by Gene Wolfe
She was probably fifty-five or sixty, a big raw-boned woman with gray hair. Seeing her, I figured she had most likely been around while the communists still had power, and I wondered what she had been doing back then. People here do not shake hands much, but she stood up and shook Naala’s, and mine, too.
“Welcome!” She motioned toward a couple of swivel chairs. “You will get whatever it is you ask, if it is possible. We at the People’s Detention for Women are always glad to cooperate.”
Naala thanked her, and she clapped her hands and told the women who had showed us in to bring tea.
Naala said, “Eighteen months ago two Amerikan spies, husband and wife, were arrested at the border. The husband was taken to the Rural Reeducation Center. The wife was taken here.”
“I see. He has been released?”
Naala shook her head. “He has escaped. That he will try to communicate with her we think certain. He may try to free her as well.”
I said, “She could have been released.”
“So you think. It would be a major error.”
The warden asked the wife’s name, Naala gave it, and the warden turned to her computer. “She sleeps in Building One Twenty-four.”
“She is outside it now? Perhaps at work?”
“She should be, yes. Now it is the work-time. She will be…” More typing and tapping the screen. “Sewing. Building Seventeen. We make uniforms for the army.”
Naala spoke to me. “We can have her brought to us, or we can go to her. You think which?”
“Go to her,” I said.
“Why is this?”
“If we go to her, we can see what she’s doing, what her surroundings are like, who she’s working with, and so on. We can bring her here later if we want to, or take her someplace else.”
The warden wanted to know if I was Russian, and Naala shook her head. “You need not take us to the place where she works. I know you must be busy. Tell us where it is, and we will find it.”
“I could never be so discourteous,” the warden said. “I will assign a guide.”
“That will not be necessary. Where is it we must go?”
Stuff like this went on for a while, and I would not give it all here if I could. Pretty soon I could see that Naala wanted us to be free to snoop around, and the warden wanted to keep us from doing it.
Finally we got the guide, a short fat woman with a whistle around her neck. She lectured us about the prison the whole way. Most of the women were in for shoplifting, and they got reeducation to teach them that stealing from stores was wrong. I could tell it was strictly the company line and did not pay a lot of attention to it.
The factory had been a barn at one time, and not a very nice barn either, a long, low, whitewashed building that could have used a lot more windows. The floor was dirty and splintery, but the walls were covered with pictures—some torn out of newspapers and magazines, some photos, stuck up there with pins.
Right then is when I got a surprise. All the women prisoners had big numbers just like the ones we had worn in prison sewn on their uniforms, and I could see our guide was looking at those. She did not know what Rosalee Rathaus looked like. We passed on a bunch of women who were working at sewing machines and making quite a racket, and finally our guide asked one of the guards, women with uniforms but no guns who were lounging around here and there. The guard just pointed.
She was a blonde, pretty thin and not much older than I was. Of course she had no makeup and she looked tired, but right off I noticed the bones in her face and her blue eyes. Fix her hair and give her a good night’s sleep and she would be a whole lot better than decent. Give her the right makeup, too, and the right clothes, and she might knock your eyes out. She was working a machine I had never seen before. You stacked cloth on it, then laid a pattern on top of the cloth and cut around it. It was sort of like a band saw but not exactly.
Naala said something to our guide, and she went over and pulled Rosalee away from her machine. After that we marched her outside where we could hear ourselves talk.
“You are Amerikan?” Naala asked. “The wife of Russell Rathaus?”
The blonde nodded. She looked a little angry and a little dazed, like she had just been smacked hard.
“Where is he?”
The blonde shrugged.
“He has communicated with you?”
She did not understand that, and you could see it. I said, “Maybe I’d better translate.”
Naala turned to our guide. “You! Get out of here!”
The guide objected.
“You were to show us where this woman was. You have done so. Now go!”
The guide argued, pretty loudly.
Naala’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Do you know who we are? We are the JAKA, you fool. Go, or you will wish you had never seen me.”
It is funny, but when somebody with a bad complexion goes pale, you don’t notice it. What you notice is that all the zits and things seemed to have jumped out at you.
I said, “We ought to go where she lives.” I had a couple of reasons for saying that, but the main one was I wanted to sit down.
Naala agreed, so I told Rosalee we wanted to see her cell block or whatever it was they called them here. It was the first time she had heard me speak English, and her eyes got big. While we were walking along, she told me it was called a group house. For three or four steps she held my hand.
The group house was pretty big and there were beds everywhere, real beds and what were probably army cots, and others that were just places various women had rigged up to sleep on. All the beds were sort of straightened around, and all of them had quilts sewn together out of scraps of uniform cloth. Those were about the color of mustard. Rosalee showed us hers, meaning a pad of scrap cloth on the floor.
There was a real bed not far from it. I sat down on that and said, “How much younger are you?”
“I’m twenty-four. He’s sixty-three.” She had known what I meant right away.
“Has he been in touch with you?”
There was a little tiny pause before she shook her head. “Can that woman understand what we’re saying?”
I did not think Naala really knew much English, but that did not matter. I knew what I had to say to get Rosalee to talk. “Hell no!” I made it definite.
“Then listen, please. Please, please listen because I mean every word. Get me out of here, and I’ll do anything you want me to do. Everything! Just get me out. Can you get me back to America?”
I said, “Maybe. It won’t be easy.”
“Russ’s rich, and there’s a joint account. I’m not sure how much is in there, but at least fifty thousand. I’ll give you the entire amount, every last dollar.”
I nodded and turned to Naala, keeping my voice down and talking fast. “I don’t know how much she’s going to understand, but she’ll have picked up a lot while she was in here. She probably knows more than she’s willing to let on.”
Naala nodded.
“I asked if Rathaus had been in touch. She said no, but she was lying. She wants out of here really bad. If we get her out but show her we can pop her back in anytime we’re pissed off at her we’ll get cooperation.”
Naala nodded again. “Outside we can beat her, also.”
I did not like that, but I think I covered it pretty good. I said, “Right. And if Rathaus finds out we’ve got her, he may want to bargain. Or try to get her away from us.”
“Either is good. In the last he will not succeed. Do you wish to take her now?”
“This minute, no. But today?” I shrugged. “Probably yes, if we can do it.”
I turned back to Rosalee. “How close were you to Rathaus’s business?”
“I was his secretary.”
“I see.” Of course I was trying to figure out whether she had heard what I said to Naala, and how much she had understood. “Up until you two were married?”
“And afterward, too. He didn’t want me sitting at home twiddling my thu
mbs, and I didn’t want him getting another secretary. Then they sold the business—he and Mr. Debussy did. That was when we came here.”
“Got it. Now listen up. I may be able to get you out, but I’m going to have to have some cooperation. Do you seriously want out—want it really bad—or are you just stringing me?”
“Oh, my God!” Rosalee looked like she was about to cry. “Please, please listen! I meant every word I said.”
“Okay. You’ve got an aunt who married some guy from this country.”
“Did Russ tell you that? Yes, I do.”
“Maybe he talked to your uncle about doing some business over here?”
“They argued about it. Russ wanted to make the dolls in our factory, but Uncle Eneas kept saying he could make them just as good and much cheaper here. I think Russ was thinking about setting up a little factory here, and that was why he agreed to come.”
“I thought he’d sold his company.”
“You didn’t know him.”
It took me a minute to digest that, because I had known Russ really well. Pretty soon I decided she was right. I said, “He thought dolls might go over here?”
She nodded. “There were two or three places here that were buying them.”
That was what I had been waiting to hear. “You say you want out. This is your chance to prove it. I can get you out, and if you can name all three I’ll do it.”
“Oh, Lord!” Rosalee backed over to another bed and sat down. “I can’t. I really can’t. The company names were, you know, so ordinary. If—if I had a keyboard, maybe. Two were stores and the other one was just a man’s name, and it was terribly foreign. I remember that. I—do you have to have this?”
I shook my head. “We have other ways of finding out. Only if you can tell us now it will impress my partner, and that’ll be good for you.”
She tried and tried hard. I could see that. But in the end she came up empty.
Naala said, “Ask where Rathaus is now. This she may know.”
So I did.
She thought about that one, too. Finally she said, “He’s outdoors someplace. That’s all I can tell you. Not in a building.”
That one threw me. I asked why she felt like that.
“He was in prison, wasn’t he? I think you said that.”
“I don’t think I did. I just asked if he’d been in touch.”
“Oh. Well, they put me in prison, so I always thought they must have put Russ in prison somewhere, too. If he weren’t in prison he would have been trying to get me out. That’s what I thought.”
I said, “Okay, let’s say that he was in prison from the time you were arrested until last week. What then? Take it from there.”
“He would want to get outdoors, that’s all. He liked to get out. He hardly ever stayed in the office all day, unless the weather was just awful. The weather’s been nice lately.”
“You’re holding something back,” I told her. “What is it?”
“I—” She started to cry, so I put my arms around her. I figured that if Naala and I were going to do good cop/bad cop, I was going to be the good cop. So there was no harm in trying to calm her down.
Naala said, “We will take her. Then you will have more time. That will help, I think.”
“Take her now?”
Naala shook her head. “No. We must speak with the archbishop. We leave her here and come back when we are finish. You may tell her this. She will fear we do not come and that will be good for her.”
So we gave Rosalee Naala’s handkerchief, which was a good big one, and when she had stopped crying I told her, “I’m going to get you out, I promise. Like we talked about, okay?”
She nodded.
“Only not right now. I can’t. Soon. Are you going to cooperate when I do?”
She was not up to talking yet, but she nodded hard.
“That’s good, because you’re going to have to. If you don’t, you’ll go back here—or maybe to someplace worse. If you do, I may be able to get you back to America.”
She just stared.
“You could go back home. Are your folks still alive?”
That got another nod.
“You could see them. Home cooking and hugs from your mother. All that stuff. I want you to keep it in mind.”
We took her back to the sewing barn, checked in at the warden’s office to tell her we were going, and left. I had an idea that the archbishop’s palace was going to be a long way from the women’s prison. I was dead right about that, but it turned out to work in my favor. It was so far that we went to a police station instead and got a car. I was happy enough to—well, you know.
It was a quiet ride. I knew it was too soon for me to start talking up Rosalee to Naala, and Naala did not want to say much of anything that would be overheard by the cop driving. So we kept pretty quiet. I looked at the city, mostly, trying to make mental notes about buildings that might make good landmarks.
One of those was the cathedral, which looked like it was about five hundred years old and had not been kept up too well for the past couple of centuries. Another, not quite so good, was the bishop’s palace, a big stone house that had been the work of at least three architects. I thought the rococo part was definitely overdone, and I suspected that if the stones were to get sandblasted it would be even worse.
Naala looked at her watch. “Four forty it is. That is perfect.”
I got out, went around to the other side, and held the door for her. The cop gave a little snort at that, which was as close to talking as he ever came.
A priest, young, thin, and hollow chested, opened the door for us. “We must see His Excellency at once,” Naala snapped. “Show us in.”
“I’ll have to speak to His Excellency.” The priest looked apologetic.
“We, too,” Naala told him. We were right at his heels, and when we got to what turned out to be the archbishop’s study we pushed past.
He stood up, smiling, as if our busting in on him was just what he had been expecting, which it probably was. “Welcome!” Old as he was, he still had one of those golden voices that are exactly right for public speaking. “You will always be welcome here, my children.”
“Thank you,” Naala said, and sat down. I took my cue from her and sat, too.
“I trust you had a pleasant walk?” The archbishop sat quite a bit more slowly.
“We did not walk. A police car. We have been at the women’s prison, you see. Even with the car we are late, for which you must forgive us.”
“As I do, and gladly.” His smile had not lost a single kilowatt. I decided it would take a lot to ruffle him.
Naala turned to me. “What is the name of the priest from Puraustays?”
I told her Papa Zenon.
“He is here now in the capital. Summoned by you?”
The archbishop nodded.
“An important matter, since he has a parish there he must neglect while he is here.”
“His parish is in excellent condition,” the archbishop murmured, “and he leaves three assistants. I feel sure it will survive without its shepherd for a few weeks.”
“That long?”
“I hope not, but…” His shoulders rose a quarter inch, and subsided one at a time.
“The police there speak well of him.”
Well, well, well, I said to myself. Those phones on the light poles are pretty useful.
“I would expect them to.” The archbishop smiled again.
Naala said, “May I ask why you have brought him here?”
“You may, of course. The question, I fear, is whether you will credit my answer. Papa Zenon is an experienced exorcist.” He cleared his throat. “Every parish has an exorcist. I see you know it.”
“I do,” Naala told him.
“Most never perform an exorcism. Those who do…” The archbishop left it hanging.
I decided I had been quiet long enough, and asked, “Who’s possessed?”
“You will not believe me, young man, w
hen I say we do not know. You do not, yet it is the truth.”
Naala leaned forward. “That someone is you know.”
“I do not know it. I feel it.” The archbishop picked a pen up from his desk, fiddled with it, and put it down again. “I may be mistaken, but I do not believe I am.”
“You have no evidence?”
“You wish me to take something from a drawer of my desk and show it to you.”
Naala said, “Which you cannot do. I understand.”
“There are rumors. There are reports I have received from good, reliable priests. The tower of my cathedral is very tall.”
Naala waited, and so did I.
“You will not credit that a man of my age climbs, every day, to the top of that tower.”
“It seems unlikely,” she said. “Do you?”
“I have climbed it every day for the past fifteen years, always early in the morning. Often before sunrise, in winter. There are three staircases. All are steep, and all are high. I pray as I climb, a prayer for every step, and a longer prayer at the landings. At the top, I stand among the bells and listen for the voice of God.”
“What has He told you?”
“Many things, though He is often silent. When I can no longer climb to the top of my tower, I will retire. He has told me to do this, and I will not disobey.”
“It may be that your successor will keep better to the point,” Naala said. “We search for one Russell Rathaus, an escaped prisoner. Your exorcist has involved himself in our investigation. Why is this?”
The archbishop chuckled, which surprised the hell out of me. “We must find out. It may be that Papa Zenon would say you have involved yourselves in his. As I listen for the voice of God, I look out over this city. In winter the sky is dark, but there are many lights. It is summer and we know God’s own clear sunlight, but the city is wrapped in darkness. I sense it and, almost, I see it.”
“There are always evil men,” Naala murmured.
The archbishop nodded. “Evil women as well. As for the rest, our entire race is corrupted by original sin. This is something more. This is Satanism, the worship of evil. I have learned that these Satanists call themselves the Unholy Way.”