The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of His Finest Short Fiction

by Gene Wolfe

  She said, “He’s not home yet. If you want to come in we’ve got a fire.”

  Zozz said, “I’ll wait for him—,” and six-legging politely across the threshold sat down over the stone Bananas had rolled in for him when they had been new friends. Maria and Mark, playing some sort of game with bottle caps on squares scratched on the floor dirt, said, “Hi, Mr. Zozz—,” and Zozz said, “Hi—,” in return. Bananas’ old mother, whom Zozz had brought here from the pads in his rusty powerwagon the day before, looked at him from piercing eyes, then fled into the other room. He could hear Teresa relax, hear her wheezing outpuffed breath.

  He said, “I think she thinks I bumped her on purpose yesterday.”

  “She’s not used to you yet.”

  “I know,” Zozz said.

  “I told her, Mother Bananas, it’s their world and they’re not used to you.”

  “Sure,” Zozz said. A gust of wind outside brought the cold in to replace the odor of the gog-hutch on the other side of the left wall.

  “I tell you it’s hell to have your husband’s mother with you in a place as small as this.”

  “Sure,” Zozz said again.

  Maria announced, “Daddy’s home!”

  The door rattled open and Bananas came in, looking tired and cheerful. Bananas worked in the slaughtering market and though his cheeks were blue with cold, his two trousers cuffs were red with blood. He kissed Teresa and tousled the hair of both children and said, “Hi, Zozzy.”

  Zozz said, “Hi. How does it roll?” And moved over so Bananas could warm his back.

  Someone groaned and Bananas asked a little anxiously, “What’s that?”

  Teresa said, “Next door.”

  “Huh?”

  “Next door. Some woman.”

  “Oh. I thought it might be Mom.”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In back.”

  Bananas frowned. “There’s no fire in there. She’ll freeze to death.”

  “I didn’t tell her to go back there. She can wrap a blanket around herself.”

  Zozz said, “It’s me—I bother her.” He got up.

  Bananas said, “Sit down.”

  “I can go. I just came to say hi.”

  “Sit down.” Bananas turned to his wife. “Honey, you shouldn’t leave her in there alone. See if you can’t get her to come out here, okay?”

  “Johnny—”

  “Teresa, dammit!”

  “Okay, Johnny.”

  B

  ananas took off his coat and sat down in front of the fire. Maria and Mark had gone back to their game.

  In a voice too low to attract their attention Bananas said, “Nice thing, huh?”

  Zozz said, “I think your mother makes her nervous.”

  Bananas said, “Sure.”

  Zozz said, “This isn’t an easy world.”

  “For us two-leggers? No, it ain’t, but you don’t see me moving.”

  Zozz said, “That’s good. I mean, here you’ve got a job anyway. There’s work.”

  “That’s right.”

  Unexpectedly Maria said, “We get enough to eat here, and me and Mark can find wood for the fire. Where we used to be there wasn’t anything to eat.”

  Bananas asked, “You remember, honey?” “A little.”

  Zozz said, “People are poor here.”

  Bananas was taking off his shoes, scraping the street mud from them, and tossing it into the fire. He said, “If you mean us, us people are poor everyplace.” He jerked his head in the direction of the back room. “You ought to hear her tell about our world.”

  “Your mother?”

  Bananas nodded. “You should hear what she has to say.”

  Maria said, “Daddy, how did Grandmother get here?”

  “Same way we did.”

  Mark said, “You mean she signed a thing?”

  “A labor contract? No, she’s too old. She bought a ticket—you know, like you would buy something in a store.”

  Maria said, “Why did she come, Daddy?”

  “Shut up and play. Don’t bother us.”

  Zozz said, “How did things go at work?”

  “So-so.” Bananas looked toward the back room again. “She came into some money, but that’s her business. I never ask her anything about it.”

  “Sure.”

  “She says she spent every dollar to get here—you know, they haven’t used dollars even on Earth for fifty, sixty years, but she still says it. How do you like that?” He laughed and Zozz laughed too. “I asked how she was going to get back and she said she’s not going back. She’s going to die right here with us. What could I possibly answer?”

  “I don’t know.” Zozz waited for Bananas to say something and, when he did not, added: “I mean, she is your mother, after all.”

  “Yeah.”

  Through the thin wall they heard the sick woman groan again and someone moving about. Zozz said, “I guess it’s been a long time since you saw her last.”

  “Yeah—twenty-two years Newtonian. Listen, Zozzy—”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You know something? I wish I had never set eyes on her again.”

  Zozz said nothing, rubbing his hands, hands, hands.

  “That sounds lousy, I guess.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “She could have lived good for the rest of her life on what that ticket cost her.” Bananas was silent for a moment. “She used to be a big, fat woman when I was a kid, you know? A great big woman with a loud voice. Look at her now—dried up and bent over. It’s like she wasn’t my mother at all. You know the only thing that’s the same about her? That black dress. That’s the only thing I recognize, the only thing that hasn’t changed. She could be a stranger—she tells stories about me I don’t remember at all.”

  Maria said, “She told us a story today.”

  Mark added: “Before you came home. About this witch—”

  Maria said, “—that brings the presents to children. Her name is La Befana, the Christmas Witch.”

  Zozz drew his lips back from his double canines and jiggled his head. “I like stories.”

  “She says it’s almost Christmas and on Christmas three wise men went looking for the Baby and they stopped at the old witch’s door and they asked which way it was and she told them and they said, ‘Come with us.’ ”

  The door to the other room opened, and Teresa and Bananas’ mother came out. Bananas’ mother was holding a teakettle. She edged around Zozz to put it on the hook and swing it out over the fire.

  “And she was sweeping and she wouldn’t come,” Maria resumed.

  Mark added: “Said she’d come when she had finished. She was a real old, real ugly woman. Watch; I’ll show you how she walked.” He jumped up and began to hobble around the room.

  Bananas looked at his wife and indicated the wall. “What’s this?”

  “Some woman. I told you.”

  “In there?”

  “The charity place—they said she could stay there. She couldn’t stay in the house because all the rooms are full of men.”

  Maria was saying, “So when she was all done, she went looking for him, only she couldn’t find him and she never did.”

  “She’s sick?”

  “She’s knocked up, Johnny, that’s all. Don’t worry about her. She’s got some guy in there with her.”

  Mark asked, “Do you know about the Baby Jesus, Uncle Zozz?”

  Zozz groped for words.

  “Johnny, my son—”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Your friend—Do they have the faith here, Johnny?”

  Apropos of nothing Teresa said, “They’re Jews, next door.”

  Zozz told Mark, “You see, the Baby Jesus has never come to my world.”

  Maria said, “And so she goes all over every place looking for him with her presents and she leaves some with every kid she finds, but she says it’s not because she thinks they might be him
like some people think but just a substitute. She can’t never die. She has to do it forever, doesn’t she, Grandma?”

  The bent old woman said, “Not forever, dearest. Only until tomorrow night.”

  AFTERWORD

  This story is based on playful theological speculation. If Jesus came into the world to save it, what about other worlds? Wouldn’t he have to come into those worlds too, if he wanted to save them? (I am misinterpreting world here in order to get a story.) Fine, and if the Savior is to be descended from King David . . .

  It’s the sort of thing proposed in religion classes to get the students thinking. I’ve included it here, knowing that it will offend some people, for the same reason, and because I like it a lot. Besides, the legend of La Befana is quite real and ought to be better known.

  FORLESEN

  W

  hen Emanuel Forlesen awoke, his wife was already up preparing breakfast. Forlesen remembered nothing, knew nothing but his name, for an instant did not remember his wife, or that she was his wife, or that she was a human being, or what human beings were supposed to look like.

  At the time he woke he knew only his own name; the rest came later and is therefore suspect, colored by rationalization and the expectations of the woman herself and the other people. He moaned, and his wife said, “Oh, you’re awake. Better read the orientation.”

  He said, “What orientation?”

  “You don’t remember where you work, do you? Or what you’re supposed to do.”

  He said, “I don’t remember a damn thing.”

  “Well, read the orientation.”

  He pushed aside the gingham spread and got out of bed, looking at himself, noticing first the oddly deformed hands at the ends of his legs, then remembering the name for them: shoes. He was naked, and his wife turned her back to him politely while she prepared food. “Where the hell am I?” he asked.

  “In our house.” She gave him the address. “In our bedroom.”

  “We cook in the bedroom?”

  “We sure do,” his wife said. “There isn’t any kitchen. There’s a parlor, the children’s bedroom, this room, and a bath. I’ve got an electric fry pan, a tabletop electric oven, and a coffeepot here; we’ll be all right.”

  The confidence in her voice heartened him. He said, “I suppose this used to be a one-bedroom house and we made the kitchen into a place for the kids.”

  “Maybe it’s an old house and they made the kitchen into the bathroom when they got inside plumbing.”

  He was dressing himself, having seen that she wore clothing, and that there was clothing too large for her piled on a chair near the bed. He said, “Don’t you know?”

  “It wasn’t in the orientation.”

  At first he did not understand what she had said. He repeated, “Don’t you know?”

  “I told you, it wasn’t in there. There’s just a diagram of the house, and there’s this room, the children’s room, the parlor, and the bath. It said that door there”—she gestured with the spatula—“was the bath, and that’s right, because I went in there to get the water for the coffee. I stay here and look after things and you go out and work; that’s what it said. There was some stuff about what you do, but I skipped that and read about what I do.”

  “You didn’t know anything when you woke up either,” he said.

  “Just my name.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Edna Forlesen. I’m your wife—that’s what it said.”

  He walked around the small table on which she had arranged the cooking appliances, wanting to look at her. “You’re sort of pretty,” he said.

  “You are sort of handsome,” his wife said. “Anyway, you look tough and strong.” This made him walk over to the mirror on the dresser and try to look at himself. He did not know what he looked like, but the man in the mirror was not he. The image was older, fatter, meaner, more cunning, and stupider than he knew himself to be, and he raised his hands (the man in the mirror did likewise) to touch his features; they were what they should have been and he turned away. “That mirror’s no good,” he said.

  “Can’t you see yourself? That means you’re a vampire.”

  He laughed, and decided that that was the way he always laughed when his wife’s jokes weren’t funny. She said, “Want some coffee?” and he sat down.

  She put a cup in front of him, and a pile of books. “This is the orientation,” she said. “You better read it—you don’t have much time.”

  On top of the pile was a mimeographed sheet, and he picked that up first. It said:

  Welcome to the planet Planet.

  You have awakened completely ignorant of everything. Do not be disturbed by this. It is NORMAL. Under no circumstances ever allow yourself to become excited, confused, angry, or FEARFUL. While you possess these capacities, they are to be regarded as incapacities.

  Anything you may have remembered upon awakening is false. The orientation books provided you contain information of inestimable value. Master it as soon as possible, BUT DO NOT BE LATE FOR WORK. If there are no orientation books where you are, go to the house on your right (from the street). DO NOT GO TO THE HOUSE ON YOUR LEFT.

  If you cannot find any books, live like everyone else.

  The white paper under this paper is your JOB ASSIGNMENT. The yellow paper is your TABLE OF COMMONLY USED WAITS AND MEASURES. Read these first; they are more important than the books.

  “Eat your egg,” his wife said. He tasted the egg. It was good but slightly oily, as though a drop of motor oil had found its way into the grease in which she had fried it. His Job Assignment read.

  Forlosen, E.

  (To his wife he said, “They got our name wrong.”)

  Forlosen, E. You work at Model Pattern Products, 19000370 Plant Prkwy, Highland Industrial Park. Your duties are supervisory and managerial. When you arrive punch in on the S&M clock (beige), NOT the Labor clock (brown). The union is particular about this. Go to the Reconstruction and Advanced Research section. To arrive on time leave before 060.30.00.

  The yellow paper was illegible save for the title and first line: There are 240 ours in each day.

  “What time is it?” he asked his wife.

  She glanced at her wrist. “Oh six oh ours. Didn’t they give you a watch?”

  He looked at his own wrist—it was bare, of course. For a few moments Edna helped him search for one, but it seemed that none had been provided and in the end he took hers, she saying that he would need it more than she. It was big for a woman’s watch, he thought, but very small for a man’s. “Try it,” she said, and he obediently studied the tiny screen. The words THE TIME IS were cast in the metal at its top; below them, glimmering and changing even as he looked: 060.07.43. He took a sip of coffee and found the oily taste was there too.

  The book at the top of the pile was a booklet really, about seven inches by four with the pages stapled in the middle. The title, printed in black on a blue cover of slightly heavier paper, was How to Drive.

  Remember that your car is a gift. Although it belongs to you and you are absolutely responsible for its acts (whether driven by yourself or others, or not driven) and maintenance (pg. 15), do not:

  Deface its surface.

  Interfere with the operation of its engine, or with the operation of any other part.

  Alter it in such a way as to increase or diminish the noise of operation.

  Drive it at speeds in excess of 40 miles/our.

  Pick up hitchhikers.

  Deposit a hitchhiker at any point other than a Highway Patrol Station.

  Operate it while you are in an unfit condition. (To be determined by a duly constituted medical board.)

  Fail to halt and render medical assistance to persons injured by you, your car, or others (provided third parties are not already providing such assistance).

  Stop at any time or for any reason at any point not designated as a stopping position.

  Wave or shout at other drivers.

  Invade th
e privacy of other drivers—as by noticing or pretending to notice them or the occupants of their vehicles.

  Fail to return it on demand.

  Drive it to improper destinations.

  He turned the page. The new page was a diagram of the control panel of an automobile, and he noted the positions of Windshield, Steering Wheel, Accelerator, Brake, Reversing Switch, Communicator, Beverage Dispenser, Urinal, Defecator, and Map Compartment. He asked Edna if they had a car, and she said she thought they did, and that it would be outside.

  “You know,” he said, “I’ve just noticed that this place has windows.”

  Edna said, “You’re always jumping up from the table. Finish your breakfast.”

  Ignoring her, he parted the curtains. She said, “Two walls have windows and two don’t. I haven’t looked out of them.” Outside he saw sunshine on concrete; a small, yellow, somehow hunched-looking automobile; and a house.

  “Yeah, we’ve got a car,” he said. “It’s parked right under the window.”

  “Well, I wish you’d finish breakfast and get to work.”

  “I want to look out of the other window.”

  If the first window had been, as it appeared to be, at one side of the house, then the other should be at either the back or the front. He opened the curtains and saw a narrow, asthmatic brick courtyard. On the bricks stood three dead plants in terra-cotta jars; the opposite side of the court, no more than fifteen feet off, was the wall of another house. There were two widely spaced windows in this wall, each closed with curtains, and as he watched (though his face was only at the window for an instant) a man pushed aside the curtains at the nearer window and looked at him. Forlesen stepped back and said to Edna, “I saw a man; he looked afraid. A bald man with a wide, fat face, and a gold tooth in front, and a mole over one eyebrow.” He went to the mirror again and studied himself.

  “You don’t look like that,” his wife said.