Late Night Story (1978–1979): Season 1, Episode 5 - Sredni Vashtar - full transcript
Conradin was 10 years old
and the doctor had pronounced
his professional opinion
that the boy would not live
another five years.
The doctor was silky and effete,
and counted for little,
but his opinion was endorsed
by Mrs De Ropp,
who counted for nearly everything.
Mrs De Ropp was Conradin's cousin
and guardian and, in his eyes,
she represented
those three-fifths of the world
that are necessary
and disagreeable and real.
The other two-fifths, in perpetual
antagonism to the foregoing,
were summed up in himself
and in his imagination.
One of these days,
Conradin supposed, he would succumb
to the mastering pressure
of wearisome, necessary things,
such as illnesses
and coddling restrictions
and drawn-out dullness.
Without his imagination,
which was rampant
under the spur of loneliness,
he would have succumbed long ago.
Mrs De Ropp would never,
in her honestest moment,
have confessed to herself
that she disliked Conradin,
although she might have been dimly aware
that thwarting him for his good
was a duty which she didn't find
particularly irksome.
Conradin hated her
with a desperate sincerity
which he was perfectly able to mask.
Such few pleasures
as he could contrive for himself
gained an added relish
from the likelihood
that they would be
displeasing to his guardian.
And from the realms of his imagination
she was locked out,
an unclean thing
which should find no entrance.
In the dull, cheerless garden,
overlooked by so many windows
that were ready to open
with a message not to do this or that,
or a reminder that medicines were due,
he found little attraction.
The few fruit trees that it contained
were set jealously apart
from his plucking,
as though they were
rare specimens of their kind,
blooming in an arid waste.
It would probably have been difficult
to find a market gardener
who would have offered 10 shillings
for their entire yearly produce.
In a forgotten corner, however,
almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery
was a disused tool shed
of respectable proportions.
And within its walls,
Conradin found a haven,
something that took on the varying
aspects of a playroom and a cathedral.
He had peopled it
with a legion of familiar phantoms,
evoked partly from fragments of history
and partly from his own brain.
But it also boasted two inmates
of flesh and blood.
In one corner
lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen,
on which the boy lavished an affection
that had scarcely another outlet.
Further back in the gloom,
stood a large hutch
divided into two compartments,
one of which was fronted
with close iron bars.
This was the abode
of a large polecat ferret,
which a friendly butcher boy
had once smuggled,
cage and all, into its present quarters
in exchange for
a long-secreted hoard of small silver.
Conradin was dreadfully afraid
of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast,
but it was his most
treasured possession.
Its very presence in the tool shed
was a secret and fearful joy
to be kept scrupulously
from the knowledge of the Woman,
as he privately dubbed his cousin.
And one day,
out of heaven knows what material,
he spun the beast a wonderful name,
and, from that moment,
it grew into a god and a religion.
The Woman indulged in religion
once a week at a church nearby,
and took Conradin with her.
But to him, the church service was
an alien rite in the house of Rimmon.
Every Thursday, in the dim
and musty silence of the tool shed,
he worshipped with mystic and elaborate
ceremonial before the wooden hutch,
where dwelt Sredni Vashtar,
the great ferret.
Red flowers in their season,
and scarlet berries in the wintertime
were offered at his shrine.
For he was a god
who laid some special stress
on the fierce, impatient side of things,
as opposed to the Woman's religion,
which, as far as Conradin could observe,
went to great lengths
in the contrary direction.
And on great festivals, powdered nutmeg
was strewn in front of his hutch,
an important feature of the offering
being that the nutmeg had to be stolen.
These festivals were
of an irregular occurrence
and were chiefly appointed
to celebrate some passing event.
On one occasion,
when Mrs De Ropp suffered
from acute toothache for three days,
Conradin kept up the festival
during the entire three days,
and almost succeeded
in persuading himself
that Sredni Vashtar was personally
responsible for the toothache.
If the malady had lasted
for another day,
the supply of nutmeg
would have given out.
The Houdan hen was never drawn
into the cult of Sredni Vashtar.
Conradin had long ago settled
that she was an Anabaptist.
He didn't pretend to have the remotest
knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was,
but he privately hoped that
it was dashing and not very respectable.
Mrs De Ropp was the ground plan
on which he based
and detested all respectability.
After a while,
Conradin's absorption in the tool shed
began to attract
the notice of his guardian.
"It's not good for him to be pottering
down there in all weathers,"
she promptly decided.
And at breakfast one morning,
she announced
that the Houdan hen had been sold
and taken away overnight.
With her short-sighted eyes,
she peered at Conradin,
waiting for an outbreak of rage
and sorrow,
which she was ready to rebuke
with a flow
of excellent precepts and reasoning.
But Conradin said nothing.
There was nothing to be said.
Something, perhaps, in his white, set
face gave her a momentary qualm,
for at tea that afternoon
there was toast on the table,
a delicacy which she usually banned
on the ground that it was bad for him.
Also because the making
of it gave trouble,
a deadly offence
in the middle-class, feminine eye.
"I thought you liked toast,"
she exclaimed with an injured air,
observing that he didn't touch it.
"Sometimes," said Conradin.
In the shed that evening,
there was an innovation
in the worship of the hutch god.
Conradin had been won't
to chant his praises,
tonight he asked a boon.
"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."
The thing wasn't specified.
As Sredni Vashtar was a god,
he must be supposed to know.
And choking back a sob
as he looked at that other empty corner,
Conradin went back
to the world he so hated.
And every night,
in the welcome darkness of his bedroom,
and every evening
in the dusk of a tool shed,
Conradin's bitter litany went up.
"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."
Mrs De Ropp noticed that
the visits to the shed didn't cease,
and, one day, she made
a further journey of inspection.
"What are you keeping
in that locked hutch?" she asked.
"I believe it's guinea pigs.
I'll have them all cleared away."
Conradin shut his lips tight.
But the Woman ransacked his bedroom
till she found the carefully hidden key
and forthwith marched down to the shed
to complete her discovery.
It was a cold afternoon,
and Conradin had been bidden
to keep to the house.
From the furthest window
of the dining room
the door to the shed could just be seen
beyond the corner of a shrubbery,
and there Conradin stationed himself.
He saw the Woman enter,
and then he imagined her opening
the door of the sacred hutch
and peering down
with her short-sighted eyes
in the thick, straw bed
where his god lay hidden.
Perhaps she would prod at the straw
in her clumsy impatience.
And Conradin fervently breathed
his prayer for the last time.
But he knew, as he prayed,
that he didn't believe.
He knew that the Woman
would come out presently
with that pursed smile
he loathed so well on her face.
And that, in an hour or two,
the gardener would carry away
his wonderful god,
a god no longer,
but a simple, brown ferret in a hutch.
And he knew that the Woman
would triumph always,
as she triumphed now,
and that he would grow ever more sickly
under her pestering and domineering
and superior wisdom,
till one day nothing
would matter much more with him,
and the doctor would be proved right.
And in the sting and misery
of his defeat,
he began to chant loudly and defiantly
the hymn of his threatened idol.
"Sredni Vashtar went forth.
"His thoughts were red thoughts
and his teeth were white.
"His enemies called for peace
but he brought them death.
"Sredni Vashtar the beautiful!"
And then of a sudden,
he stopped his chanting
and drew closer to the windowpane.
The door of the shed stood
still ajar as it had been left,
and the minutes were slipping by.
They were long minutes,
but they slipped by nevertheless.
He watched the starlings
running and flying
in little parties across the lawn.
He counted them, over and over again,
with one eye always
on that swinging door.
A sour-faced maid came in
to lay the table for tea,
and still Conradin stood
and waited and watched.
Hope had crept by inches into his heart,
and now a look of triumph
began to blaze in his eyes
that had known only
the wistful patience of defeat.
Under his breath,
with a furtive exultation,
he began once again
the paean of victory and devastation.
And, presently, his eyes were rewarded.
Out through that doorway,
came a long, low, yellow and brown beast
with eyes a-blink
in the waning daylight,
and dark, wet stains
around the fur of jaws and throat.
Conradin dropped on his knees.
The great polecat ferret
made its way down
to a small brook
at the foot of the garden,
drank for a moment,
then crossed the little plank bridge
and was lost to sight in the bushes.
Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.
"Tea's ready," said the sour-faced maid.
"Where's the mistress?"
"She went down to the shed
some time ago," said Conradin.
And while the maid went
to summon her mistress to tea,
Conradin fished a toasting fork
out of the sideboard drawer
and proceeded to toast himself
a piece of bread.
And, during the toasting of it
and the buttering of it
with much butter,
and the slow enjoyment of eating it,
Conradin listened
to the noises and silences
which fell in quick spasms
beyond the dining room door.
The loud, foolish screaming of the maid,
the answering chorus of wondering
ejaculations from the kitchen region,
the scuttering footsteps
and hurried embassies for outside help,
and then, after a lull,
the scared sobbings
and the shuffling tread of those
who bore a heavy burden into the house.
"Whoever will break it
to the poor child?
"I couldn't for the life of me!"
exclaimed a shrill voice.
And while they debated
the matter among themselves,
Conradin made himself
another piece of toast.
and the doctor had pronounced
his professional opinion
that the boy would not live
another five years.
The doctor was silky and effete,
and counted for little,
but his opinion was endorsed
by Mrs De Ropp,
who counted for nearly everything.
Mrs De Ropp was Conradin's cousin
and guardian and, in his eyes,
she represented
those three-fifths of the world
that are necessary
and disagreeable and real.
The other two-fifths, in perpetual
antagonism to the foregoing,
were summed up in himself
and in his imagination.
One of these days,
Conradin supposed, he would succumb
to the mastering pressure
of wearisome, necessary things,
such as illnesses
and coddling restrictions
and drawn-out dullness.
Without his imagination,
which was rampant
under the spur of loneliness,
he would have succumbed long ago.
Mrs De Ropp would never,
in her honestest moment,
have confessed to herself
that she disliked Conradin,
although she might have been dimly aware
that thwarting him for his good
was a duty which she didn't find
particularly irksome.
Conradin hated her
with a desperate sincerity
which he was perfectly able to mask.
Such few pleasures
as he could contrive for himself
gained an added relish
from the likelihood
that they would be
displeasing to his guardian.
And from the realms of his imagination
she was locked out,
an unclean thing
which should find no entrance.
In the dull, cheerless garden,
overlooked by so many windows
that were ready to open
with a message not to do this or that,
or a reminder that medicines were due,
he found little attraction.
The few fruit trees that it contained
were set jealously apart
from his plucking,
as though they were
rare specimens of their kind,
blooming in an arid waste.
It would probably have been difficult
to find a market gardener
who would have offered 10 shillings
for their entire yearly produce.
In a forgotten corner, however,
almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery
was a disused tool shed
of respectable proportions.
And within its walls,
Conradin found a haven,
something that took on the varying
aspects of a playroom and a cathedral.
He had peopled it
with a legion of familiar phantoms,
evoked partly from fragments of history
and partly from his own brain.
But it also boasted two inmates
of flesh and blood.
In one corner
lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen,
on which the boy lavished an affection
that had scarcely another outlet.
Further back in the gloom,
stood a large hutch
divided into two compartments,
one of which was fronted
with close iron bars.
This was the abode
of a large polecat ferret,
which a friendly butcher boy
had once smuggled,
cage and all, into its present quarters
in exchange for
a long-secreted hoard of small silver.
Conradin was dreadfully afraid
of the lithe, sharp-fanged beast,
but it was his most
treasured possession.
Its very presence in the tool shed
was a secret and fearful joy
to be kept scrupulously
from the knowledge of the Woman,
as he privately dubbed his cousin.
And one day,
out of heaven knows what material,
he spun the beast a wonderful name,
and, from that moment,
it grew into a god and a religion.
The Woman indulged in religion
once a week at a church nearby,
and took Conradin with her.
But to him, the church service was
an alien rite in the house of Rimmon.
Every Thursday, in the dim
and musty silence of the tool shed,
he worshipped with mystic and elaborate
ceremonial before the wooden hutch,
where dwelt Sredni Vashtar,
the great ferret.
Red flowers in their season,
and scarlet berries in the wintertime
were offered at his shrine.
For he was a god
who laid some special stress
on the fierce, impatient side of things,
as opposed to the Woman's religion,
which, as far as Conradin could observe,
went to great lengths
in the contrary direction.
And on great festivals, powdered nutmeg
was strewn in front of his hutch,
an important feature of the offering
being that the nutmeg had to be stolen.
These festivals were
of an irregular occurrence
and were chiefly appointed
to celebrate some passing event.
On one occasion,
when Mrs De Ropp suffered
from acute toothache for three days,
Conradin kept up the festival
during the entire three days,
and almost succeeded
in persuading himself
that Sredni Vashtar was personally
responsible for the toothache.
If the malady had lasted
for another day,
the supply of nutmeg
would have given out.
The Houdan hen was never drawn
into the cult of Sredni Vashtar.
Conradin had long ago settled
that she was an Anabaptist.
He didn't pretend to have the remotest
knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was,
but he privately hoped that
it was dashing and not very respectable.
Mrs De Ropp was the ground plan
on which he based
and detested all respectability.
After a while,
Conradin's absorption in the tool shed
began to attract
the notice of his guardian.
"It's not good for him to be pottering
down there in all weathers,"
she promptly decided.
And at breakfast one morning,
she announced
that the Houdan hen had been sold
and taken away overnight.
With her short-sighted eyes,
she peered at Conradin,
waiting for an outbreak of rage
and sorrow,
which she was ready to rebuke
with a flow
of excellent precepts and reasoning.
But Conradin said nothing.
There was nothing to be said.
Something, perhaps, in his white, set
face gave her a momentary qualm,
for at tea that afternoon
there was toast on the table,
a delicacy which she usually banned
on the ground that it was bad for him.
Also because the making
of it gave trouble,
a deadly offence
in the middle-class, feminine eye.
"I thought you liked toast,"
she exclaimed with an injured air,
observing that he didn't touch it.
"Sometimes," said Conradin.
In the shed that evening,
there was an innovation
in the worship of the hutch god.
Conradin had been won't
to chant his praises,
tonight he asked a boon.
"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."
The thing wasn't specified.
As Sredni Vashtar was a god,
he must be supposed to know.
And choking back a sob
as he looked at that other empty corner,
Conradin went back
to the world he so hated.
And every night,
in the welcome darkness of his bedroom,
and every evening
in the dusk of a tool shed,
Conradin's bitter litany went up.
"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar."
Mrs De Ropp noticed that
the visits to the shed didn't cease,
and, one day, she made
a further journey of inspection.
"What are you keeping
in that locked hutch?" she asked.
"I believe it's guinea pigs.
I'll have them all cleared away."
Conradin shut his lips tight.
But the Woman ransacked his bedroom
till she found the carefully hidden key
and forthwith marched down to the shed
to complete her discovery.
It was a cold afternoon,
and Conradin had been bidden
to keep to the house.
From the furthest window
of the dining room
the door to the shed could just be seen
beyond the corner of a shrubbery,
and there Conradin stationed himself.
He saw the Woman enter,
and then he imagined her opening
the door of the sacred hutch
and peering down
with her short-sighted eyes
in the thick, straw bed
where his god lay hidden.
Perhaps she would prod at the straw
in her clumsy impatience.
And Conradin fervently breathed
his prayer for the last time.
But he knew, as he prayed,
that he didn't believe.
He knew that the Woman
would come out presently
with that pursed smile
he loathed so well on her face.
And that, in an hour or two,
the gardener would carry away
his wonderful god,
a god no longer,
but a simple, brown ferret in a hutch.
And he knew that the Woman
would triumph always,
as she triumphed now,
and that he would grow ever more sickly
under her pestering and domineering
and superior wisdom,
till one day nothing
would matter much more with him,
and the doctor would be proved right.
And in the sting and misery
of his defeat,
he began to chant loudly and defiantly
the hymn of his threatened idol.
"Sredni Vashtar went forth.
"His thoughts were red thoughts
and his teeth were white.
"His enemies called for peace
but he brought them death.
"Sredni Vashtar the beautiful!"
And then of a sudden,
he stopped his chanting
and drew closer to the windowpane.
The door of the shed stood
still ajar as it had been left,
and the minutes were slipping by.
They were long minutes,
but they slipped by nevertheless.
He watched the starlings
running and flying
in little parties across the lawn.
He counted them, over and over again,
with one eye always
on that swinging door.
A sour-faced maid came in
to lay the table for tea,
and still Conradin stood
and waited and watched.
Hope had crept by inches into his heart,
and now a look of triumph
began to blaze in his eyes
that had known only
the wistful patience of defeat.
Under his breath,
with a furtive exultation,
he began once again
the paean of victory and devastation.
And, presently, his eyes were rewarded.
Out through that doorway,
came a long, low, yellow and brown beast
with eyes a-blink
in the waning daylight,
and dark, wet stains
around the fur of jaws and throat.
Conradin dropped on his knees.
The great polecat ferret
made its way down
to a small brook
at the foot of the garden,
drank for a moment,
then crossed the little plank bridge
and was lost to sight in the bushes.
Such was the passing of Sredni Vashtar.
"Tea's ready," said the sour-faced maid.
"Where's the mistress?"
"She went down to the shed
some time ago," said Conradin.
And while the maid went
to summon her mistress to tea,
Conradin fished a toasting fork
out of the sideboard drawer
and proceeded to toast himself
a piece of bread.
And, during the toasting of it
and the buttering of it
with much butter,
and the slow enjoyment of eating it,
Conradin listened
to the noises and silences
which fell in quick spasms
beyond the dining room door.
The loud, foolish screaming of the maid,
the answering chorus of wondering
ejaculations from the kitchen region,
the scuttering footsteps
and hurried embassies for outside help,
and then, after a lull,
the scared sobbings
and the shuffling tread of those
who bore a heavy burden into the house.
"Whoever will break it
to the poor child?
"I couldn't for the life of me!"
exclaimed a shrill voice.
And while they debated
the matter among themselves,
Conradin made himself
another piece of toast.