by Gene Wolfe
At this the old man looked more doleful than ever. “By what means, O my son, can we poor mortals offer Allah a gift equal to those he has given us?”
Now the boy thought again, scratching his head as if he feared his mind slept there, rubbing his chin and pulling his ear; and at last he said, “O my father, I do not know. Is it possible? Tell me.”
“It is, my son.” The old man’s gaze, which had been upon the boy’s face until that time, was now upon the dust before him. “When we return to Allah a gift he has given us, we make him a gift as fine as that he gave, do we not?”
“Ah!” said the boy, and his eyes flashed like sunlight on dark pools. “Thou hast cut the knot, O my father! In all the world, is there any like to thee?”
“Many, many. My son, I would give such a gift to Allah. In the city to the north there stands a mosque like no other, the Madrasa of Sultan Hasan. Here the wisest gather to speak of the will of Allah, and His knowledge, and the knowledge of all the world. Young men come there to hear them, that they may become wise in their turn, and when they have sat long, they may question them, and so become wiser still.”
At this the boy’s eyes grew very wide.
“O my son, for seven years I give thee to Allah. Thou shalt go to the mosque I have named, and my blessing go with thee. Learn there. Betimes thou must labor, even as I labor at my keyboard, for the belly must be fed. As thou strain and sweat, thou must repeat in thine own ear that thou hast come to learn, and not to labor. And in seven years, if Allah grant seven years more of life, I will come for thee. If thou hast learned well, I shall die full of joy. But if thou has not, tears and sorrow will be my lot in this life and in paradise.”
“I will learn, O my father,” the boy promised. And before the sun rose again, he had set out for the city; and though his heart was sad when he recalled his mother, it leaped for joy to think of the learning that would be his.
A year passed, and another, and another. The old man labored, recalling often the son he had given to Allah. Now it seemed to him that his son would surely grow discouraged upon the path of wisdom; he himself had not traveled far along it, yet he well knew how steep were its slopes and how rock-strewn the way. And now it seemed to him that within a day or two the boy would surely return, making some excuse, and he told himself ten score times that he must have hard words for the boy if it were so—and knew in his heart that they could never pass his lips. On such days he watched the road for hours. But the boy never came.
And again he imagined his son sitting at the feet of the wisest of the wise in that great mosque, the Madrasa of Sultan Hasan; and he was happy, and went about his work with increased vigor. In this way, year followed year.
At last it seemed to him that seven had passed, and more than seven, and he went to his neighbor and spoke of the boy; and when his neighbor had praised him, as all did, the old man said, “How long has it been since we have seen the light of his face? Five years, I think? I have lost track of the reckoning. Six? Has it been as many as six?”
“More,” declared his neighbor. “Long and long. Behold! My picktruck that is old shone like a jewel when thy son left us.”
The old man could scarcely speak, his voice shook so. “Seven? Has it been seven?”
“What is seven years to a picktruck?” replied his neighbor.
The old man left, confessing in his heart that he himself was but another such laboring machine and begging forgiveness for it. On the next day he dug up the fifteen milpiasters he had buried in his floor, and set out. The road was not short, nor was it gracious to poor travelers; yet he reached the city at last, and asking directions of those who bore kind faces, he made his way to the Madrasa of Sultan Hasan, and sat of a long afternoon hearing the wise discourse on Al Qur’an and much more, and was greatly improved thereby. Ever he looked for the boy, but he did not see him.
Betimes the light faded, and the wise departed one by one, and the old man also, to seek a place in which to lay his head.
Down one street he went, and up another, and chancing to look into a bookshop beheld one tall and lean and of serious mien, whose beard was touched with gray. Their eyes met, and both knew.
Of their embraces and the many things they said, a long tale might be made; but at last they sat together with coffee between them. Then quoth he who had been the boy, “O my father, I thought thee dead when the seventh year passed. Had I known thou still lived, I would have returned to the south long ago, and carried thee to my house in this city—the house in which thou shalt repose this night. Thou came not, and I thought, surely he is dead.”
“O my son,” said the old man, “as each year passed I resolved to let thee remain a little longer, that thou might grow in wisdom yet more at the feet of the wise. Another year, and another year, until this. Now I feel the hand of death upon me, and I would not die as a frog in a well, by all forgotten.”
“Thou shalt not die at all,” he who had been the boy declared, “but bide here full many a year. But, O my father, I have sinned against thee.”
“It cannot be!” the old man declared.
“It is.” And he who had been the boy sat in silence while the traffic of the street clamored on all uncaring.
Until at last the old man said. “Thou canst not speak, my son. I see it. Do not speak. Let us rather rejoice, and talk of thy mother, and the days when thou wert small.”
“I will not deceive thee more, O my father.” He who had been the boy lifted the fragrant cup yet left it untasted. “I have betrayed thee, my father. Betrayal atop betrayal I shall not set. To this city I came worn and hungry, and thus before going to the mosque as thou had instructed me I looked first for employment that I might be fed. In this street, I beheld an old man unloading a flitter. Hastening to him, I said, ‘Grandfather, thou art of years, and the boxes weighty. Permit me to assist thee.’ For I hoped that he would give that with which I might eat when the task was done.
“He stood aside, and while I worked we talked. And when the last had been unloaded, he bid me carry them into this shop, and when I had carried the last, he bid me open them. They held books, such as thou seest.”
He who had been the boy sighed, and the old man nodded.
“I put them in their places, as he directed me, and as I labored he discoursed upon their contents. Some came from Baghdad, some from Damascus, some from Frankish lands even to the other side of Earth, some from the stars of heaven. All were wondrous in my sight, and he saw it. He bid me sleep in the shop that night, as many a night thereafter, with a cudgel by my side to protect our wares.”
The old man sipped his coffee, hot, strong, and very sweet. “There is nothing shameful in this, O my son.”
“My master died. It was my loss, and all the world’s, for he was both learned and compassionate. I took his shop in charge, and delivered all profit therefrom, which was never great, to her who had been his wife. Too soon she followed him. His shop became mine, and the house that had been his also. It is not large, but thou will ever find a place there, O my father.”
“Nor is there dishonor in that,” the old man declared, “but the contrary.”
“O my father, thou sent me to this city that I might sit at the feet of the wise in the mosque. I have been there to worship many times. But I have never done as thou wished, my father. When the call to prayer came, I went—or oft times went not. And when my prayers were done, I returned to this shop in which thou discovered me. I have done wrong, and it is no childish matter, I know. What is thy judgment? That punishment which thou decree, I will accept without murmur. It will be less than I deserve.”
The old man did not speak again until he had drunk the last drop, and eaten the grounds as well, for he followed the old ways. And when the last were gone, he said only, “O my son, I must think on this.”
Next morning he rose early and made his way to the Madrasa of the Sultan Hasan. All morning he sat in silence, harkening to the wise as he had the day before; but when the sun neared its zenith, “O my unc
le,” quoth one, “thy beard is gray. Thou hast seen much of life. Is it not so?”
The old man acknowledged that it was.
“And yet thou harken to us, and never speak. Whether thou hast come to teach us or to learn, we would hear thee.”
“O revered sheikh,” quoth the old man, “know that I am sorely troubled. I am a simple man. To mere compilers and codes, to interrupts, subroutines, and iterations has my life been given. Now I must judge a weighty matter, and know not the way.”
“Speak on,” quoth the one to whom he had spoken.
“Upon the one hand, my son has disobeyed, O revered sheikh,” quoth the old man. “Upon the other, he has done well and is deserving of approbation. Upon the first hand, I sought to honor Allah, to whom all praise. Upon the second, he confesses his fault.”
“Thy voice breaks,” observed he to whom the old man had spoken.
“I love him dearly, O revered sheikh, and no man ever had a better son. Yet he did wrong, and I know not which way to turn.”
Others had fallen silent to listen as the old man spoke, and for a time they discussed the matter. Then came the call to prayer. All prayed, and when the prayer was done, he to whom the old man had spoken declared, “This is a troubled matter, O my uncle. Thy son hath transgressed.”
The old man nodded.
“And his transgression was against Allah and thee. Is it not so?”
The old man nodded as before.
“Yet he is true of tongue, contrite of heart, and a good Moslem?”
The old man nodded a third time, and while others spoke he to whom he had spoken sat stroking his beard. Ere long, the speech of those others turned to other topics, and when that time came, quoth he, “O my uncle, there is one in this city whom we reckon wisest of the wise. Matters of great difficulty are brought to him. Let us bring thine, thou and I.”
And they went, down one street and up another, and so came to a certain shop. He to whom the old man had spoken entered first, and the old man after him.
And behold!
It seemed to Michael that this story had been intended for him from the beginning. It was true that he had not remained long at the university. Money had been in short supply, and he was a member of no prioritized group. During his long wait at the bus stop, he turned the story over and over in his mind, with all that he could recall of the first two, which he had read years before.
Next morning, the young woman returned to the store. Michael looked at her, then looked again and snapped his fingers. “What is it?” she asked.
“I’ve been trying to think who you reminded me of,” he explained. “It’s my teacher, the teacher I had when I was a kid. I mean, she was really a machine, and she was older than you are, and the principal was the machine, too, like for everybody, but—but—”
“I understand.” She grinned at him. “Were you sent to the principal a lot? You must have been a bad boy.”
“Well, sometimes.” He discovered that he was blushing, something he had not done in years. “He could never remember my name until I told him, but she called me Mick. I never could understand that. I mean, since it was all the same machine, really.”
The young woman’s grin had softened to a smile. “I do, Mick. May I have some of your coffee?”
“Yes. Certainly.” He hurried over to show her. “There are nice chairs, and reading lights, and—and everything. Sweetener and sugar and real cream. So people can sit down and look at the books, you know. And—and everything.”
“But not the big book in the end window.” She was still smiling. “The brown one.”
“I’d have to stay and watch.” Michael decided he could use some coffee too; his mouth felt dry. He poured a cup for her and another for himself.
“Do you eat the grounds, Mick?”
“Do I … ? That story. You read it.”
“Uh-huh.” Her smile had become impish.
“It’s been bothering me.” He smiled in return. “It bothers me more than the teaching machine ever did. Or Junior Teacher Huggins or Principal Maxwell. Will you—I feel silly saying it here, but won’t you please sit down?”
She did, and accepted the coffee he had poured for her.
“Would you like sweetener? Cream?”
“Honey, Mick. I see you have honey over there.”
He got it for her, and sat beside her on the sofa. “Do you really want to see that book? Are you thinking of buying it?” He tried to gauge the cost of her clothing and jewelry, and failed.
“No,” she said.
“Then I can’t. I mean I shouldn’t. It really is a very valuable book. But just for a minute or two, while I watch.”
She sipped her coffee, and smiled, and added more honey, and smiled again.
“If you read that story, it sounds like me. Like my life. Not exactly, of course, but …”
“Uncomfortably close.”
“That’s it. That’s it exactly.”
“The book does that, you see. That’s what makes it so valuable. It’s not just its age. It knows, somehow, and we were never sure whether it was just opening itself to the right place—that’s what a man I knew thought—or whether it created the stories. Made them to order, so to speak, the way you print your books. I think it does both.”
He was speechless for a moment, then remembered to sip his coffee, and spilled a little, and winced. At last he said, “It seems to be saying that what I’m doing—this bookstore—is right. But it doesn’t feel right. Or not as right as it ought to. I think the man in the story …That he didn’t feel right either, until his father came.”
She nodded.
“So I thought of getting a cat or something. But I don’t know.” He sighed, and ran his free hand through his hair. “Only what you said about the stories, that can’t be right. There was one I read a long time ago, about a boy in class, and what was a princess? Only it wasn’t all there. I could never read the end.”
“Tell me,” she said, and he recounted as much as he could remember of “The Tale of Prince Know-Nothing.”
When he had finished, she said, “I can tell you how it ended. Prince Know-Nothing decided he should go in search of a princess; but a thousand things conspired to stop him, and he never did. At the end, a very plain girl in a very plain dress kissed him, and after the wedding he discovered that she was a princess who had gone forth in search of a prince.”
“You read that one, too,” Michael said.
She nodded. “Did you read any more?”
“Just one other one.” He paused, not sure he remembered it at all. “It was about a dwarf and a sphinx. They had children—he gave birth to them, which used to puzzle me. And he wanted to be a sphinx like her, and at the end his children made him one, and it was wonderful.”
“It was saying you ought to have children.” For a moment she looked pensive. “I’ve never had any,” she said.
“I haven’t either. I mean, I’d like some, but I’ve never been married.”
“I’d like some too, Mick.” Quite suddenly she kissed his cheek; and when he turned his head in surprise, his lips. “There,” she said when they parted, “and now I’m through fooling you. You’ve never been married.”
He shook his head.
“I have. I was married for almost fifty years, Mick, but we never had children. There were reasons, but the reasons don’t matter anymore, and the children do. We had love, and the love was enough, but now that’s gone too, and I want love again. I want it back.”
“You—you’re …” Michael felt as though the whole world had dropped from under him.
“I’m eighty-seven now, Mick, and I used to be a teacher before I married. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of cell therapy. They go in and clean up the nuclei, and your cells start dividing again, and you grow younger instead of older.”
Michael managed to nod. “I’ve read about it. It’s terribly expensive.”
“It was. Fortunately, I’m terribly rich. Does it bother you that I�
�m so much older than you are?”
He shook his head desperately.
“It doesn’t bother me, either.” Her hand found his. “Because I’m not. I mean biologically. And I don’t want to buy that book because I own it already. My name’s Caitlin Higgins. It should be in your files.”
He could not speak.
“But please don’t call me Caitlin, or something awful, like Junior Teacher Huggins.”
She had smiled, and he felt that he could look at that smile forever, and it would always be new, and always magic.
“My friends call me Kitty,” she said.
Black Shoes
I heard this story from an old college acquaintance, a man I had not spoken to for twenty years. I do not vouch for its veracity, but I do—I will—vouch for his: he believed every word of it. My questions, of which there were many, I will omit for brevity’s sake. His answers and explanations I will insert in his narrative.
You left the university and went to work as soon as you got your undergraduate degree, he said. I did not. I got a master’s—two, actually—and my Ph.D. Once I had it, I was able to get a tenure-track job teaching. I got tenure, and I’m still there. As I will be for the rest of my life. This happened just before my ex-wife and I went on vacation. Most of it the day I left the hotel to come back, really, but it started a day or two before we left.
I described our trip—she felt I needed a rest—to the class, and told the students Mr. Durkin would take over while I was gone. That was Gelt’s opportunity. I’d learned not to call on him when he waved his hand with enthusiasm, but I’d been softened up by thoughts of a little time off, and I did. He presented the theory that our ancestors were aquatic in all its preposterous detail, just as he had read it in some crank book, and challenged me to refute it.
I had to, of course. As I did, presenting the overwhelming case for the arboreal background of pre-humans and ending, rather generously, by conceding that all life originated in the sea.