Wandering Stars

by Jack Dann (ed)

  “You talk too much,” Carmody repeated and lit a cigarette.

  “That is your fourth cigarette in five minutes.”

  Carmody opened his mouth to bellow an insult. Then he changed his mind and walked away.

  “What’s this?” Carmody asked.

  “It’s a candy machine,” the city told him.

  “It doesn’t look like one.”

  “Still, it is one. This design is a modification of a design by Saarionmen for a silo. I have miniaturized it, of course, and—”

  “It still doesn’t look like a candy machine. How do you work it?”

  “It’s very simple. Push the red button. Now wait. Press down one of those levers on Row A; now press the green button. There!”

  A Baby Ruth bar slid into Carmody’s hand.

  “Huh,” Carmody said. He stripped off the paper and bit into the bar. “Is this a real Baby Ruth bar or a copy of one?” he asked.

  “It’s a real one. I had to subcontract the candy concession because of the pressure of work.”

  “Huh,” Carmody said, letting the candy wrapper slip from his fingers.

  “That,” the city said, “is an example of the kind of thoughtlessness I always encounter.”

  “It’s just a piece of paper,” Carmody said, turning and looking at the candy wrapper lying on the spotless street.

  “Of course it’s just a piece of paper,” the city said. “But multiply it by a hundred thousand inhabitants and what do you have?”

  “A hundred thousand Baby Ruth wrappers,” Carmody answered at once.

  “I don’t consider that funny,” the city said. “You wouldn’t want to live in the midst of all that paper, I can assure you. You’d be the first to complain if this street were strewn with garbage. But do you do your share? Do you even clean up after yourself? Of course not! You leave it to me, even though I have to run all of the other functions of the city, night and day, without even Sundays off.”

  Carmody bent down to pick up the candy wrapper. But just before his fingers could close on it, a pincer arm shot out of the nearest sewer, snatched the paper away and vanished from sight.

  “It’s all right,” the city said. “I’m used to cleaning up after people. I do it all the time.”

  “Yuh,” said Carmody.

  “Nor do I expect any gratitude.”

  “I’m grateful, I’m grateful!” Carmody said.

  “No, you’re not,” Bellwether said.

  “So okay maybe I’m not. What do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t want you to say anything,” the city said. “Let us consider the incident closed.”

  “Had enough?” the city said, after dinner.

  “Plenty,” Carmody said.

  “You didn’t eat much.”

  “I ate all I wanted. It was very good.”

  “If it was so good, why didn’t you eat more?”

  “Because I couldn’t hold any more.”

  “If you hadn’t spoiled your appetite with that candy bar …”

  “Goddamn it, the candy bar didn’t spoil my appetite! I just—”

  “You’re lighting a cigarette,” the city said.

  “Yeah,” Carmody said.

  “Couldn’t you wait a little longer?”

  “Now look,” Carmody said. “Just what in hell do you—”

  “But we have something more important to talk about,” the city said quickly. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do for a living?”

  “I haven’t really had much time to think about it.”

  “Well, I have been thinking about it. It would be nice if you became a doctor.”

  “Me? I’d have to take special college courses, then get into medical school, and so forth.”

  “I can arrange all that,” the city said.

  “Not interested.”

  “Well … What about law?”

  “Never.”

  “Engineering is an excellent line.”

  “Not for me.”

  “What about accounting?”

  “Not on your life.”

  “What do you want to be?”

  “A jet pilot,” Carmody said impulsively.

  “Oh, come now!”

  “I’m quite serious.”

  “I don’t even have an air field here.”

  “Then I’ll pilot somewhere else.”

  “You’re only saying that to spite me!”

  “Not at all,” Carmody said. “I want to be a pilot, I really do. I’ve always wanted to be a pilot! Honest I have!”

  There was a long silence. Then the city said, “The choice is entirely up to you.” This was said in a voice like death.

  “Where are you going now?”

  “Out for a walk,” Carmody said.

  “At nine-thirty in the evening?”

  ”Sure. Why not?”

  “I thought you were tired.”

  “That was quite some time ago.”

  “I see. And I also thought that you could sit here and we could have a nice chat.”

  “How about if we talk after I get back?” Carmody asked.

  “No, it doesn’t matter,” the city said.

  “The walk doesn’t matter,” Carmody said, sitting down. “Come on, we’ll talk.”

  “I no longer care to talk,” the city said. “Please go for your walk.”

  V

  “Well, good night,” Carmody said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, ‘good night.’ ”

  “You’re going to sleep?”

  “Sure. It’s late, I’m tired.”

  “You’re going to sleep now?”

  “Well, why not?”

  “No reason at all,” the city said, “except that you have forgotten to wash.”

  “Oh. … I guess I did forget: I’ll wash in the morning.”

  “How long is it since you’ve had a bath?”

  “Too long. I’ll take one in the morning.”

  “Wouldn’t you feel better if you took one right now?”

  “No.”

  “Even if I drew the bath for you?”

  “No! Goddamn it, no! I’m going to sleep!”

  “Do exactly as you please,” the city said. “Don’t wash, don’t study, don’t eat a balanced diet. But also, don’t blame me.”

  “Blame you? For what?”

  “For anything,” the city said.

  “Yes. But what did you have in mind, specifically?”

  “It isn’t important.”

  “Then why did you bring it up in the first place?”

  “I was only thinking of you,” the city said.

  “I realize that.”

  “You must know that it can’t benefit me if you wash or not.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “When one cares,” the city went on, “when one feels one’s responsibilities, it is not nice to hear oneself sworn at.”

  “I didn’t swear at you.”

  “Not this time. But earlier today you did.”

  “Well … I was nervous.”

  “That’s because of the smoking.”

  “Don’t start that again!”

  “I won’t,” the city said. “Smoke like a furnace. What does it matter to me?”

  “Damned right,” Carmody said, lighting a cigarette.

  “But my failure,” the city said.

  “No, no,” Carmody said. “Don’t say it, please don’t!”

  “Forget I said it,” the city said.

  “All right.”

  “Sometimes I get overzealous.”

  “Sure.”

  “And it’s especially difficult because I’m right. I am right, you know.”

  “I know,” Carmody said. “You’re right, you’re right, you’re always right. Right right right right right—”

  “Don’t overexcite yourself bedtime,” the city said. “Would you care for a glass of milk?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sur
e?”

  Carmody put his hands over his eyes. He felt very strange. He also felt extremely guilty, fragile, dirty, unhealthy and sloppy. He felt generally and irrevocably bad, and it would always be this way unless he changed, adjusted, adapted....

  But instead of attempting anything of the sort he rose to his feet, squared his shoulders, and marched away past the Roman piazza and the Venetian bridge.

  “Where are you going?” the city asked. “What’s the matter?”

  Silent, tight-lipped, Carmody continued past the children’s park and the American Express building.

  “What did I do wrong?” the city cried. “What, just tell me what?”

  Carmody made no reply but strode past the Rochambeau Cafe and the Portuguese synagogue, coming at last to the pleasant green plain that surrounded Bellwether.

  “Ingrate!” the city screamed after him. “You’re just like all the others. All of you humans are disagreeable animals, and you’re never really satisfied with anything.”

  Carmody got into his car and started the engine.

  “But of course,” the city said, in a more thoughtful voice, “you’re never really dissatisfied with anything either. The moral, I suppose, is that a city must learn patience.”

  Carmody turned the car onto King’s Highbridge Gate Road and started east, toward New York.

  “Have a nice trip!” Bellwether called after him. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be waiting up for you.”

  Carmody stepped down hard on the accelerator. He really wished he hadn’t heard that last remark.

  ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER

  Jachid and Jechidah

  Hell’s bells tinkle in urban glades where love is an infirmity leading to death, where green fields and blue skies are the manifold blessings of corruption and the vulgarity of death is nothing but a short episode in the eternity of life. Isaac Bashevis Singer, a recognized master of Jewish fiction, pours black paint over modern man’s favorite philosophical toys with a cheerful vengeance. With the blind, mocking eyes of an omniscient skeptic he examines acceptable reality, throws stones at it, and pushes past its cardboard parameters. The result is a happy exercise in Jewish iconoclasm.

  J.D

  *

  IN A PRISON where souls bound for Sheol—Earth they call it there—await destruction, there hovered the female soul Jechidah. Souls forget their origin. Purah, the Angel of Forgetfulness, he who dissipates God’s light and conceals His face, holds dominion everywhere beyond the Godhead. Jechidah, unmindful of her descent from the Throne of Glory, had sinned. Her jealousy had caused much trouble in the world where she dwelled. She had suspected all female angels of having affairs with her lover Jachid, had not only blasphemed God but even denied him. Souls, she said, were not created but had evolved out of nothing: they had neither mission nor purpose. Although the authorities were extremely patient and forgiving, Jechidah was finally sentenced to death. The judge fixed the moment of her descent to that cemetery called Earth.

  The attorney for Jechidah appealed to the Superior Court of Heaven, even presented a petition to Metatron, the Lord of the Face. But Jechidah was so filled with sin and so impenitent that no power could save her. The attendants seized her, tore her from Jachid, clipped her wings, cut her hair, and clothed her in a long white shroud. She was no longer allowed to hear the music of the spheres, to smell the perfumes of Paradise and to meditate on the secrets of the Torah, which sustain the soul. She could no longer bathe in the wells of balsam oil. In the prison cell, the darkness of the nether world already surrounded her. But her greatest torment was her longing for Jachid. She could no longer reach him telepathically. Nor could she send a message to him, all of her servants having been taken away. Only the fear of death was left to Jechidah.

  Death was no rare occurrence where Jechidah lived but it befell only vulgar, exhausted spirits. Exactly what happened to the dead, Jechidah did not know. She was convinced that when a soul descended to Earth it was to extinction, even though the pious maintained that a spark of life remained. A dead soul immediately began to rot and was soon covered with a slimy stuff called semen. Then a grave digger put it into a womb where it turned into some sort of fungus and was henceforth known as a child. Later on, began the tortures of Gehenna: birth, growth, toil. For according to the morality books, death was not the final stage. Purified, the soul returned to its source. But what evidence was there for such beliefs? So far as Jechidah knew, no one had ever returned from Earth. The enlightened Jechidah believed that the soul rots for a short time and then disintegrates into a darkness of no return.

  Now the moment had come when Jechidah must die, must sink to Earth. Soon, the Angel of Death would appear with his fiery sword and thousand eyes.

  At first Jechidah had wept incessantly, but then her tears had ceased. Awake or asleep she never stopped thinking of Jachid. Where was he? What was he doing? Whom was he with? Jechidah was well aware he would not mourn for her for ever. He was surrounded by beautiful females, sacred beasts, angels, seraphim, cherubs, ayralim, each one with powers of seduction. How long could someone like Jachid curb his desires? He, like she, was an unbeliever. It was he who had taught her that spirits were not created, but were products of evolution. Jachid did not acknowledge free will, nor believe in ultimate good and evil. What would restrain him? Most certainly he already lay in the lap of some other divinity, telling those stories about himself he had already told Jechidah.

  But what could she do? In this dungeon all contact with the mansions ceased. All doors were closed: neither mercy, nor beauty entered here. The one way from this prison led down to Earth, and to the horrors called flesh, blood, marrow, nerves, and breath. The God-fearing angels promised resurrection. They preached that the soul did not linger forever on Earth, but that after it had endured its punishment, it returned to the Higher Sphere. But Jechidah, being a modernist, regarded all of this as superstition. How would a soul free itself from the corruption of the body? It was scientifically impossible. Resurrection was a dream, a silly comfort of primitive and frightened souls.

  One night as Jechidah lay in a corner brooding about Jachid and the pleasures she had received from him, his kisses, his caresses, the secrets whispered in her ear, the many positions and games into which she had been initiated, Dumah, the thousand-eyed Angel of Death, looking just as the Sacred Books described him, entered bearing a fiery sword.

  “Your time has come, little sister,” he said.

  “No further appeal is possible?”

  “Those who are in this wing always go to Earth.”

  Jechidah shuddered. “Well, I am ready.”

  “Jechidah, repentance helps even now. Recite your confession.”

  “How can it help? My only regret is that I did not transgress more,” said Jechidah rebelliously.

  Both were silent. Finally Dumah said, “Jechidah, I know you are angry with me. But is it my fault, sister? Did I want to be the Angel of Death? I too am a sinner, exiled from a higher realm, my punishment to be the executioner of souls. Jechidah, I have not willed your death, but be comforted. Death is not as dreadful as you imagine. True, the first moments are not easy. But once you have been planted in the womb, the nine months that follow are not painful. You will forget all that you have learned here. Coming out of the womb will be a shock; but childhood is often pleasant. You will begin to study the lore of death, clothed in a fresh, pliant body, and soon will dread the end of your exile.”

  Jechidah interrupted him. “Kill me if you must, Dumah, but spare me your lies.”

  “I am telling you the truth, Jechidah. You will be absent no more than a hundred years, for even the wickedest do not suffer longer than that. Death is only the preparation for a new existence.”

  “Dumah, please. I don’t want to listen.”

  “But it is important for you to know that good and evil exist there too and that the will remains free.”

  “What will? Why do you talk such nonsense?”

  “Jechidah, listen car
efully. Even among the dead there are laws and regulations. The way you act in death will determine what happens to you next. Death is a laboratory for the rehabilitation of souls.”

  “Make an end of me, I beseech you.”

  “Be patient, you still have a few more minutes to live and must receive your instructions. Know, then, that one may act well or evilly on Earth and that the most pernicious sin of all is to return a soul to life.”

  This idea was so ridiculous that Jechidah laughed despite her anguish.

  “How can one corpse give life to another?”

  “It’s not as difficult as you think. The body is composed of such weak material that a mere blow can make it disintegrate. Death is no stronger than a cobweb; a breeze blows and it disappears. But it is a great offense to destroy either another’s death or one’s own. Not only that, but you must not act or speak or even think in such a way as to threaten death. Here one’s object is to preserve life, but there it is death that is succoured.”

  “Nursery tales. The fantasies of an executioner.”

  “It is the truth, Jechidah. The Torah that applies to Earth is based on a single principle: Another man’s death must be as dear to one as one’s own. Remember my words. When you descend to Sheol, they will be of value to you.”

  “No, no, I won’t listen to any more lies.” And Jechidah covered her ears.

  Years passed. Everyone in the higher realm had forgotten Jechidah except her mother who still continued to light memorial candles for her daughter. On Earth Jechidah had a new mother as well as a father, several brothers and sisters, all dead. After attending a high school, she had begun to take courses at the university. She lived in a large necropolis where corpses are prepared for all kinds of mortuary functions.

  It was spring, and Earth’s corruption grew leprous with blossoms. From the graves with their memorial trees and cleansing waters arose a dreadful stench. Millions of creatures, forced to descend into the domains of death, were becoming flies, butterflies, worms, toads, frogs. They buzzed, croaked, screeched, rattled, already involved in the death struggle. But since Jechidah was totally inured to the habits of Earth, all this seemed to her part of life. She sat on a park bench staring up at the moon, which from the darkness of the nether world is sometimes recognized as a memorial candle set in a skull. Like all female corpses, Jechidah yearned to perpetuate death, to have her womb become a grave for the newly dead. But she couldn’t do that without the help of a male with whom she would have to copulate in the hatred which corpses call love.