Read Online American Ghosts & Old World Wonders by Angela Carter - Free Book Online

Europe.
                Mendoza himself tore the earrings from his mother's ears. And raped her. And somebody shot his father when his father tried to stop the rape. And then they shot his mother because she was screaming so loudly.
                Calm, quiet, Johnny recounts all.
                "We all have our tragedies."
                "Some tragedies we can turn back on the perpetrators. I've planned my revenge. A suitably operatic revenge. I shall seduce the beautiful senorita and give her a baby. And if I can't shoot her father and mother, I shall find some way of strangling them with my beautiful pianist's hands."
                Quiet, assured, deadly -- but incompetent. He doesn't know one end of a gun from the other; never raised his hand in anger in his life.
                But he's been brooding on this revenge ever since the black-edged letter arrived at his lodgings in Vienna; in Vienna, where he heard how a nobleman made a pact with the devil, once, to ensure no bullet he ever fired would miss the mark. . .
                "If you've planned it all so well, if you're dedicated to your vengeance. . ."
                Johnny nods. Quiet, assured, deadly.
                "If you're quite determined, then. . . you belong to the devil already. And a bullet is indeed more merciful than anger, if accurately fired."
                And the Count has always hated Mendoza's contempt for himself and Roxana, who live on Mendoza's charity.
                But Johnny has never used a gun in his life. Old man, old man, what have you to lose? You've nothing, you've come to a dead end, kept by a whore in a flyblown town at the end of all the roads you ever took. . . give me a gun that will never miss a shot; that will fire by itself. I know you know how to get one. I know --
                "I have nothing to lose," says the Count inscrutably. "Except my sins, Johnny. Except my sins."
     
                Teresa, sixteen, sullen, pretty, dissatisfied, retreats into her bedroom, into the depths of an enormous, gilded, four-poster bed looted from a train especially for her, surrounded by a jackdaw's nest of tawdry, looted glitter, gorges herself on chocolates, leafs through very very old fashion magazines. She hugs a scrawny kitten, her pet. Chickens roost on the canopy of her bed. Maa! maa! a goat pokes its head in through the open window. Teresa twitches with annoyance. You call this living?
                Her door bursts open. An excited dog follows a flock of squawking chickens into the room; all the chickens roosting on the bed rise up, squawking. Chaos! The dog jumps on to the bed, begins to gnaw at the bloody something he carries in his mouth. Kitten rises on its hind legs to bat at the dog. Teresa hurls chocolates, magazines, screaming -- insupportable! She storms out of the room.
                In the courtyard, her mother is slaughtering a screaming pig. That's the sort of thing the Mendoza women folk enjoy! Ugh. Teresa's made for better things, she knows it.
                She wanders disconsolately out into the dusty street. Empty. Like my life, like my life.
                Willows bend over the scummy pool in front of Roxana's brothel; it has a secluded air.
                Teresa skulks beside the pool, sullenly throwing stones at her own reflection. Morning, slack time; in voluptuous déshabillé, the whores lean over the veranda: "Little Teresa! Little Teresa! Come in and see your auntie!" They laugh at her in her black stockings, her convent-girl dress, her rumpled hair.
                Roxana's doing the books, behind the bar, with a pair of wire-rimmed glasses propped on her nose. The Count pours himself elevenses -- she looks up, is about to remonstrate with him, thinks better of it, returns to her sums. Morning sunshine; outside on the veranda, the