Girl in Landscape

by Jonathan Lethem

  E. G. Wa pointed his toothpick at the potato Raymond held. “That a fish?”

  “Yeah, we’re keeping it,” said Bruce.

  “Give a quarter for that one.”

  “Nope.”

  “Ha-ha. You bargaining, young Mr. Kincaid?”

  “No, we want it.”

  Martha whispered, too loud, to Pella, “He makes soup of it. It’s yucky.”

  “Okay,” said E. G. Wa, “fifteen, thirty, forty-five—you got seventy cents here.”

  “Morris’s are separate,” said Bruce, with sardonic emphasis.

  “Fifty-five and fifteen, then,” said E. G. Wa. “Dollar seventy-five for you with what you had before, Brucey.”

  “Give me a package of those cookies,” said Bruce, pointing.

  “Yes, sir! Earth imports. Good deal trading Archbuilder crap for nice Earth stuff, eh? Only problem is the Archbuilder emigration tax—that’s fifteen cents per new kid in town, comes to, uh—”

  “Cut it out,” said Bruce. He rapped his knuckles against the counter directly over the cookies. “He’s just making that stuff up,” he said to Pella and Raymond. “There’s no such thing as Archbuilder tax.”

  “Hah.” E. G. Wa gestured honorifically with toothpick in hand, then pulled out the package of cookies. “Very good, Mr. Kincaid. And what’s the names of you new kids?”

  “Pella Marsh,” said Pella, just as Raymond said, “Raymond.” E. G. Wa nodded, though it seemed unlikely he had made them out. And then Pella added, “And David.”

  They went out and sat on the porch, Raymond with the fish potato resting in his lap. Bruce crinkled open the cookies and handed them out, two to each, except to Morris.

  “Hey,” said Morris.

  “It was your idea to keep yours separate,” said Bruce.

  “Fifteen cents isn’t enough to buy anything.”

  “It was your idea.”

  “You can build up credit,” said Martha consolingly. “Like Bruce did.”

  “Yeah, but make sure Wa writes your fifteen cents down,” said Bruce. “He’ll forget it.”

  “He didn’t forget yours.”

  “Well I’m in there all the time.” Bruce said this through a mouthful of cookies. Morris glared resentfully.

  Pella gave Morris one of her cookies. He didn’t thank her, just wolfed it down, then scooped up some rocks to throw from the porch into the gully. After a minute he said, “Potatoes growing out everywhere, I don’t even get why he gives you any credit at all.”

  “It’s work digging them up, something you wouldn’t know about,” said Bruce. “Worth a nickel to him. That’s the reason.”

  Pella thought she knew a better reason, having to do with the full pot of coffee and the empty rocking chairs.

  “Fish, fish, fish,” said Martha softly.

  “Okay,” said Bruce, exasperated. “Let’s go. We’ll do it at your house,” he said to Pella and Raymond. “You can keep them.”

  “Keep them?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Clement wasn’t there when they went in. Bruce rummaged confidently through the cabinets in the kitchen of the new homestead until he found a large glass jar. Pella and Raymond and David sat and waited, still as much strangers in this house as the other children. The fish potato sat waiting on the kitchen table, quivering slightly when someone walked nearby.

  Bruce filled the half-gallon jar two-thirds full with water from the well tap at the sink, put it on the table, and sawed a small hole in the top of the potato with his pocketknife. Pinching the rupture shut, he tilted the potato up, then opened his fingers and squeezed the contents into the water like a baker writing with a bag of frosting.

  Seven little bodies flooded out into the jar. Sardines with legs. They drifted toward the bottom, but before the first bumped down it was beginning to squirm and thrash. Within a minute they had untangled and begun swimming around inside the jar in frantic darting movements, and the amniotic gunk that floated away from their bodies dissolved and made the water gray. Bruce took it to the sink, and covering the top with his fingers poured off most of the floating sediment, then refilled the jar from the tap with fresh water.

  “There.”

  Even Martha, who had obviously seen this before and had been clamoring to have it demonstrated to others, crowded closer. And Morris forsook his distance to have a look. Everyone peered in at the swimmers. The legs of the fish groped back and down, like swimmers searching for the bottom in the deep end of a pool, and though their tiny blistered eyes were still shut they avoided collisions with one another or the walls of the jar.

  “You can feed them whatever,” said Bruce. “They don’t grow or anything, you can’t train them. They’ll die, eventually.”

  “That guy makes soup out of them?” said Raymond, incredulous. “That makes me want to retch.”

  “It’s pretty rotten soup,” agreed Bruce. “But they make pretty bad pets. Efram says they’re not real animals, just some kind of screwed-up Archbuilder food thing. All the potatoes are just stuff the Archbuilders wanted to have big supplies of around to eat.”

  “Why are they alive, then?” said Raymond, his forehead screwed up. It was an urgent question.

  “Maybe the way you can wake them up if you put them in water is just some weird mistake.”

  “The Archbuilders eat them,” suggested Pella. She understood Raymond’s objection. She too wanted the confusing and horrible fish to have a clear place in the order of things.

  “Nope,” said Bruce. “The Archbuilders ignore them. When they dig them up they throw them out in the sun to rot. That’s why Efram says that it’s a mistake.”

  “Only E. G. Wa eats it,” said Martha, wrinkling her mouth and nose. “In soup.”

  “Dad eats the soup sometimes,” said Bruce. “Ben Barth eats it too, when Efram’s not around. E. G. Wa’s always handing it out when you go in there—probably all the grown-ups eat it sometimes.”

  The assertion went unanswered.

  “Speaking of not eating,” said Morris Grant to Pella, “Martha told me you’re not eating the pills.” The words could have been neutral, but his voice rose tauntingly at the end.

  “Mind your own business,” said Bruce.

  “Martha told me.”

  “Then Martha should mind her own business.”

  “Efram isn’t going to like it,” said Morris.

  “Efram isn’t their dad.”

  Pella felt she should speak up, not leave it to Bruce, but she didn’t know what she would be defending, what it meant to the people here that her family wasn’t taking the little blue pills. It was her battle, inherited from Caitlin, but she didn’t understand it.

  David sat with his chin resting on his crossed arms, staring at the swimming figures inches away.

  Morris went to the door. “I’m telling Efram.”

  “Efram isn’t even around,” said Bruce. “You can go tell anybody you want. Tell some old Archbuilder. Get out of here.” He moved suddenly at Morris, stomping on the floor threateningly. Morris shrank through the doorway out onto the porch. “Go, already,” said Bruce.

  Morris peered through the door once more, then ran away over the porch and off into the paths of the valley.

  Raymond went out of the kitchen, into his new room. David just sat hypnotized by the things in the jar.

  “But what’s going to happen?” said Martha to Pella.

  “What?”

  “If you don’t take the pills.”

  “I don’t know,” said Pella.

  Five

  “Misplaced intensity,” said Hiding Kneel.

  Hiding Kneel was the first Archbuilder the girl had seen in the flesh—flesh and fur and shell and frond. In fact flesh was barely visible, just the black leather of its ears and eyelids. Whereas the fur was everywhere, under the papery clothes, and it was black, too, smooth and tufted, perhaps faintly musky. Shell shone beneath the fur in odd places, sleek natural armor; cheeks, wrists, what might be breastpla
tes. The Archbuilder’s fronds seemed less horns or hair or limbs than flowers, a bundle of calla lilies topping the Archbuilder’s head, twisted, drooping elegantly to the side, tucked behind the large, clownish ears. The fronds were a kind of rhyming rebuke to the smashed towers that littered the planet: Bend, they said, and you may not crumble.

  The girl and her brother had been sitting on the porch, gazing at the distant arches, when a pickup truck rumbled over the wastes, driven by the man named Ben Barth. Their father sat in the cab. Hiding Kneel rode in the back of the truck, with the supplies. When the truck stopped beside the porch, the Archbuilder clambered out in a supple, slinking motion, its limbs seeming to flow in a ripple of two-way knee joints, of double elbows.

  The girl felt the sight of the Archbuilder move through her, a physical thing. She clutched the porch where she sat, not looking at her brother. Her body slowly adjusted to the fact of the Archbuilder, its walking and speaking, scuffling in the dust, seemingly made of scraps, stage props, but alive, cocking its head curiously like an attentive dog, moving around the truck now beside the unconcerned men. She stared, perfectly still, fighting the urge to run. In one sense the Archbuilder was nothing, a joke, a tatter, too absurd to glance at twice. It seemed pathetic that they’d honored this thing with their endless talk, back in Brooklyn. That Caitlin had wasted her breath. At the same time, the Archbuilder burned a hole in the world, changed it utterly. It made the far-off towers loom up, made the glaring horizon draw closer. The place wasn’t rubble everywhere. Somewhere there were more Archbuilders. The rubble and what grew in the rubble belonged to them. The girl felt her body understand.

  The alien leaned against Ben Barth’s truck, crossing its odd, double-jointed legs, watching as Clement and Ben Barth heaved a pallet of supplies from the back of the truck onto the porch. They’d driven the pallet from Southport, the older, bigger town, where there were doctors, stores, a restaurant, where people came and went. From what Pella had heard she already wished they lived there instead of here, in the new settlement without even a name, this place on the edge of nothing.

  Ben Barth was shaped like a question mark, and he was a head shorter than Clement. But he looked like he belonged moving supplies off a truck, where Clement looked wrong.

  “I’m sorry?” said Clement to Hiding Kneel.

  “Misplaced intensity,” repeated the Archbuilder.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” said Ben Barth, with a hint of annoyance. He and Clement had one end of the pallet on the porch and were both behind it, pushing. Pella could hear the porch or the pallet splintering.

  “The delivery could have been disassembled otherwhere,” said Hiding Kneel, “and transferred in miniature. Rather than this present clunking challenge.”

  “Be less of a clunking challenge if you were helping instead of watching,” said Ben Barth. He laughed sourly, and said to Clement: “Yeah, that’s just how an Archbuilder would do it. Open a crate in the middle of the valley and walk each item back separately. Only they’d get so fascinated with the first one that they’d forget the rest and leave it out there.”

  Clement and Ben Barth got the pallet onto the porch. Clement stepped back and mopped his forehead with his sleeve. Ben Barth examined the crushed edge of the porch.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “This wood is shit.”

  “Mangled surfaces,” said Hiding Kneel.

  “Yeah, mangled goddamn surfaces,” said Ben Barth. “If you have to give every goddamn thing a name.”

  “Mangled surfaces is not a name, Ben,” said the Archbuilder innocently.

  “Neither is Hiding Kneel,” said Ben Barth. He scratched at the sides of his grizzled beard. “But seems to me I know a somebody, or something, that calls itself that. So why not Mangled Surfaces?”

  Pella was able to tear her gaze from the Archbuilder now. She sat staring past the house, to where the distant shapes met the sky, and thought: The whole planet should be named Mangled Surfaces.

  “Come inside for a drink?” said Clement. “Ben? Hiding Kneel?”

  Ben Barth nodded, and looked at the Archbuilder. “Sure,” said Ben Barth.

  “Why is your name Hiding Kneel?” said Raymond, following them into the house. Pella went too, feeling protective. It was one thing to meet Archbuilders outside, another to have them in the house. The four rough rooms had been divided now: the boys’ bedroom, Pella’s, one for Clement that was also an office, though it wasn’t clear why it should be one, and the kitchen, where they ate. And hosted Archbuilders, apparently. Clement went to the refrigerator and began pouring drinks.

  Ben Barth answered. “They’re so in love with English, they had to go rename themselves that way. Truth Renowned, Rock Friend, Lonely Candybar, Hiding Kneel. You’ll meet the whole bunch, one name stupider than the other.”

  “Stupider and more carnivalesque,” said Hiding Kneel, seemingly taking it as a compliment.

  “Yeah, life’s a carnival on the Planet of the Archbuilders,” said Ben Barth. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Marsh.” He took the glass of reconstituted juice.

  “Call me Clement. This is Pella, and Raymond.”

  “Your name evokes,” said Hiding Kneel, turning to Pella. “Pella Marsh.”

  “Evokes what?” said Pella. “I didn’t pick it myself, anyway.” She was distracted, noticing household deer scurrying around the edges of the room, finding vantage points. Little giraffe spies, everywhere.

  The day before, the household deer had seemed new and strange. Now, compared to the Archbuilder, they were familiar and ambient, like weather.

  “Kneel just likes the sound of your name,” said Ben Barth. “That’s all it means to say.”

  Clement handed Hiding Kneel a glass of juice. The Archbuilder lifted it to its dark maw and took a sip.

  “Where’s David?” said Clement.

  “He fell asleep,” said Pella.

  “Yeah, with his head on the table,” said Ray. “We made him go to his room. But I’ll wake him up—he’ll want to see this.” He jerked his head at the Archbuilder.

  “Ray, Hiding Kneel is not a this.”

  “He’ll want to meet Mr. Kneel, is what I mean.”

  “Nor a mister,” chortled Ben Barth.

  Raymond stood openmouthed, struck dumb by this second correction.

  “Go ahead,” said Clement, nodding. “Wake him up.”

  While Raymond and Clement talked, Pella watched the Archbuilder step over to the table, dip two furry fingers into the jar, pluck out one of the swimming fish, and dump it into its glass of juice. Pella looked over at Clement and Ben Barth, but they hadn’t seen. In a little panic, she looked back at Hiding Kneel. The Archbuilder blithely lifted the glass and gulped down the fish.

  Bruce had said they didn’t eat the fish. But this one did, apparently.

  So Bruce couldn’t be trusted to know the whole truth about Archbuilders. No one could, probably. If the fish in the jar weren’t important, something else would be, and she would have to learn that something else on her own. No one could be counted on to tell her. She felt the burden of this lonely knowledge fall on her, instantly.

  She hoped David hadn’t named his new pets. Or counted them.

  “Kneel, are you listening?” said Ben Barth.

  “Assuming the Marshes to be residing long and unveiling interest to me slowly, I wasn’t, no,” said Hiding Kneel. “Rather I was busily savoring nuances, details such as the name of Pella Marsh.”

  “Enough about that,” said Pella. She disliked the way her name had gotten roped together with swallowing live things as savoring nuances.

  “Well, get over here,” said Ben Barth. “Mr. Marsh isn’t just any new homesteader on your dirty old planet.”

  “In as how?” said the Archbuilder, sidling toward them.

  “In as he’s an important politician from Earth,” said Ben. “He’s here to scrape us up into some kind of society. Be the first real civilization on this planet since your great-great-grand-whatever and the
ir pals built those arches.”

  “Ah. What will you build?” said Hiding Kneel.

  “Sorry?” said Clement.

  “Whatever it is, it won’t all fall down,” said Ben Barth. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Marsh?”

  “Well, we’re not building anything right now,” said Clement. “I mean, besides a home. What I did back on Earth might be relevant at some time in the future; I’ll do that kind of work if there’s a call for it. But a planet with less than two hundred people on it doesn’t have any use for a politician. I’m just here to join the community.”

  “Listen to him, Kneel. A speech maker, whether he means to or not. Now you’re going to hear some English spoken around here, instead of that bunk of yours.”

  “I’m in a state of anticipation, anticipating statehood,” said Hiding Kneel.

  Raymond and David came out of the back, David rubbing his mouth and nose with a curled finger. “There,” said Raymond, pointing at the Archbuilder, and whispering menacingly in his brother’s ear. “Its name is Hiding Kneel. It talks crazy. And that guy is Ben Barth. He helped Clement with our stuff.”

  Pella caught sight of the household deer again, more than she’d ever seen before, all darting to take up positions around the room.

  David stopped when he saw the Archbuilder, and stared. Hiding Kneel raised its glass of juice in a salute. Pella could only think of the potato fish that had been swimming in it a moment before.

  David’s face warped in dreadful slow-motion. The actual crying, the noise and tears, always waited until his face made itself ready. Like seeing a dish slip and fall toward the floor, it was impossible to do anything but watch.

  Then it came, a roar of weeping. “The kid’s scared,” said Ben Barth delightedly. “He thinks he’s having a nightmare, Kneel!”

  “David, it’s all right,” said Clement. “Hiding Kneel is our friend.” To the Archbuilder he said, “I’m sorry.”

  Raymond punched his brother lightly on the shoulder. “C’mon, David. Be brave like an arm.”

  David just stood and stared and cried. The situation freed Pella to study Hiding Kneel’s face again, to stare down her own fear. To marvel at the furred, toothless hole of a mouth, at the burnished cheeks, the tangle of fleshy tendrils.