by Gene Wolfe
“All the names?”
“If you can, sure.”
“Mostly they don’t give you their last names, and I’m not sure I remember them right. They probably didn’t give me their real names anyway.”
“Okay,” I said, “but try.”
“The first one was a young guy who kept playing with his gun. At first I thought he was just a jerk, later I could see he was trying to make me nervous. Hell, I was nervous as a cat already. They’d separated us. Did I tell you that? About Rosalee?”
He had not and I said so.
“Well, they arrested her, too. They didn’t say what for. They just marched her away. That was the last time I saw her, and I keep thinking I may never see her anymore. Will I? What do you think?”
“You want a guess?”
He nodded. “An honest guess. Sure I do.”
“Okay. I think they’ve released her already and she’s gone back to Austria or Germany, and she’s trying to find out what happened to you. She doesn’t know whether they’ve still got you, or what. If you get out of here, you’ll see her again, but if you don’t you won’t.”
“I hope it’s really that good,” Russ said.
“I was just guessing,” I told him, “but that’s what I think. They’re probably not as tough on women as they are on men. Do they think you’re a spy or something?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Same here,” I said.
And he said, “Well, are you?”
So that was Russ Rathaus, my cellmate. We got to be pretty good friends. I had never been in a prison before, but here is the way I figured it. You are going to have to spend a lot of time with the guy you are locked up with, and if you are not friends that is going to be pure hell. He was a lot older than I am and got a little patronizing sometimes. But I put up with it and I have to say I learned a good deal about business just listening to him. It was something I had never known a lot about or cared much about, either. Only after I had heard him talk a couple of times I realized that it was something I ought to know more about. Every time you buy a hamburger or a car you are dealing with somebody’s business, and business is not like government. It is more like poker.
Another thing I learned from Russ was the language. He had been locked up for over a year and had learned a lot more of it than I had. He coached me as well as he could and sometimes he got other prisoners to coach me a little, too.
I have already told you most of the important things about Russ, but there are others. One was the spells. He got to talking about the spells in his voodoo book, and being a writer myself I asked him who wrote them. That shut him up hard and right away, and he would not even say why he did not want to talk about it.
Another thing was that when they pulled me out of our cell to talk to me, they always asked about him. He said he had been questioned by five different guys at one time or another, but then they had had him a hell of a lot longer. For me it was just two. Butch was the good cop and Aegis was the bad cop. You probably know what I mean.
Butch would offer his cigarettes and give me coffee and see that I got little stuff I wanted, like soap. Aegis would knock me around and yell. I tried to fight him a couple times, but he was bigger and stronger than I am, and a better fighter, too. I suppose he could have yelled for help if he had needed it, but he never did. Both of them always asked me about Russ, and after a while I noticed that.
Reading over all the stuff about him that I have just written, I see that I have never mentioned anything about Russ’s smoking. That is mostly because he did not have any cigarettes when I first met him. He would bitch about it now and then, but I never paid a lot of attention to that. After we had been in that prison for almost a year, I asked him whether Butch did not offer him a cigarette sometimes and if he took it. And he said yeah he did, but he could not keep it. He had to smoke it right there.
That gave me an idea. The next time Butch offered me a cigarette I took it and explained that it was not for me, I was going to take it back and give it to Russ. Russ was always wanting to smoke, I said, which was pretty much the truth.
“You’ll need matches,” Butch told me. “I can give you some, but if you set fire to your mattress or any dumb shit like that, I’ll get in trouble.”
I said I would not do anything like that, and I would light Russ’s cigarette for him and not let him touch the matches.
“Oh, that’s okay. Russ will behave. How about a drink?”
I said I would love one but could I have the matches first?
He gave me a folder of matches after that. It was pretty beat up and did not advertise anything. It just had the name of the match company on it, and a price. I had bought big wooden matches back in Puraustays and they had been the same way. I have probably told you about them. There were only three matches left in the folder I got from Butch.
When a screw took me back to my cell, I gave the cigarette and the matches to Russ. His eyes sort of lit up, you probably know what I mean, and he thanked me. I asked if he was not going to smoke it, and he said no, he was going to save it awhile, a few hours at least, and get used to the idea that he had it and could smoke it anytime he wanted to.
After that I went to bed. I am not sure what time I woke up, but midnight would probably be about right. It was the smell of smoke that woke me. It was sort of like the smell of cigarette smoke, but there was other stuff, a lot rougher stuff, in there, too. I opened my eyes and turned my head, and there was Russ sitting cross-legged on the floor with a tiny little fire in front of him.
He was not looking at me, and he was not looking at his fire either. He was looking up at the window. I watched him for a while and listened to him murmuring to himself in some language that was not English, French, or German, or even Japanese. It was not the way they talked where we were, either. Something else.
Then his fire went out. He blew on it and got it to burning again for a couple of minutes, but he quit praying or whatever it was he had been doing.
The fire went out again and he blew some more, but this time he could not bring it back to life. So he cleaned it up and got into bed, and I was about ready to go back to sleep when somebody came into our cell without opening the door. Here I want to say that I knew him right off, and I should have. But it would be a lie. I did not, and he was standing in the corner with his pale face really plain and his black clothes just about invisible before I recognized him. Russ’s little fire had gone out and its ashes had been dropped into our slop jar, and the big stone fireplace at the Willows was miles and miles away, but fire from somewhere was still reflected in his eyes.
9
FREE ALMOST
When I woke up next it was still really early, but the man in black had gone. Or anyhow, that was how it looked. I sat up and put on my shoes and more clothes, and went to the window to look out. The sky was gray, but the sun was not up. You probably know that time. I knew I would be able to see it out of that window when it rose, and it was not there.
Then it came to me that he was like the sun. He was still there, I just could not see him. I tried to remember whether he had said anything to me and whether I had said anything to him. We had not talked at all. I had looked at him and sort of smiled, meaning I am glad to see you. He had not smiled. (His eyes never did smile, even when his mouth did.) But he had nodded just the tiniest bit, meaning I am glad to see you, too. You know how you do.
Of course I remembered pretty soon that the next time I was questioned they would ask about Russ, but that was an easy one. I had been asleep and had not seen a thing. I had given him the cigarette and the matches, and I was pretty sure he must have smoked the cigarette by this time.
So that was a piece of cake. The big question was whether Russ had seen the man in black, too. I did not know and did not want to ask because I would not have trusted the answer either way. If he had, there was a good strong chance he would say he had not. If he had not, there was an even stronger chance that he would say he had so as
to try to find out what the heck I was talking about.
Okay, that was the big question and there was no way I was going to learn anything by quizzing Russ. If I kept my eyes and ears open I might find out something. Or not.
The little question was whether what Russ had done with his fire and the cigarette, plus whatever it was he had been saying, had fetched the man in black. It seemed pretty clear that the answer was yes, and after that I got to wondering about those voodoo dolls. Had they worked? Any of them? Most people probably had not tried the spells, and most of those who had, had not done them right. But were the spells any good? There was no way of telling.
I was still thinking about all that, about the dolls especially, when the screw came up the corridor unlocking cells so the guys could go to breakfast. Russ was still in his bunk, so I said, “Hey, breakfast!” He did not move, so I let him sleep. When I got back from breakfast, his bunk was empty. I figured somebody had decided he was on a hunger strike or something and he was getting slapped around.
Later on a screw and a cop came for me. The cop made me put my hands behind me the way they do and snapped cuffs on me. Then they marched me down to Butch and Aegis in one of the interrogation rooms in the basement. It was the first time I had seen the two of them together.
(So much for my idea that they were the same guy with different clothes and so forth. I had never really been serious about that one anyhow.)
Butch looked worried, something I had never seen before, and Aegis looked mad, something I had seen a lot of. Aegis said, “Do we make him stand or let him sit?”
“We let him sit,” Butch said, “if he has something to tell us. If he doesn’t, he stands.”
“That is good. It hurts more when they fall down.”
They were talking in their own language, but by that time I had picked up enough of it to have a pretty good idea of what they were saying.
Butch switched to English. “Where is your cellmate?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “He was asleep in his bunk when I went down to breakfast. When I came back he was gone.”
Butch told Aegis what I had said, although I was not sure he had to. From now on I will not mention that much.
In German, Aegis said, “He was not asleep in his bed at breakfast.”
I sort of shrugged and said he was a lot smarter than I was.
“You don’t know where he is now?” That was Butch.
I said I did not, which was the truth.
“You saw Rathaus lying in his bunk this morning?”
I said sure.
“You didn’t. If you don’t believe that, I think I can prove it to you.”
“Of course I believe you. Not to change the subject, but I notice I’m still not sitting down.”
Aegis laughed.
Butch said, “You don’t believe us because you feel certain you saw Rathaus.”
I said, “No, I believe you. I made a mistake, that’s all.”
“Let me show you what you saw,” Butch said. He left, but he was only gone for a minute or two. When he came back he was dragging something that looked so much like Russ that for a second I thought it must be Russ’s body. He held it up, then sat it down on the floor with its back propped by a table leg.
That was when the truth jumped up and smacked me in the face like a rake handle. It was a big doll—just a big doll!
Pretty soon I was sitting down and telling them all about Russ’s business in the States. Butch bought my story, but Aegis did not. He wanted to send a letter by courier to the U.S. embassy, asking them if there were such dolls and requesting a dozen or so.
Butch said, “In a year we get them—or perhaps we don’t. Listen to me. If an artist make this there is something inside in which he has cut the face. Rubber it might be, or synthetic. If it is as he says, this is something else. Let us open it and see.”
Aegis agreed, and they slit the side of the doll’s face with a pocketknife. Granules poured out, little multicolored spheres no bigger than coarse sand. As they did, Russ’s face vanished. All that was left was a doll with a blank face.
They sent me away after that, and I suppose they must have reported what they had learned from me to somebody higher up.
Three days, or maybe four, went by without anything happening. One day I did factory work, which Russ and I had been doing off and on all year. Mostly I just sat in my cell staring at the wall. When the door was unlocked for meals, I went out and ate with the other prisoners. There was supposed to be no talking, but we whispered. Once they let us go outside for exercise, and I went out into the yard and met a couple of other Americans. Both of them had been in longer than I had, and neither of them had known I was in, too. Once I was taken down to the shower. The screw was surprised that I had soap but did not take it away from me.
Then a couple of screws came for me. One told me to take anything I wanted to keep, because he did not think I was coming back. So I got my soap and a few other things Butch had given me.
I had thought we would be going someplace in the prison, but we did not. It was outside and into a big green car that looked like it was at least ten years old but seemed to be in good shape. Probably I should explain that we were handcuffed together, me to a screw on each side. I knew which one had the keys and which pocket he had put them in. I had been careful to notice all that, but it did not do me a bit of good.
We drove into the city, which was a lot bigger than Puraustays. I have probably said that already somewhere in here, but it will stand saying again. When we had driven through as much city as Puraustays, we were not past the suburbs yet.
Every once in a while our driver said something. He was not talking to me or to the screws on each side of me. They were talking about what they were going to do tonight, because by the time I got out they would be off work and have the next two days off. One was going to get drunk and the other one was going to play some game. I think it was probably billiards, but I could not be sure. Whatever it was, he said he was going to play it tonight and tomorrow night and maybe Sunday night, too, and win a lot of money.
After I had listened awhile I got the idea that our driver was talking to somebody sitting next to him who was too short for his head to show over the back of the seat. Either that, or he was invisible. Or most likely of all, our driver was nuts and there was really nobody there.
But thinking “Nuts!” reminded me that there were those nut trees all around Martya’s house. They had nut trees because the neighbors were not scared enough of Kleon to let his fruit alone, but they did not bother with the nuts. Or at least not much. But Martya and I had made out, and that was kind of nice to think about. Four times for sure were all I could remember, which did not seem like enough. It ought to have been five or six. There ought to have been one time on the boat, or else on the island where the ruined castle was. And maybe one time in the Willows. I kept telling myself that someday I would go back and make both those come true.
Then the green car stopped and we got out and went into a building that looked like an old warehouse—old but not abandoned. An old warehouse that somebody was still using. Our driver stayed with his car, and the two screws and I got out (which was clumsy because we were cuffed together) and went up to the door. There was a phone there in a steel box. I think it was the first phone I had seen since coming to the country. One of the screws picked it up and talked, keeping his voice too low for me to hear what he was saying.
What I could hear was the door unlocking. The other screw pushed it open and we went in. It was dark inside and not like a warehouse. There was a long passage with only two or three doors along it. Those doors had mirrors in them instead of glass. At the end of it was a steel booth with a machine gun poking out of it. When we got close to that, the gunner said, “Keep going.”
We turned left and went down another hall to the biggest, fanciest elevator I have ever seen. It was maybe twelve feet square, and there were screens and keyboards in it, with nice chairs in front of
them and a padded bench in the middle. None of us sat down, and I noticed that the elevator was pretty slow and clanked.
We got out on what was probably the top floor of the old building. The hall there was a lot nicer. Scarier, too, for me. That hall had thick carpets, and good tables and really nice leather-upholstered armchairs off to the sides. Everything said: The people up here have real power, the no-shit kind that pays no attention to the law or anything else. If they say you die, you die. There were no pictures on the walls that I could see, just framed seashells and bones. One was the front of a skull.
One of the doors opened and a woman came out. I got to know her really well, so I might as well describe her here for you. She was not bad looking if you did not mind a hard face, and her hair always looked dark under lights. When I saw her out in the sunlight it was really a tawny red. In there you might have thought it was black. She was quite a bit older than I was but I was never sure how much. Her eyes were hazel and her name was Naala.
She stopped the screws and told them to take the cuffs off me. They did not like that but they did it. “You do not speak this tongue?” she asked me.
“Not well,” I said. “Just a little bit.”
“That is good.” She gave me a hard smile. “They fear you will run. Will you?”
I shook my head. “They’d catch me while I was waiting for the elevator.”
It made her laugh. “You are wise, too. We shall get on well, I know. Come with me.”
I followed her into a big room with a lot of windows. It was a relief to look out of them after what I had seen of that building already, even if they did not show much except a lot of roofs and chimneys, and the night sky.
There was a table in the middle, a table not nearly as big as the room. It had six chairs, but there were only two men sitting at it, both middle-aged, well dressed, and tough looking. The bald one was at the end of the table. Naala motioned to a chair and we sat down.
Hair said, “What do you think of him?”
Naala opened her purse and got out a gold pen. There was a tablet at her place already. “We could not ask for better.”