Otherwise: Three Novels by John Crowley

by John Crowley

  “My information regarding him”—he gestured toward the yard below the window—“was accurate enough.”

  “It put us to a lot of trouble. Unnecessary trouble.”

  “Well.”

  “You might be merely planning to confuse us, tell lies….”

  “I’ve voluntarily put myself in your hands this time,” Reynard said. “I’m helpless. I know that if I mislead you now, the full weight of your authority will fall on me. I’m sure also that you have, well, experimental methods of extracting truths. The research arm.”

  “That’s an odious slander.”

  “Is it?”

  “We wouldn’t let you renege, that’s true enough,” said Barron testily.

  “It’s all I meant.”

  “And what you want in exchange. It doesn’t seem enough. Not for such a betrayal.”

  Reynard turned to the window again and looked out. “Perhaps you feel more deeply about betrayal than I do.” Barron had to lean out over the desk now to catch his hoarse whisper. “The answer is that I’m at the end of my powers. I’ve eluded your government so far because of a large fortune I managed to assemble working for Gregorius. That’s gone now. I’m old, not well. I’ve spent my life in motion, but I can’t run anymore. Eventually I’d be cornered, taken—” He paused, staring down into the yard. “Rather than have that happen, I’d prefer to trade the last of what I have for peace. For time to die peacefully in.” He turned to Barron. “Remember,” he said. “I’m not a man. I am the only, the first and last of me there will ever be. You know I’m sterile. I have no loyalties. Only advantages.”

  Barron didn’t speak for a moment; the affectless voice had seemed to paralyze him. Then he cleared his throat, opened his briefcase and looked inside, closed it. Himself again. “So,” he said briskly, “in exchange for immunity, and a pension or the like—we’ll negotiate details—you’re willing to give evidence that Sten Gregorius and yourself planned the murder of Gregorius; that USE had nothing to do with it; that the murderers weren’t USE agents; that Sten Gregorius is still conspiring against the Federal provisional government in the Northern Autonomy. Nashe?”

  “Nashe, I hear, is dead.”

  “Then what you have to say about her can’t hurt her.”

  “There’s the other thing I require,” Reynard said.

  “Yes.”

  “The leo.”

  Barron straightened. “Yes, I think that’s odd.”

  “Do you?”

  “It’s also probably impossible. He’s committed several crimes; he’s very dangerous.”

  Reynard made a noise that might have been a laugh. “Look at him,” he said. “I think you’ve broken his spirit. At least.”

  “The criminal charges…”

  “Come now,” Reynard said almost sharply. “You’ve said yourself he’s not a prisoner. An experimental subject only. Well. Put an end to the experiment.”

  “He’s still dangerous. It would be like… like…”He seemed to search unused places for a forgotten image. “Like releasing Barabbas to the populace.”

  Reynard said nothing. Barron supposed he had spoken over the creature’s head. “He’s part of the conspiracy, in any case,” he said.

  “A very small part,” Reynard said. “He never understood it. He was used, first to help me, then to distract your attention. He worked well enough.”

  “He and his kind have gotten completely bound up together in the public mind with Sten Gregorius. That may have been an accident….”

  “No accident. It was due to your stupidity in persecuting the leos so—so artlessly. Sten took up their cause. It was ready-made. By you.” He limped toward the desk where Barron still sat, and Barron drew back as though he were being approached by something repugnant. “Maybe I can put this so that you can see the advantage to you. You’re planning a reservation somewhere for the leos, a kind of quarantine.”

  “In the Southeastern Autonomy.”

  “Well then. Once Sten is in your hands, and the leo has gone voluntarily to this reservation, the union will evaporate.”

  “He would never go voluntarily,” Barron said. “These beasts never do anything voluntarily except make trouble.”

  “Let me talk to him. I could persuade him. He listens to me. I’ve been his adviser, his friend.” No irony. This was presented as an argument only. Barron marveled: no thin skin of pretense was drawn over this creature’s amorality. It made him easy to deal with. Only—

  “Why,” he said, “do you insist on this? It can’t be just to make things easier for us.”

  Reynard sat on the edge of a metal folding chair. Barron wondered if he was at a loss. It seemed unlikely. He moved his hands on the head of his stick. His long feet just touched the floor. “Do you go to zoos?” he said at last.

  “When I was a kid. In my opinion, zoos…”

  “You might have noticed,” Reynard went on, “that according to a curious human logic, the cages are proportionate in size to the creatures they contain. Small cages for small animals—weasels, foxes—big ones for big animals. In old zoos, anyway.”

  “Well?”

  “People go to zoos. They pity the lions, noble beasts, caged like that, with hardly room to move. In fact the lion is relatively comfortable. He’s a lazy beast and exerts himself only when he must—if he doesn’t have to, he rests. Other animals—foxes, notably—have a natural urge for movement. In the wild, they may cover miles in a night. They pace endlessly in their little cages. All night, when the zoo is closed, they pace—two body lengths this way, two that way. For hours. They probably go mad quite quickly. A madness no one notices.

  “To put it baldly: I would do anything to avoid the cage. I hope you grasp that. He-—down there—probably doesn’t care. So long as he has a cage suited to his dignity.”

  “The reservation.”

  “It’s the least I can do for him,” Reynard said, again with no irony. “The very least.”

  Barron stood and went to the window. The leo still sat; his eyes appeared to be closed. Was he sleeping? Maybe the fox was right. Barron had felt, though he had ignored, a certain pity for the leos who would be committed to quarantine. Left over from guilt over the Indian reservations, perhaps. But the Indians were, after all, men. Maybe the USE plan, besides being the only practicable one, was the kindest too.

  “All right,” he said. “When do you want to talk to him? I make no promises. But I agree in principle.”

  “Now,” Reynard said.

  Face upward into the weak sun, Painter watched brilliance expand and deliquesce on his eyelids. Entranced by hunger, he had entered into a fugue of sleep, memory, waking, rough dream.

  Coalescing in sunlight, fat, strong; taste of blood from cut lips, a haze of fury, then some victory—ancientest childhood. Sun and darkness, warmth of light and then warmth of flesh in lightlessness, amid other bodies. Sleep. Consciousness spring by spring flaring like anger along flesh wakened roughly, nothing father Sun could do against the father before him, his battle only, only perceived in enormous flashings of feeling, the possibility of victory, the battle prolonged, unacknowledged, he shackled and… Shackled. He raised his arms and opened his eyes. Vision of nothing. Still shackled. Stains of ancient rains ran across the yard, meeting at the drain in the center, rays from a minute black sun, tears from a deadeye.

  Wandering. Nothing to do; nothing he couldn’t do, coursing the stream of his own blood, turning and spinning on its currents. But bounded: banks of men, channeling him. He pressing on their united faces, passing through, they coalescing again behind and in front, rebounding him. Towns and roads. Strength for sale: cold steel half-dollars and paper as fine as shed snakeskin. As though in disguise he wore them. Smells burned him, tobacco burned smells, half-dollars bought both, language crept in between his eyes and came out his mouth tasting of tobacco. At a touch, anger could flare; they pressed so tightly together, how could they bear themselves? Learning how to bind down strengths and knit them up,
twigs bound too tightly to burn. Until he was packed and pregnant as bound dynamite, faceless as quarried walls: the stone walls he square-cut in quarries, faceted walls all of one stone, like the faces that looked at him, faceted, unyielding, nothing could move them except dynamite.

  The walls around him now were black; those had been pale. Would he die here? Sun had withdrawn from him. He would die here when Sun withdrew altogether; day by day it had grown narrower, a few minutes’ blessing only now, tenderly feeling the brick wall brick by brick as it ascended away from him. Winter, and he would die in prison.

  In prison. That was where he had been cut in two, years ago, in the darkness. Feeling the mansion peel away in the darkness like a separate being. Solitary. No place else to put you. Steel doors closing like cryings-out. Rage at the darkness. Too dumb to know better. Half a man, they said, like the blond boy who kissed his hands for it, wept before him: not a man. They didn’t know he had a man concealed on his person. Carrying a concealed weapon, resisting arrest, solitary: and in the darkness feeling the man peel away, as though he were a skin, and the man-skin in darkness acquired his own life.

  How long? Day after dark day he descended stairs, kept descending further stairs into further darkness, illuminating it with unyielding will, following the manskin that led the way. Solitary. Not alone though. Because the manskin led him. Down to the bottom of the darkness, his being held up before him like a torch, the manskin always just ahead, hair streaming from his head like language from his mouth; stepless darkness where they went down in the halo of his light-bearing aliveness. In the end, the bottom, and he made the manskin turn. No retreat. You are me. In the terrible dry light of understanding looking into his face, drawing close to his face, reaching for him, he for him, coupling ravishing, beast with two backs but ever after that one face only. He did not die in prison.

  The fox came to him in prison. He thought at first he had invented him too. Not a prison like this one: white, naked, without surfaces, only the cryings-out of steel doors shrieking closed together. Get you out of here. What did he want? Nothing. Out of there: away from darkness, through the shrieking doors, into Sun’s face again. Why?

  Accept it as your due, the fox had said. Only accept it. You deserve my service; only accept it.

  “Painter,” said the fox.

  Take me as your servant, he had said. Only go by my direction for a while. For a long while, maybe. Take what you deserve; I’ll point it out to you.

  “Painter,” said the fox.

  If this were the fox before him now in the black prison, he would kill him. The fox had betrayed him, freed him from the white prison so that he could die in the black; had given him over to the men. Had killed his son. Would kill him. Sun alone knew why he wanted such deaths. And if this were the fox

  “Painter.”

  before him now he would

  “Your servant,” said the fox.

  “You.”

  “I’ve come to get you out. Again.”

  “You put me here.” His long-unused voice was thick.

  “An error. A piece of planning that went badly. My apologies. It’s worked out for the best.”

  “My son is dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Painter moved his arms against the shackles. Reynard, hardly taller than he, though he stood, bent over him, leaning on his stick. “How ill are you?”

  “I could still kill you.”

  “Listen to me now. You must listen. There is a way out of this.”

  “Why? Why listen?”

  “Because,” Reynard said, “you have no one else.”

  From the window of the consulting room, Barron looked down on them. Like a scene from some antique cartoon or fairytale, seeing them together. Hideous, in a way. Misdirected ingenuity. Frankenstein. He wondered at the fox, though; had he been right, about his own nature? It would be interesting to see what limits there were to his intelligence. Certainly he was cunning, cold, in a way no man could be; but still he apparently had been unable to see that the price he had asked for his betrayal was too high, and that to leave him in peace was something the government couldn’t possibly do. Once Reynard was of no more use to them, he certainly couldn’t be set free to do more mischief.

  Tests, maybe. It would be interesting to see. A misdirected experiment, perhaps, and yet perhaps something could be learned from it.

  What were they saying? He cursed himself for not having forseen this, not having the courtyard bugged.

  In the morning, Caddie found a food shop and ate, pressed in among other bodies, watching the windows steam up and the steam condense to tears that streaked the panes. An argument started and threatened to become a fight. Everyone here seemed touchy, frustrated, at flashpoint. What did they want so badly, which they weren’t getting? What was it that goaded them?

  She began her circuit of the park again, carefully studying faces and places, wondering what she could do alone, if she couldn’t find Reynard. Nothing. She had no idea where Painter was. Government channels are silent. But she couldn’t give up, not after having come so far, counted so much on this plan, readied herself so carefully for any sacrifice…. She found that she was hurrying, not searching, driven by anxiety. She stopped, and closed her eyes. No hope, she must have no hope. When her heart was calm, she opened her eyes. At an intersection of streets not far off was a slim, black three-wheeler, closed and faceless.

  She approached it by stages, uncertain, and not wanting to reveal herself. When she passed by it, walking aimlessly and not looking at it, as though passing by chance, the passenger door was pushed open by a stick. “Get in,” Reynard whispered.

  His traveling den smelled richly of him, though he himself was obscure in the shuttered darkness. The man up front was uniformed. Caddie looked from him to Reynard, uncertain.

  “My jailer,” Reynard said. His harsh sandpaper voice was fainter than ever. “On our side, though. More or less.”

  Still not knowing how freely she could speak, Caddie gave him the paper the bearded man had given her. She saw Reynard’s spectacles glint as he bent over it, his nose almost touching it. He folded it, thoughtful.

  “It’s Meric Landseer who’s done this,” he said at last. “Yes. His tapes. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Well. It’ll do. Yes.” He put the paper back in her hand, and leaned close to her, seizing her wrist in the strong, childlike grip she had first felt in the woods, in the hollow tree. “Now listen to me and remember everything I say. I’m going to tell you where Painter is. I’m going to tell you what he must do to be free, and what the price is, and what you must do. Remember everything.”

  When he had told her, though, she refused. He said nothing, only waited for her answer. She felt she would weep. “I can’t,” she said.

  “You must.” He stirred, impatient or uncomfortable. “We don’t have time here to talk. If I’m missed, they’ll suspect something. They’ll prevent this. Now I’ll tell you: it was I who sent the Federals to the Preserve, to arrest Painter. Do you understand? Because of me he’s where he is. He might have died. He will die, now, if he’s not freed. His son. I murdered him. By what I did. Do you understand? All my fault. You might have starved. His wives and children. All my fault. Do you understand?”

  He had taken her wrist again, and squeezed insistently. She looked at his black shape, feeling well up in her a disgust so deep that saliva gathered in her mouth, as though she would spit at him. Alien, horrid, as unfeeling as a spider. She wanted desperately to leave, to do this without him, but she knew she couldn’t. “All right,” she said thickly.

  “You’ll do it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Exactly as I said.”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember everything.”

  “Yes.” She pulled her wrist from his fingers. He pushed open the door with his stick.

  “Go,” he said.

  She went across the street to the park, pulling up her jacket collar against the cold wind, which blew paper
s and filth against her ankles as she walked. She wouldn’t weep. She’d think of Painter and Painter’s son only. As though she were an extension of the gun and not the reverse, she would execute its purposes. She wouldn’t think.

  The pillared shrine contained only an enormous seated figure Caddie thought she should know but couldn’t remember. His name, most of his left leg, and some fingers had been erased by a bomb. The black rays of the blast still flashed up the pillars and across the walls as though frozen at the moment of ignition. The same desperate and illegible slogans marked this monument, sprayed across the slogans cut in stone. With malice toward none, and justice for all.

  Vengeance.

  At the side of the building the bearded man sat on the steps, eating hard-boiled eggs from a paper and talking animatedly to a group of men and women gathered around him. The step was littered with eggshell and his beard was flecked with yolk.

  “Brutality,” he was saying. “What does that mean? It doesn’t matter what they do. Their morality isn’t ours, it can’t be. It’s enough that we see the right in our terms, and if we see it we must act on it. The basis of all political action…”

  He turned and looked at her, munching. She gave him back the paper he had given her, with the picture of the leo on it.

  “I know where he is,” she said.

  “Without the shackles,” Reynard said.

  “We can’t,” Barron said. “How do we know what he’ll do?”

  “A crowd of people is outside,” Reynard said. “They’ve been waiting all night. Do you want them to see him shackled?”

  “Well, why did you delay us all night?” Barron’s voice was a tense whisper attempting a shout. It was hideously cold in the corridors of the old hospital; he felt tremors of anxiety and cold and sleeplessness contract his chest. The corridors were dim; only every third or fourth light was lit, glaring off the particolored green enamel of the walls, as though the place were lit with fading flares. “We’ll take him out a back way.”

  “I think they’ve discovered all the exits.”