foreign setting combined with the cruelties. It also has elements of a social morality tale, showing how irrational beliefs about money can corrode the soul. It's cold and clinical, observing alarming behavior without comment, simply reporting, though it gets well inside the head of Foiral. At the same time, it makes us guess about the exact nature of the ignorance, it is so deeply inside his head. The action can be swift, with all things changing at once, even when the characters they are happening to remain unknowing of their fates, which we see all too clearly.

Short Story Masterpieces, ed. Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine

Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier