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

by Gene Wolfe

  “Similar, perhaps.”

  “But the thing was . . . it was . . . was—”

  She gulped and gasped so loudly that even I realized she was about to cry. I hugged her, perhaps the most percipient thing I have ever done.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you that, and I guess I’d better not or I’ll bawl. I just wanted to say you’re Larry, because my husband never minded him, not really, or anyhow not very much, and he’d kid around with him in those days, and sometimes Larry’d help him with his homework too.”

  “You’re right,” I told her, “I am Larry, and your name is Martha Williamson, although she was never half so beautiful as you are and I had nearly forgotten her.”

  “Have you cooled down enough?”

  “No. Another five minutes, possibly.”

  “I hope you don’t get the aches. Do you really think I’m beautiful?”

  I said I did, and that I could not tell her properly how lovely she was, because she would be sure I lied.

  “My face is too square.”

  “Absolutely not! Besides, you mean rectangular, surely. It’s not too rectangular either. Any face less rectangular than yours is too square or too round.”

  “See? You are Larry.”

  “I know.”

  “This is what I was going to tell, if I hadn’t gotten all weepy. Let me do it, and after that we’ll . . . You know. Get together.”

  I nodded, and she must have sensed my nod in a movement of my shoulder, or perhaps a slight motion of the mattress. She was silent for what seemed to me half a minute, if not longer. “Kiss me; then I’ll tell it.”

  I did.

  “You remember what you said in the kitchen?”

  “I said far too many things in the kitchen, I’m afraid. I tend to talk too much even when I’m sober. I’m sure I couldn’t recall them all.”

  “It was before that awful man came in and took my room. I said the people going to Hell were dead, and you said some were and some weren’t. That didn’t make any sense to me till later when I thought about my husband. He was alive, but it was like something was getting a tighter hold on him all the time. Like Hell was reaching right out and grabbing him. He went on so about me looking at other men that I started really doing it. I’d see who was there, trying to figure out which one he’d say when we got home. Then he started bringing up ones that hadn’t been there, people from school—this was after we were out of school and married, and I hadn’t seen a lot of them in years.”

  I said, “I understand.”

  “He’d been on the football team and the softball team and run track and all that, and mostly it was those boys he’d talk about, but one time it was the shop teacher. I never even took shop.”

  I nodded again, I think.

  “But never Larry, so Larry got to be special to me. Most of those boys, well, maybe they looked, but I never looked at them. But I’d really dated Larry, and he’d had his arms around me and even kissed me a couple times, and I danced with him. I could remember the cologne he used to wear, and that checkered wool blazer he had. After graduation most of the boys from our school got jobs with the coal company or in the tractor plant, but Larry won a scholarship to some big school, and after that I never saw him. It was like he’d gone there and died.”

  “It’s better now,” I said, and I took her hand, just as she had taken mine going upstairs.

  She misunderstood, which may have been fortunate. “It is. It really is. Having you here like this makes it better.” She used my name, but I am determined not to reveal it.

  “Then after we’d been married about four years, I went in the drugstore, and Larry was there waiting for a prescription for his mother. We said hi, and shook hands, and talked about old times and how it was with us, and I got the stuff I’d come for and started to leave. When I got to the door, I thought Larry wouldn’t be looking anymore, so I stopped and looked at him.

  “He was still looking at me.” She gulped. “You’re smart. I bet you guessed, didn’t you?”

  “I would have been,” I said. I doubt that she heard me.

  “I’ll never, ever, forget that look. He wanted me so bad, just so bad it was tearing him up. My husband starved a dog to death once. His name was Ranger, and he was a bluetick hound. They said he was a good coon dog, and I guess he was. My husband had helped this man with some work, so he gave him Ranger. But my husband used to pull on Ranger’s ears till he’d yelp, and finally Ranger bit his hand. He just locked Ranger up after that and wouldn’t feed him anymore. He’d go out in the yard and Ranger’d be in that cage hoping for him to feed him and knowing he wouldn’t, and that was the way Larry looked at me in the drugstore. It brought it all back, about the dog two years before, and Larry, and lots of other things. But the thing was . . . thing was—”

  I stroked her hand.

  “He looked at me like that, and I saw it, and when I did I knew I was looking at him that very same way. That was when I decided, except that I thought I’d save up money, and write to Larry when I had enough, and see if he’d help me. Are you all right now?”

  “No,” I said, because at that moment I could have cut my own throat or thrown myself through the window.

  “He never answered my letters, though. I talked to his mother, and he’s married with two children. I like you better anyway.”

  Her fingers had resumed explorations. I said, “Now, if you’re ready.”

  And we did. I felt heavy and clumsy, and it was over far too quickly, yet if I were given what no man actually is, the opportunity to experience a bit of his life a second time, I think I might well choose those moments.

  “Did you like that?”

  “Yes, very much indeed. Thank you.”

  “You’re pretty old for another one, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Wait a few minutes and we’ll see.”

  “We could try some other way. I like you better than Larry. Have I said that?”

  I said she had not, and that she had made me wonderfully happy by saying it.

  “He’s married, but I never wrote him. I won’t lie to you much more.”

  “In that case, may I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Or two? Perhaps three?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You indicated that you had gone to a school, a boarding school apparently, where you were treated badly. Was it near here?”

  “I don’t remember about that—I don’t think I said it.”

  “We were talking about the inscription Dante reported. I believe it ended: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate! ‘Leave all hope, you that enter!’ ”

  “I said I wouldn’t lie. It’s not very far, but I can’t give you the name of a town you’d know, or anything like that.”

  “My second—”

  “Don’t ask anything else about the school. I won’t tell you.”

  “All right, I won’t. Someone gave your husband a hunting dog. Did your husband hunt deer? Or quail, perhaps?”

  “Sometimes. I think you’re right. He’d rather have had a bird dog, but the man he helped didn’t raise them.”

  I kissed her. “You’re in danger, and I think that you must know how much. I’ll help you all I can. I realize how very trite this will sound, but I would give my life to save you from going back to that school, if need be.”

  “Kiss me again.” There was a new note in her voice, I thought, and it seemed to me that it was hope.

  When we parted, she asked, “Are you going to drive me to St. Louis in the morning?”

  “I’d gladly take you farther. To New York or Boston or even to San Francisco. It means ‘Saint Francis,’ you know.”

  “You think you could again?”

  At her touch, I knew the answer was yes; so did she.

  Afterward she asked, “What was your last question?” and I told her I had no last question.

  “You said one question; then it was two, then three. So what was the last one?” />
  “You needn’t answer.”

  “All right, I won’t. What was it?”

  “I was going to ask you in what year you and your husband graduated from high school.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  I sighed. “A hundred wise men have said in various ways that love transcends the power of death, and millions of fools have supposed that they meant nothing by it. At this late hour in my life I have learned what they meant. They meant that love transcends death. They are correct.”

  “Did you think that salesman was really a cop? I think you did. I did too, almost.”

  “No or yes, depending upon what you mean by cop. But we’ve already talked too much about these things.”

  “Would you rather I’d do this?”

  “Yes,” I said, and meant it with every fiber of my being. “I would a thousand times rather have you do that.”

  A

  fter some gentle teasing about my age and inadequacies (the sort of thing that women always do, in my experience, as anticipatory vengeance for the contempt with which they expect to be treated when the sexual act is complete), we slept. In the morning, Eira wore her wedding band to breakfast, where I introduced her to the old woman as my wife, to the old man’s obvious relief. The demon sat opposite me at the table, wolfing down scrambled eggs, biscuits, and homemade sausage he did not require, and from time to time winking at me in an offensive manner that I did my best to tolerate.

  Outside I spoke to him in private while Eira was upstairs searching our room for the hairbrush that I had been careful to leave behind.

  “If you are here to reclaim her,” I told him, “I am your debtor. Thank you for waiting until morning.”

  He grinned like the trap he was. “Have a nice night?”

  “Very.”

  “Swell. You folks think we don’t want you to have any fun. That’s not the way it is at all.” He strove to stifle his native malignancy as he said this, with the result that it showed so clearly I found it difficult not to cringe. “I do you a favor, maybe you’ll do me one sometime. Right?”

  “Perhaps,” I hedged.

  He laughed. I have heard many actors try to reproduce the hollowness and cruelty of that laugh, but not one has come close. “Isn’t that what keeps you coming back here? Wanting favors? You know we don’t give anything away.”

  “I hope to learn, and to make myself a better man.”

  “Touching. You and Dr. Frankenstein.”

  I forced myself to smile. “I owed you thanks, as I said, and I do thank you. Now I’ll impose upon your good nature, if I may. Two weeks. You spoke of favors, of the possibility of accommodation. I would be greatly in your debt. I am already, as I acknowledge.”

  Grinning, he shook his head.

  “One week, then. Today is Thursday. Let us have—let me have her until next Thursday.”

  “Afraid not, pal.”

  “Three days, then. I recognize that she belongs to you, but you’ll have her for eternity, and she can’t be an important prisoner.”

  “Inmate. Inmate sounds better.” The demon laid his hand upon my shoulder, and I was horribly conscious of its weight and bone-crushing strength. “You think I let you jump her last night because I’m such a nice guy? You really believe that?”

  “I was hoping that was the case, yes.”

  “Bright. Real bright. Just because I got here a little after she did, you think I was trailing her like that flea-bitten dog and I followed her here.” He sniffed, and it was precisely the sniff of a hound on the scent. The hand that held my shoulder drew me to him until I stood with the almost insuperable weight of his entire arm on my shoulders. “Listen here. I don’t have to track anybody. Wherever they are, I am. See?”

  “I understand.”

  “If I’d been after her, I’d of had her away from you as soon as I saw her. Only she’s not why I came here, she’s not why I’m leaving, and if I was to grab her all it would do is get me in the soup with the big boys downstairs. I don’t want you either.”

  “I’m gratified to hear it.”

  “Swell. If I was to give you a promise, my solemn word of dishonor, you wouldn’t think that was worth shit-paper, would you.”

  “To the contrary.” Although I was lying in his teeth, I persevered. “I know an angel’s word is sacred, to him at least.”

  “Okay then. I don’t want her. You wanted a couple of weeks, and I said no deal because I’m letting you have her forever, and vice versa. You don’t know what forever means, whatever you think. But I do.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, and I meant it from the bottom of my soul. “Thank you very, very much.”

  The demon grinned and took his arm from my shoulders. “I wouldn’t mess around with you or her or a single thing the two of you are going to do together, see? Word of dishonor. The boys downstairs would skin me, because you’re her assignment. So be happy.” He slapped me on the back so hard that he nearly knocked me down.

  Still grinning, he walked around the corner of someone’s camper van. I followed as quickly as I could, but he had disappeared.

  L

  ittle remains to tell. I drove Eira to St. Louis, as I had promised, and she left me with a quick kiss in the parking area of the Gateway Arch; we had stopped at a McDonald’s for lunch on the way, and I had scribbled my address and telephone number on a paper napkin there and watched her tuck it into a pocket of the denim shirt she wore. Since then I have had a week in which to consider my adventure, as I said on the first page of this account.

  In the beginning (especially Friday night), I hoped for a telephone call or a midnight summons from my doorbell. Neither came.

  On Monday I went to the library, where I perused the back issues of newspapers; and this evening, thanks to a nephew at an advertising agency, I researched the matter further, viewing twenty-five-and thirty-year-old tapes of news broadcasts. The woman’s name was not Eira, a name that means “snow,” and the name of the husband she had slain with his own shotgun was not Tom, Dick, Harry, or even Mortimer, but I was sure I had found her. (Fairly sure, at least.) She took her own life in jail, awaiting trial.

  She has been in Hell. That, I feel, is the single solid fact, the one thing on which I can rely. But did she escape? Or was she vomited forth?

  All this has been brought to a head by the card I received today in the mail. It was posted on Monday from St. Louis, and has taken a disgraceful four days to make a journey that the most cautious driver can complete in a few hours. On its front, a tall, beautiful, and astonishingly busty woman is crowding a fearful little man. The caption reads: I want to impress one thing on you.

  Inside the card: My body.

  Beneath that is the scrawled name Eira, and a telephone number. Should I call her? Dare I?

  Bear in mind (as I must constantly remind myself to) that nothing the demon said can be trusted. Neither can anything that she herself said. She would have had me take her for a living woman, if she could.

  Has the demon devised an excruciating torment for us both?

  Or for me alone?

  The telephone is at my elbow as I write. Her card is on my desk. If I dial the number, will I be blundering into the snare, or will I have torn the snare to pieces?

  Should I call her?

  A final possibility remains, although I find it almost impossible to write of it.

  What if I am mad?

  What if Foulweather the salesman merely played up to what he assumed was an elaborate joke? What if my last conversation with him (that is to say, with the demon) was a delusion? What if Eira is in fact the living woman that almost every man in the world would take her for, save I?

  She cannot have much money and may well be staying for a few days with some chance acquaintance.

  Am I insane? Deluded?

  Tomorrow she may be gone. One dash three one four—

  Should I call?

  Perhaps I may be a man of courage after all, a man who has never truly understood hi
s own character.

  Will I call her? Do I dare?

  AFTERWORD

  Because its demons are evil, this story is a favorite of Kathe Koja’s.

  I know how she feels. The first writer who presented Satan as a cheerful companion with supernatural powers was giving us an interesting novelty; that novelty has become the norm. Speaking not for Kathe but for myself alone, I have had it with little giants, chatty dragons, bumbling invaders, and their ilk. If you enjoyed this story, I hope you’ll look into The Knight, a book that tries to return giants, dragons, and invaders to their roots—a book in which the knights who wage war on all three are hard-bitten fighting men.

  PETTING ZOO

  R

  oderick looked up at the sky. It was indeed blue, but almost cloudless. The air was hot and smelled of dust.

  “Here, children. . . .” The teaching cyborg was pointedly not addressing him. “Tyrannosaurus rex. Rex was created by an inadequately socialized boy who employed six Build-a-Critter kits . . .”

  Sixteen.

  “. . . which he duped on his father’s Copystuff. With that quantity of Gro-Qik . . .”

  It had taken a day over two weeks, two truckloads of pigs that he had charged to Mother’s account, and various other things that had become vague. For the last week, he had let Rex go out at night to see what he could find, and people would—people were bound to—notice the missing cattle soon. Had probably noticed them already.

  Rex had looked out through the barn window while he was mooring his air-bike and said, “I’m tired of hiding all day.”

  And he himself had said . . .

  “Let’s go for a ride.” One of the little girls had raised her hand.

  From the other side of the token barrier that confined him, Rex himself spoke for the first time, saying, “You will, kid. She’s not quite through yet.” His voice was a sort of growling tenor now, clearly forced upward as high as he could make it so as to seem less threatening. Roderick pushed on his suit’s AC and shivered a little.