Otherwise: Three Novels by John Crowley
Page 59
You make me ashamed. Ashamed, with all that, of why in the end I did agree to let him take me, or whatever it was he wanted to take, with him.
Why?
It was just, well: ever since I was a kid I’ve somewhere in me believed in a City in the Sky. Not as Blink did, as a perhaps, or as the List did, as a story, or as Little St. Roy did, as a pretty thought, but that it was real. As real as clouds. And an angel had dropped from there, and said he’d take me. And however much he said that I, mortal I, would feel no change, that I would be left sitting in the meadow just as I was while he went off with—with something like a slide of the Filing System, if he could have thought to say that: still, I thought maybe I would get to see it, what it was like; that dome, those clouds. That’s all.
But I slept, first. I was exhausted by our struggle. I wrapped up in my black and silver and watched the moon for a while; Brom lay next to me roaring. Mongolfier wouldn’t sleep; he sat straight up, with his back against a tree, and watched.
I dreamed that night of the warren, of running on Path toward the inside, through great and little rooms where chests were kept and gossips studied cords, circling in a spiral nearer to the center past people smoking and kids playing, into narrow passages of angelstone in the dim small deep insides. I awoke without reaching the center, and thinking that after all I had never known where exactly the center of Belaire was, to see Mongolfier still sitting, paler with his vigil and with his, his Gun, as he called it, in his lap, waiting.
“All right,” I said. “All right.” I rubbed my eyes and sat up. He got up, stiff with tension, and held out his hand for the silver ball and glove. I searched in my pack for them; they called to me softly from beneath the raggedies piled on top of them. “Now,” he said, when he had them, his voice hoarse with no sleep, but calm for the first time since I’d met him. He led me down through the pasture to where Plunkett stood amid the meadow flowers. “Sit, sit,” he said, “and close your eyes.”
I sat, but wouldn’t close my eyes. I watched silver fog rising out of the valley of That River. I watched Mongolfier at the engine: he drew on my glove, and with it brought the ball close to the pedestal on which Plunkett sat, and then released it: as though thrown, it buried itself within the glassy box, lining up with the others there. Its whistle ceased as it entered. He pretended, with his gloved hand, to turn that ball, that knob, and it turned. The sphere on top of the pedestal, clearer than glass, grew clouded, as though filling with smoke; Mongolfier turned the knob until the sphere was black: as black as way-wall: a black no-place in the morning.
“Plunkett is dead,” he said. “Close your eyes.” With the other glove, the glove he had brought, he pretended to turn a black knob, and the sphere rose off its pedestal. “Close your eyes,” he said again, worried, glancing from me to his machine.
“All right,” I said, but didn’t. I put my hat on. I took it off again. The black sphere came slowly before my face. I had a moment to feel the limitless fear I had felt before way-wall as it filled up my sight: and then I closed my eyes.
And opened them here.
Yes. And you must close them now again, the story’s told.…
Wait. Put down the glove. I’m afraid.
Afraid?
Afraid for him, for me. What do I do, angel, alone, stuck like the fly, when I’m not here telling this?
Nothing. If you dream, they are the dreams you wake from having already forgotten. But I don’t think you dream: no, nothing, probably.
It seems I’m still in that meadow, and that I, I mean my story, just got here to be told. But that can’t be so. I’ve told all this before.
Yes.
Why don’t I remember?
You aren’t here, Rush. There isn’t anything here of you but—but something like a slide of the Filing System, that can only reveal you by—
Interpenetration.
Interpenetration, yes. With another. Who is gone now, while you’re here, who will return when you are gone. But nothing spoken to you while you are here can affect you, any more than the picture of Plunkett could smile back at you if you smiled at it; when you are in yet another, you will be surprised again to find yourself here, surprised that a moment ago you sat in the meadow with Mongolfier; and you’ll marvel at the dome, the clouds; and tell your story again. What it is to be you when you aren’t here but on your pedestal, we don’t know; we only know that sometimes you come from that sleep asleep, sometimes awake…
How many times? How many?
… and each time ask that. When our son … when my son is grown, Rush, and takes you on himself, if he dares, you will have been awakened here three hundred times, in twice as many years.
No. No, angel…
Many lives, Rush. Painted Red said.
But she’s gone. They’re all gone. And I… what did I do, then, angel, in my life? Did I grow old? Did I ever go down the hill? And Once a Day… oh, angel, what became of me?
I don’t know. There are those who, having been you, have guessed; have dreamed or imagined how you returned to Belaire, the saint you became. Mongolfier said he watched you, after the old copter had come for him, watched you marvel at it, watched you watch it fly off with him: that’s all we know. We know nothing else, Rush, but what you tell us. It’s all you here now, Rush.
And do I each time learn this? And then forget? As though I were Mother Tom in her box, like the strip of paper looped by St. Gene?
Yes.
Then free me now, angel. Let me sleep, if I can’t die. Free me, quickly, while I can still bear all this.…
Yes. Sleep now, brave man; sleep again, Rush; close your eyes, close your eyes. Forget.
Only… wait, wait. Listen: the one who I am, you must be gentle with him, angel, when he returns, remember. Here, take my hand, take his hand. Yes. Don’t let go. Promise.
Yes. I promise.
Stay with him.
Ever after. I promise. Now close your eyes.
WILLIAM MORROW Perennial
New in Hardcover March 2002 from John Crowley:
THE TRANSLATOR
ISBN 0-380-97862-8 (hardcover)
In 1962, at a large college in the Midwest, Kit Malone, a young woman with a troubled past, finds herself in a class taught by an exiled Russian poet, Innokenti Falin. Over the course of the summer the two forge a friendship, she becomes his translator, and a delicate love grows between these two displaced people. Years later, returning from a convention on Falin in Moscow, Kit realizes what really happened the last night that she spent with Falin… while the country held it’s breath against the threat of war, she was helping him make a decision that would change the course of history.
Now Available in Trade Paperback:
LITTLE, BIG
ISBN 0-06-093793-9 (paperback)
The epic story of Smoky Barnable—an anonymous young man whose life takes a magical turn the day he meets and falls in love with a unique woman named Daily Alice Drinkwater. Daily Alice lives in Edgewood, a mysterious place that cannot be found on a map, but where Smoky must travel in order to take her as his bride. In this palatial manor lives a family with ties to other worlds; as their history is revealed to Smoky, he discovers that he, too, is a part of a much larger tale unfolding all around.
“Prose that Scott Fitzgerald would envy and a heartbreaking love story.”
—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book Review
OTHERWISE
Three Novels by John Crowley
ISBN 0-06-093792-0 (paperback)
Now back in print, this volume contains three of award-winning author John Crowley’s critically acclaimed short novels: Beasts, Engine Summer, and The Deep.
Available wherever books are sold, or call 1-800-331-3761 to order.
About the Author
JOHN CROWLEY was born in 1942 on an Army Air Corps base and grew up in Vermont and Indiana. A recipient of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, Mr. Crowley’s novels include Ægypt, Love & Sleep, Dæmonomania,
and, most recently, The Translator. He teaches fiction and film writing at Yale, and lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and twin daughters.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Praise for
THE WORK OF JOHN CROWLEY
The Deep
“Extraordinary…. It has genuine beauty.” —Ursula K. Le Guin
“An honest and sensitively written fantasy.” —Chicago Daily News
“Crowley writes with style and wit, creates characters that live and breathe.” —New York Newsday
Engine Summer
“A strikingly original and involving book…with uncommon sensitivity and grace.” —Washington Post Book World
“Engine Summer has strong, believable characters, an ingenious, well-made plot, and a resolution that is intellectually and dramatically satisfying.” —New York Times Book Review
“Reminiscent of Tolkien’s and Bradbury’s gentle mysticism…. This is the sort of book people take to their hearts, reread and recommend.” —Publishers Weekly
Beasts
“This haunting, thought-provoking novel…is extraordinarily touching, mingling a sense of hope with a pervasive mood of despair.” —Booklist
“Crowley has enough genuine imagination for ten ordinary writers.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Unforgettable. —Penthouse
Other Books by John Crowley
Also by John Crowley
The Translator
Dæmonomania
Love & Sleep
Ægypt
Little, Big
Copyright
THE DEEP. Copyright © 1975 by John Crowley.
BEASTS. Copyright © 1976 by John Crowley.
ENGINE SUMMER. Copyright © 1979 by John Crowley.
A previous edition of this book was published in 1994 by Bantam Books under the title Three Novels by John Crowley. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
OTHERWISE. Copyright © 1994 by John Crowley. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © May 1994 ISBN: 978-0-06-196602-6
First Perennial edition published 2002.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crowley, John.
Otherwise: three novels / by John Crowley.
p. cm.
Contents: The deep—Beasts—Engine summer.
ISBN 0-06-093792-0
1. Fantasy fiction, American. I. Title.
PS3553.R597A62002
813′.54—dc21 2001055477
04 05 06 RRD10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
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