The Top of the Volcano

by Harlan Ellison

  He walked around her. She ran after him.

  “All right, okay, maybe I was a little out of sorts. I was asleep, after all.”

  He stopped. She stood in front of him. Now it was her move. “My name is Catherine Molnar. How do you do?”

  “Not too well, that’s how.”

  “Have you been here long?”

  “Longer than I wanted to be here, that’s for sure.”

  “Can you explain what’s happened to me?”

  He thought about it. Walking with someone would be a nice change. “Let me ask you something,” Ian Ross said, beginning to stroll off toward the phantom image of the hanging gardens of Babylon wafting past them, “did you waste a lot of time, sitting around, not doing much, maybe watching television a lot?”

  They were lying down side-by-side because they were tired. Nothing more than that. The Battle of the Ardennes, First World War, was all around them. Not a sound. Just movement. Mist, fog, turretless tanks, shattered trees all around them. Some corpses left lying in the middle of no man’s land. They had been together for a space of time…it was three hours, it was six weeks, it was a month of Sundays, it was a year to remember, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times: who could measure it, there were no signposts, no town criers, no grandfather clocks, no change of seasons, who could measure it?

  They had begun to talk freely. He told her again that his name was Ian Ross and she said Catherine, Catherine Molnar again. She confirmed his guess that her life had been empty. “Plain,” she said. “I was plain. I am plain. No, don’t bother to say you think I have nice cheekbones or a trim figure; it won’t change a thing. If you want plain, I’ve got it.”

  He didn’t say she had nice cheekbones or a trim figure. But he didn’t think she was plain.

  The Battle of the Ardennes was swirling away now.

  She suggested they make love.

  Ian Ross got to his feet quickly and walked away.

  She watched him for a while, keeping him in sight. Then she got up, dusted off her hands though there was nothing on them, an act of memory, and followed him. Quite a long time later, after trailing him but not trying to catch up to him, she ran to match his pace and finally, gasping for breath, reached him. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Nothing to be sorry about.”

  “I offended you.”

  “No, you didn’t. I just felt like walking.”

  “Stop it, Ian. I did, I offended you.”

  He stopped and spun on her. “Do you think I’m a virgin? I’m not a virgin.”

  His vehemence pulled her back from the edge of boldness. “No, of course you’re not. I never thought such a thing.” Then she said, “Well…I am.”

  “Sorry,” he said, because he didn’t know the right thing to say, if there was a right thing.

  “Not your fault,” she said. Which was the right thing to say.

  From nothing to nothing. Thirty-four years old, the properly desperate age for unmarried, unmotherhooded, unloved. Catherine Molnar, Janesville, Wisconsin. Straightening the trinkets in her jewelry box, ironing her clothes, removing and refolding the sweaters in her drawers, hanging the slacks with the slacks, skirts with the skirts, blouses with the blouses, coats with the coats, all in order in the closet, reading every word in Time and Reader’s Digest, learning seven new words every day, never using seven new words every day, mopping the floors in the three-room apartment, putting aside one full evening to pay the bills and spelling out Wisconsin completely, never the WI abbreviation on the return envelopes, listening to talk radio, calling for the correct time to set the clocks, spooning out the droppings from the kitty box, repasting photos in the album of scenes with round-faced people, pinching back the buds on the coleus, calling Aunt Beatrice every Tuesday at seven o’clock, talking brightly to the waitress in the orange and blue uniform at the chicken pie shoppe, repainting fingernails carefully so the moon on each nail is showing, heating morning water for herself alone for the cup of herbal tea, setting the table with a cloth napkin and a placemat, doing dishes, going to the office and straightening the bills of lading precisely. Thirty-four. From nothing to nothing.

  They lay side-by-side but they were not tired. There was more to it than that.

  “I hate men who can’t think past the pillow,” she said, touching his hair.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, it’s just something I practiced, to say after the first time I slept with a man. I always felt there should be something original to say, instead of all the things I read in novels.”

  “I think it’s a very clever phrase.” Even now, he found it hard to touch her. He lay with hands at his sides.

  She changed the subject. “I was never able to get very far playing the piano. I have absolutely no give between the thumb and first finger. And that’s essential, you know. You have to have a long reach, a good spread I think they call it, to play Chopin. A tenth: that’s two notes over an octave. A full octave, a perfect octave, those are just technical terms. Octave is good enough. I don’t have that.”

  “I like piano playing,” he said, realizing how silly and dull he must sound, and frightened (very suddenly) that she would find him so, that she would leave him. Then he remembered where they were and he smiled. Where could she go? Where could he go?

  “I always hated the fellows at parties who could play the piano…all the girls clustered around those people. Except these days it’s not so much piano, not too many people have pianos in their homes any more. The kids grow up and go away and nobody takes lessons and the kids don’t buy pianos. They get those electric guitars.”

  “Acoustical guitars.”

  “Yes, those. I don’t think it would be much better for fellows like me who don’t play, even if it’s acoustical guitars.”

  They got up and walked again.

  Once they discussed how they had wasted their lives, how they had sat there with hands folded as time filled space around them, swept through, was drained off, and their own “chronons” (he had told her about the lunatic; she said it sounded like Benjamin Franklin; he said the man hadn’t looked like Benjamin Franklin, but maybe, it might have been) had been leached of all potency.

  Once they discussed the guillotine executions in the Paris of the Revolution, because it was keeping pace with them. Once they chased the Devonian and almost caught it. Once they were privileged to enjoy themselves in the center of an Arctic snowstorm that held around them for a measure of measureless time. Once they saw nothing for an eternity but were truly chilled—unlike the Arctic snowstorm that had had no effect on them—by the winds that blew past them. And once he turned to her and said, “I love you, Catherine.”

  But when she looked at him with a gentle smile, he noticed for the first time that her eyes seemed to be getting gray and pale.

  Then, not too soon after, she said she loved him, too.

  But she could see mist through the flesh of his hands when he reached out to touch her face.

  They walked with their arms around each other, having found each other. They said many times, and agreed it was so, that they were in love, and being together was the most important thing in that endless world of gray spaces, even if they never found their way back.

  And they began to use their time together, setting small goals for each “day” upon awakening. We will walk that far; we will play word games in which you have to begin the name of a female movie star from the last letter of a male movie star’s name that I have to begin off the last letter of a female movie star; we will exchange shirt and blouse and see how it feels for a while; we will sing every camp song we can remember. They began to enjoy their time together. They began to live.

  And sometimes his voice faded out and she could see him moving his lips but there was no sound.

  And sometimes when the mist cleared she was invisible from the ankles down and her body moved as through thick soup.

  And as they used their time, they became alien in that place
where wasted time had gone to rest.

  And they began to fade. As the world had leached out for Ian Ross in Scotland, and for Catherine Molnar in Wisconsin, they began to vanish from limbo. Matter could neither be created nor destroyed, but it could be disassembled and sent where it was needed for entropic balance.

  He saw her pale skin become transparent.

  She saw his hands as clear as glass.

  And they thought: too late. It comes too late.

  Invisible motes of their selves were drawn off and were sent away from that gray place. Were sent where needed to maintain balance. One and one and one, separated on the wind and blown to the farthest corners of the tapestry that was time and space. And could never be recalled. And could never be rejoined.

  So they touched, there in that vast limbo of wasted time, for the last time, and shadows existed for an instant, and then were gone; he first, leaving her behind for the merest instant of terrible loneliness and loss, and then she, without shadow, pulled apart and scattered, followed. Separation without hope of return.

  Great events hushed in mist swirled past. Ptolemy crowned king of Egypt, the Battle of the Teutoburger Forest, Jesus crucified, the founding of Constantinople, the Vandals plundering Rome, the massacre of the Omayyad family, the court of the Fujiwaras in Japan, Jerusalem falling to Saladin…and on and on…great events…empty time…and the timeless population trudged past endlessly…endlessly…unaware that finally, at last, hopelessly and too late…two of their nameless order had found the way out.

  * * *

  Djinn, No Chaser

  1983 Locus Poll Award: Best Novelette

  “Who the hell ever heard of Turkish Period?” Danny Squires said. He said it at the top of his voice, on a city street.

  “Danny! People are staring at us; lower your voice!” Connie Squires punched his bicep. They stood on the street, in front of the furniture store. Danny was determined not to enter.

  “Come on, Connie,” he said, “let’s get away from these junk shops and go see some inexpensive modern stuff. You know perfectly well I don’t make enough to start filling the apartment with expensive antiques.”

  Connie furtively looked up and down the street—she was more concerned with a “scene” than with the argument itself—and then moved in toward Danny with a determined air. “Now listen up, Squires. Did you or did you not marry me four days ago, and promise to love, honor and cherish and all that other good jive?”

  Danny’s blue eyes rolled toward Heaven; he knew he was losing ground. Instinctively defensive, he answered, “Well, sure, Connie, but—”

  “Well, then, I am your wife, and you have not taken me on a honeymoon—”

  “I can’t afford one!”

  “—have not taken me on a honeymoon,” Connie repeated with inflexibility. “Consequently, we will buy a little furniture for that rabbit warren you laughingly call our little love nest. And little is hardly the term: that vale of tears was criminally undersized when Barbara Fritchie hung out her flag.

  “So to make my life bearable, for the next few weeks, till we can talk Mr. Upjohn into giving you a raise—”

  “Upjohn!” Danny fairly screamed. “You’ve got to stay away from the boss, Connie. Don’t screw around. He won’t give me a raise, and I’d rather you stayed away from him—”

  “Until then,” she went on relentlessly, “we will decorate our apartment in the style I’ve wanted for years.”

  “Turkish Period?”

  “Turkish Period.”

  Danny flipped his hands in the air. What was the use? He had known Connie was strong-willed when he’d married her.

  It had seemed an attractive quality at the time; now he wasn’t so sure. But he was strong-willed too: he was sure he could outlast her. Probably.

  “Okay,” he said finally, “I suppose Turkish Period it’ll be. What the hell is Turkish Period?”

  She took his arm lovingly, and turned him around to look in the store window. “Well, honey, it’s not actually Turkish. It’s more Mesopotamian. You know, teak and silk and…”

  “Sounds hideous.”

  “So you’re starting up again!” She dropped his arm, her eyes flashing, her mouth a tight little line. “I’m really ashamed of you, depriving me of the few little pleasures I need to make my life a blub, sniff, hoo-hoo…”

  The edge was hers.

  “Connie…Connie…” She knocked away his comforting hand, saying, “You beast.” That was too much for him. The words were so obviously put-on, he was suddenly infuriated:

  “Now, goddammit!”

  Her tears came faster. Danny stood there, furious, helpless, outmaneuvered, hoping desperately that no cop would come along and say, “This guy botherin’ ya, lady?”

  “Connie, okay, okay, we’ll have Turkish Period. Come on, come on. It doesn’t matter what it costs, I can scrape up the money somehow.”

  It was not one of the glass-brick and onyx emporia where sensible furniture might be found (if one searched hard enough and paid high enough and retained one’s senses long enough as they were trying to palm off modernistic nightmares in which no comfortable position might be found); no, it was not even one of those. This was an antique shop.

  They looked at beds that had canopies and ornate metalwork on the bedposts. They looked at rugs that were littered with pillows, so visitors could sit on the floors. They looked at tables built six inches off the deck, for low banquets. They inspected incense burners and hookahs and coffers and giant vases until Danny’s head swam with visions of the courts of long-dead caliphs.

  Yet, despite her determination, Connie chose very few items; and those she did select were moderately-priced and quite handsome…for what they were. And as the hours passed, and as they moved around town from one dismal junk emporium to another, Danny’s respect for his wife’s taste grew. She was selecting an apartment full of furniture that wasn’t bad at all.

  They were finished by six o’clock, and had bills of sale that totaled just under two hundred dollars. Exactly thirty dollars less than Danny had decided could be spent to furnish the new household…and still survive on his salary. He had taken the money from his spavined savings account, and had known he must eventually start buying on credit, or they would not be able to get enough furniture to start living properly.

  He was tired, but content. She’d shopped wisely. They were in a shabby section of town. How had they gotten here? They walked past an empty lot sandwiched in between two tenements—wet-wash slapping on lines between them. The lot was weed-overgrown and garbage-strewn.

  “May I call your attention to the depressing surroundings and my exhaustion?” Danny said. “Let’s get a cab and go back to the apartment. I want to collapse.”

  They turned around to look for a cab, and the empty lot was gone.

  In its place, sandwiched between the two tenements, was a little shop. It was a one-storey affair, with a dingy facade, and its front window completely grayed-over with dust. A hand-painted line of elaborate script on the glass-panel of the door, also opaque with grime, proclaimed:

  MOHANADUS MUKHAR, CURIOS.

  A little man in a flowing robe, wearing a fez, plunged out the front door, skidded to a stop, whirled and slapped a huge sign on the window. He swiped at it four times with a big paste-brush, sticking it to the glass, and whirled back inside, slamming the door.

  “No,” Danny said.

  Connie’s mouth was making peculiar sounds.

  “There’s no insanity in my family,” Danny said firmly. “We come from very good stock.”

  “We’ve made a visual error,” Connie said.

  “Simply didn’t notice it,” Danny said. His usually baritone voice was much nearer soprano.

  “If there’s crazy, we’ve both got it,” Connie said.

  “Must be, if you see the same thing I see.”

  Connie was silent a moment, then said, “Large seagoing vessel, three stacks, maybe the Titanic. Flamingo on the bridge, flying the flag of
Lichtenstein?”

  “Don’t play with me, woman,” Danny whimpered. “I think I’m losing it.”

  She nodded soberly. “Right. Empty lot?”

  He nodded back, “Empty lot. Clothesline, weeds, garbage.”

  “Right.”

  He pointed at the little store. “Little store?”

  “Right.”

  “Man in a fez, name of Mukhar?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Right.”

  “So why are we walking toward it?”

  “Isn’t this what always happens in stories where weird shops suddenly appear out of nowhere? Something inexorable draws the innocent bystanders into its grip?”

  They stood in front of the grungy little shop. They read the sign. It said:

  BIG SALE! HURRY! NOW! QUICK!

  “The word unnatural comes to mind,” Danny said.

  “Nervously,” Connie said, “she turned the knob and opened the door.”

  A tiny bell went tinkle-tinkle, and they stepped across the threshold into the gloaming of Mohanadus Mukhar’s shop.

  “Probably not the smartest move we’ve ever made,” Danny said softly. The door closed behind them without any assistance.

  It was cool and musty in the shop, and strange fragrances chased one another past their noses.

  They looked around carefully. The shop was loaded with junk. From floor to ceiling, wall to wall, on tables and in heaps, the place was filled with oddities and bric-a-brac. Piles of things tumbled over one another on the floor; heaps of things leaned against the walls. There was barely room to walk down the aisle between the stacks and mounds of things. Things in all shapes, things in all sizes and colors. Things. They tried to separate the individual items from the jumble of the place, but all they could perceive was stuff…things! Stuff and flotsam and bits and junk.

  “Curios, effendi,” a voice said, by way of explanation.

  Connie leaped in the air, and came down on Danny’s foot.

  Mukhar was standing beside such a pile of tumbled miscellany that for a moment they could not separate him from the stuff, junk, things he sold.