Otherwise: Three Novels by John Crowley

by John Crowley

Yes. In a way: …

  But why would you want such a thing? I’m only a thing like that now myself; I know that, though I feel myself to be truly here. I’m a sort of crystal only, or—or a fly trapped in a block of plastic….

  What?

  A fly. Inside a block of plastic. That was a thing Blink had…. Tell me. Who is it that I am?

  Rush that Speaks.

  That’s not an answer.

  It’s the only one that’s true now.

  It’s very confusing. I feel myself to be me, and only me; but that can’t be so.

  Go on with your story; it’s less confusing. It’s best just to tell the story, beginning to end—that’s something we know about you. Will you tell about Blink?

  Blink.

  If Blink was a saint, then I’m not; if Blink wasn’t a saint, then perhaps it’s true that I could be one. Transparent: that’s what Painted Red said the saints were, or tried to be; and that’s what I am now, isn’t it?

  She said: “The saints found that truthful speaking was more than just being understood; the important thing was that the better you spoke, the more other people saw themselves in you, as in a mirror. Or better: the more they saw themselves through you, as though you had become transparent.”

  It was the end of my second seventh year, and I had come to have the System read for me again; and before she began work with her lenses and squares of glass we sat talking, eating apples which reminded me of the first day I had come to learn with her.

  “Why are there no saints now?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said, “perhaps there are. Saints aren’t known to be saints, you know, till long after they’re dead, and people see that their stories have lived. So if there are saints now, we don’t know it.”

  “But there haven’t been saints. Not for many lives.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “Little St. Roy and St. Olive were the last; and St. Gene, if he’s a saint, as Thread cord thinks. But there are quiet times, you know, centuries long they can be, where the task is only to learn what the busy times discovered; and then there will come a time of new discovery. People in motion.”

  “Seven Hands thinks one is beginning now.”

  “Does he?”

  “He talks about leaving Belaire, ‘going to meet it and not wait,’ he says.”

  “Yes?”

  I knew by the way she spoke that she doubted Seven Hands truly knew of a new thing, or meant to go out and discover it. “And Once a Day left,” I said.

  “Who is that?” Painted Red said. “Ah, the Whisper cord girl …” She looked at me closely. “Do you suppose she left to learn to be a saint?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will you follow where she went?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “No.”

  When Once a Day had at last been found to be missing, I was questioned. I said I knew she had gone with the List, and of her own accord, but not why, or whether she would return; and they saw that this was the truth. The news went quickly all through Belaire, and there were reproaches, and a meeting was nearly held; messages flew along Path, and gossips met, but no one could determine whether the grownups of Whisper cord had known beforehand what Once a Day would do, or not, or if the List had asked her to come, or how it had come about. It ought to be, among truthful speakers, that such mysteries couldn’t occur, but they can. Little St. Roy said: “Truthful speaking would be a simple way to tell the truth, if the whole truth were simple, and could be told.”

  When the traders of the List came next spring, she wasn’t among them. Waiting for them to come, I had imagined a lot of things: that she would return, but would be changed beyond recognition, unable to speak truthfully; that she would not be changed at all, would greet me as she always had, and share with me all the wonders she had seen; that she would be sorry she had run away, and ask us humbly to take her back; that she would have sickened and died amid the alien surroundings of the List, and they would bring back her white, sad corpse amid them. But she didn’t come back at all; and they would only say that she was well, and happy enough, and they forgot what else, nothing important, and could the trading begin?

  We counted our children, that spring, after they had gone.

  Every spring I waited for her, but she didn’t return. Every year, waiting for the List to come, waiting for her, became part of waiting for spring. It made the need for spring more urgent, the boredom of winter’s end more maddening; made the signs—snow torrents, birds returning—spur me more terribly. She, who was so autumnal, so indoor, came to mean spring to me.

  “You won’t follow her,” Painted Red said. “Then where will you go?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said. “Not exactly.”

  “For someone who’s to be a saint,” she said, “you don’t know a lot of things.” She smiled. “That’s a good sign.”

  That Painted Red knew, though I had not told her or anyone, that I meant to leave Little Belaire and learn to live a life that could be told in stories—that I meant to be a saint—didn’t surprise me. I had told her. There was nothing now that I knew or wanted or drought that I could keep from telling her: for I spoke truthfully, and it was she who had taught me.

  “A life,” she said, folding her hands and regarding the first slide of the System which shone on her wall, “is circumstances. Circumstances are encirclings, they’re circles. The circle of a saint’s life, all its circumstances, is contained in the story of his life as he tells it; and the story of his life is contained in our remembering it. The story of his life is a circumstance in ours. So the circle of his life is contained in the circle of our lives, like circles of ripples rising in water.”

  She rose, leaving the marks of her skirts on the hard dirt floor. From the long box that was Palm cord, she drew out a second square of glass and put it in place with the other. The board changed; colors mixed and became other colors; masses changed shape, became newly related to other masses.

  “Do you see?” she said. “The saints are like the slides of the System. Their interpenetation is what reveals, not the slides themselves.”

  “It’s like the saints,” I said, “because they made their lives transparent, like the slides; and their lives can be placed before our own, in our remembering their stories, and reveal things to us about ourselves. Not the stories or the lives themselves, but their?”

  “Interpenetation, yes,” Painted Red said. “They’re saints not because of what they did, especially, but because in the telling of it, what they did became transparent, and your own life could be seen through it, illuminated.

  “Without the Co-op Great Belaire there would be no truthful speaking. Without truthful speaking there could be no transparent life. And in transparent life, the saints hoped that one day we might be free from death: not immortal, as the angels tried to become, but free from death, our lives transparent even as we live them: not through a means, you see, like the Filing System or even truthful speaking, but transparent in their circumstances: so that instead of telling a story that makes a life transparent, we will ourselves be transparent, and not hear or remember a saint’s life, but live it: live many lives in the moment between birth and dying.”

  “How could that come about?” I said, unable to grasp it, or even imagine it.

  “Well,” she said, “If I knew, perhaps I would be a great saint. Perhaps if you discover it … But tell me this, Rush that Speaks: how anyway is truthful speaking itself done?”

  I must know that; I was a truthful speaker, the craft could never be taken from me; and yet … How: Painted Red’s question reverberated within me, as a thing held up between two mirrors multiplies itself endlessly; as though my mind were crossing as my eyes can cross. I laughed, helpless. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know how it’s done.”

  She laughed with me. She leaned forward, as though to impart a secret, and almost whispered to me: “Well, well, you know, Rush, I don’t know either!”

  Still chuckling, she
picked up the long box which contained Palm cord’s slides, to continue her preparations. A thought struck her as her fingers moved over the tabs. “You asked me once, Rush,” she said, “what the names of these slides are, and how they go together.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still want to know?”

  “I do.”

  “It’s the day for it,” she said, regarding me for a long time with a tenderness that was like a farewell. “The one you see,” she said, “the first slide, is Fourth Finder, Palm cord’s slide: you see, in the center, where the lines meet, a figure like the palm of a hand? And the other placed over it is called Little First Slot. Together, they make little Knot.” She took a third slide from the box and placed it behind the others. “Little Knot and Hands make Little Knot Unraveled.” She put two more with them. “Little Knot Unraveled and the two Stair slides make Great Knot.” Carefully she drew out and inserted the thin, thin pieces of glass. “Great Knot and First Trap make Little Trap. Little Trap and the Expedition make Little Second Gate, or Great Trap Unlocked in Leaf cord. Little Second Gate and the Ball Court make Gate.”

  The figures on the wall had grown tangled and dark, infinitely intertwining. When one slide seemed to make a pattern of the previous ones, the next distorted the pattern. And now I could see nothing in it. Painted Red’s hands lingered over the rest of the slides in her box. “It’s thought,” she said, “that Gate and the second and great Slot slides, together with the Broken Heart and the Shaken Fragments slides, all make Great Knot Unraveled. But no one can read that much; no one who can begin to understand Gate can even begin to read that much.” She touched the lens tube to sharpen the figures; sharpness came and went amid the overlayed figures as she moved the tube. She came and sat by me again. “The gossips know, now, after many years of searching, that it can’t be read past Gate, not packed all together; and if Great Knot Unraveled is the whole set, then Great Knot Unraveled can never be read.”

  “Does that mean,” I asked, “that it’s no longer any use? Since you know that? It doesn’t, does it?”

  “Oh no,” she said. “No, no. It will be a long time before we have learned everything there is to learn even from Little Knot. But … well. It seemed, when the System was first being truly searched, in St. Olive’s time, it seemed that … it seemed there was a promise, that one day it would be seen all together, and answer all questions. Now we know it won’t, not ever. When that was first understood, there were gossips who broke up their Systems, and some who left Belaire; that was a sad time.”

  She pushed her spectacles back along her nose. “For me: well, I know there are enough byways, and snake’s-hands, and things to be learned from the System to last many lifetimes. And work enough to do with its wisdom among the cords, in their knots and troubles.” She looked at Gate, and its lights were reflected from her spectacles. “And the whole answer is there, you know, Rush, though I can’t read it; it knows everything, about people, though I never will. That’s enough to keep me in its presence.”

  She was silent a long time, and seemed to grow older. Then: “When will you leave?” she asked me.

  “In the spring,” I said. “I think I’ll be ready then.”

  “A saint,” she said. “You know, Rush, the first time you came to see me, seven years ago, you had a different thought. You were going to go out and find all our things that were lost, and bring them back to us.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your Whisper cord girl one of those things that was lost?”

  I said nothing. Painted Red had not looked at me, only at Gate. “Well, perhaps after all it’s not a different thought, not really….” She struck her knees with her palms. “No,” she said. “No, I won’t read for you this year. I think, if you mean to do this, it could hurt as much as help. Do you mind?”

  “If you think it’s right.”

  “I do,” she said. She had me help her up. “I do.” Could it be that I had—almost instantly—grown taller than she, or had she somehow just as quickly shrunk? She took my shoulders in her strong hands. “When you go,” she said, “never forget us and our needs. Whatever you find, if it’s useful to us, save it; make the knowledge you got here into a box to carry it, it can be used for that. And however far away you go, come back with what you find to us.”

  And so she embraced me, and I left her, and ran away down the puzzle of Path that I knew by heart, through rooms and passages that seemed also to have grown smaller suddenly. I wondered about the reading of the System, and what it might have shown for me and my endeavor, what possibilities, what failures; and I felt a cord cut that had tied my childhood to Little Belaire, and a little lost, and a little free. She must have known best, though: if she knew nothing else (and she did, much else) she knew when and when not to tell what the System revealed.

  But forget Little Belaire! She could not have thought I could forget it. The longer I’m away, the more it grows in my mind, the stream that runs through it speaking, its bugs and birds and berry bushes, the mystery at the heart of it hidden perhaps in the Filing System or the saved things of the Carved Chests; and now, now after I have lived in a tree and gotten a letter from Dr. Boots and been dark and light and lived as an avvenger and been taken apart and put back together any number of ways, though now I think sometimes that that place in the woods is imaginary and I am not a truthful speaker at all, do not really mean what I say or say what I really mean, and have invented all of it: still, even if it’s a dream, it’s a dream dictated by a voice that speaks truthfully: a voice that cannot lie.

  SECOND FACET

  You did, though, really set out to find Once a Day again. Didn’t you?

  I don’t know. Perhaps I did. I didn’t know it.

  When I was a kid, I wanted to find our things that were lost; as I grew up, and heard the stories of the saints, and listened to Seven Hands talk, I had another ambition: I wanted to be a saint. I wanted to have strange adventures, which I could tell of; and learn forgotten secrets, secrets stronger than the ones Once a Day kept from me; and make sense of the world in the stories I told.

  Painted Red suspected that what I really wanted to do was follow Once a Day; that perhaps she was the lost thing I most wanted to find.

  And she told me that what saints attempt to do is to become transparent.

  How could I know, that spring, what it was I most wanted, or what would become of me? And how was I to know that all of those things were true, that they would all happen to me, every single one?

  Well, I didn’t. What I thought was this: that despite what Painted Red had said about saints nowadays, somewhere in the world there must be a saint, a saint like the saint I wanted to become; and that what I ought to do first was to find such a saint, and sit down before him, and study him, and learn from him how to go about being what I couldn’t imagine being: transparent.

  Seven Hands and I had made many expeditions together, sometimes spending a week outside Belaire, just seeing what we could see. I had learned to climb rocks, to make fires with wet wood, tell directions, and to walk all day without worrying that I didn’t know just where I was walking to. Preparations, Seven Hands called these; and as my resolve to leave Little Belaire grew stronger, I made these preparations more eagerly, with greater attention. And Seven Hands came to know—though we never spoke of it—that the preparations we made were in the end mine, and not his.

  I had a shaggy blue shirt, and bread and a pipe and some dried fruit and nuts; I had a string hammock, light and strong, that Seven Hands had made for me, and a sheet of plastic to hang above it to make a tent. I had Four Pots and some other doses; I had my new spectacles that My Eyes had made for me. They were yellow, and turned the white May morning into deepest summer; I took them off and put them on again for entertainment, looking now and then up into the trees for saints.

  In the trees?

  Because the saints always lived apart from us, and often in houses built into trees. I don’t know why. I thought, one day, I would
live in a tree as those old saints had; I would choose a great low-branching oak or maple, like some I passed. I loved already the saint I knew I would be, saw with strange clarity that old man, could almost, though not quite, hear the compelling stories he would tell…. When the sun was high, I crept into a little woods that bordered a marshy stream where wild cows sometimes could be seen drinking, and smoked. Then there was nothing to do but keep on. With only a morning of my adventure passed so far, it began to seem impossibly long; and I decided I would lighten that load.

  Of the Four Pots, it is the silver one that lightens a load. It contains many small black granules like cinders, of different sizes; I knew this because I had seen Mbaba open it and swallow one. I knew also that to lighten the load of a journey, you must know clearly before you lighten your load just where you are going, how you will get there, and when you intend to arrive. I knew the way to That River, and that it would take me till nearly sunset to find it and the bridge of iron that Seven Hands and I had crossed; so I cracked open the pot and—a little uncertain and a little afraid of what was about to happen to me (for I had never done this before)?I selected a small one of the black granules and swallowed it.

  A little bit later my footsteps slowed as I approached an enormous maple that shaded the way. The sound of the wind in its branches grew slow also, and low, like a moan, and then slower, till it was too low to be heard. The sound of the birds slowed, and the movement of the leaves; the sunlight dimmed to a blue darkness that was still daylight, like the light of an eclipse; one branch of leaves absorbed my attention, and then one leaf; I had leisure between one footstep and the next to study it quite intensely, while the sunlight on it didn’t change and the low call of a bird extended note by note infinitely. I was waiting with enormous patience for my raised right foot to fall, which it seemed it would never do, when the leaf and the birdcall and the soundless moan of the wind went away, the footfall struck and I found myself standing before That River, downstream from the iron bridge, watching the sun go down. I laughed, amazed. Lighten my load! I had traveled the whole of an afternoon, miles, and hadn’t noticed it. I suddenly understood the chuckle of old men when they look, a little startled, at some day-long task they have completed after taking one of these black cinders to lighten the load.