Aegypt

by John Crowley

  She turned in her chair. Behind her on the bookshelves were several old-fashioned letter files, the kind with orange backs and black-and-white spatterdash spines, little brass clips to close them with, and leather tabs on their sides to draw them out by. She chose one of these, opened it, and after a little search amid its contents drew out a twelve-part pie chart like the unfinished one she had been explicating for Spofford, only all different, different domiciles housing different guests differently disposed. She placed it next to Spofford’s, and cradling her brow with one hand and drumming with the fingers of the other, she studied both together.

  Pisces: Love and Death. That’s how Val thought of the sign. Chopin was a Pisces. Only here was a commonsense ascendant, Taurus with Venus in the House of Life.

  Well, she was a good girl, and probably a survivor, but a little crazy; more crazy than she probably knew. Moon in Scorpio: Scorpio is Sex and Death.

  She had better be careful.

  The snow continued, growing heavier, through that day and the night; the big plows came out toward morning, sailing ghostlike behind their bright lights, their blades casting aside long wakes of snow. Next day when the sun shone at last the world had been neatly packed up in it; Spofford’s sheep were not so round, or so white, or so soft, as the hills and woods seen from the kitchen windows of Arcady where Rosie stood waiting.

  ‘Pst,’ said the tall radiator.

  ‘Pst,’ said Sam, half in and half out of her snowsuit but ready enough to go that Rosie needed only to encase her upper half and put her out the door. The snowsuit’s arms and hood hung down like a pelt Sam was shedding.

  ‘Psst,’ said the radiator.

  ‘Pssst,’ said Sam, and laughed.

  ‘There he is,’ said Rosie, gratefully, ‘right on time.’

  ‘I wanna see.’

  Rosie lifted her up to see a little red car turn in at the gate, fishtailing somewhat in the heedless snowplow’s leavings piled there in the driveway.

  ‘I hope they’re careful,’ Rosie said to Sam, pulling up the Siamese twin of her snowsuit and tucking Sam into it.

  ‘It’s slipry.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Daddy can drive.’

  ‘He can?’

  ‘You could come too.’

  ‘Not this morning. I’ll see you later.’

  Rosie hurried Sam through the house to the vestibule and swung open the heavy front door. In the drive the little red car idled, trembling as though with cold, and breathing whitely from its tailpipe. Mike made his way toward the house carefully, holding out gloved hands for balance.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi. Okay? Hi, hi Sam. Hey.’ He gathered up the wrapped bundle of his daughter and squeezed her; Rosie, embracing herself, cold in the open doorway, waited for their colloquy. Sam had news. Mike listened.

  ‘So what’s up today?’ Rosie said at last. ‘What’s the schedule?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mike said, looking not at Rosie but at Sam, whose fingers were in his mustache. ‘Maybe build a snowman, huh? Or a snow fort.’

  ‘Okay!’ Sam said, wriggling to get down. ‘Or a snow car! Or a snow hops pittal.’

  ‘Hey, but not here,’ Mike said. He put her down. ‘We’ll go home and make one.’

  ‘Hey,’ Rosie said to him, warningly.

  ‘Okay.’

  She gave Mike a zippered case. ‘Blankie. Bottle for later. Don’t give her milk in it while she naps; dentist says. Book. Stuff.’

  ‘Okay,’ Mike said. ‘Ready?’

  Sam, standing between them, looked from one to the other, still new at this choice.

  ‘Bye, Sam. See you later.’

  ‘Come on, Sam. Mommie’s cold in the doorway. Let’s let her go inside.’

  Sam still would make no voluntary move to go, so Mike at last with a cheerful Whee! picked her up again and carried her off like a pirate, almost taking a header on the snowy path. The little car harrumphed. Mike climbed into the driver’s side, pushing Sam in before him, must be a little crowded in there Rosie thought, but she knew Sam liked that car.

  Rosie waved. Bye-bye. She smiled. She waved again, a grownup’s wave, for the car, no hard feelings.

  She went inside and shut the door. The last segment of caught winter air went off down the hall.

  Boney stood at the hall’s end, hands behind his back.

  ‘It’s sort of okay,’ Rosie said. ‘Sort of like having a good babysitter. Free.’ She hadn’t uncrossed her arms, they still hugged her. ‘He never spent this much time with her before. Never tried this hard to please her.’

  Boney nodded, slowly, as though considering this. He wore an old old turtleneck sweater, its stretched neck-opening far too wide for his own skinny turtle’s neck which protruded from it. ‘Did you have anything planned for this morning?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, pondering. ‘I’d like to have your advice about something. Talk something over.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’

  ‘What say?’

  ‘I said sure,’ Rosie said, releasing herself and coming to Boney’s side, no need to make him shout.

  ‘Sure. What kind of something?’

  ‘If you’re sure you’ve got nothing else to occupy you,’ Boney said, watching her closely.

  ‘I haven’t got anything else,’ Rosie said smiling, taking the arm he offered her and squeezing it gently. ‘You know I don’t.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this might be a good opportunity then. We’ll just go down along to my office there.’

  Every time, every time Mike went off with Sam, Rosie felt it, this cloud of guilt and loss that was absurd and unusable, a cloud she refused to stand under and yet couldn’t get rid of – it was like that dream she had used repeatedly to have in the first months of Sam’s life, that somebody with a right to judge had decided that Sam wasn’t hers, or that Rosie wasn’t competent to raise her and would have to give her up: the same sense of guilt and loss, the awful shriving off of her adulthood, and at the same time that feeling of being once again free and alone, like a child – a sneaky sense of freedom and solitary possibility that was no substitute for Sam, but was there anyway. Now either this cloud came from that dream, or both this cloud and that dream came from the same place, and what was that? Guilt, guilt over not wanting to grow up, could that be it; not wanting in your own secret kid’s heart to be double or triple but only and forever single – and then loss, too, loss of everything dear to you, everything earned in growing up.

  Everything, everything dear to you but yourself.

  ‘Here we are,’ Boney said, opening narrow double doors and showing her in.

  Rosie had never been in what was called the office, though Boney had often been spoken of, when she was a child, as being there, occupied there, not to be disturbed there; she had used to picture him denned and brooding like a dark mage, but supposed now, hearing again in memory those injunctions, that Boney had probably been taking a nap.

  And in fact in the corner there was a buttoned leather chaise longue with an afghan thrown over it which looked pretty cozy.

  ‘The office,’ Boney said.

  It had once been and was still mostly a library; handsome bookcases of some light wood reached up to a coffered ceiling all around the room, even in between the deep tall windows that looked out to the garden; and they were all full, though not entirely with books, there were letter files and what seemed to be shoe boxes, and piles of old newspapers and magazines on the shelves as well.

  ‘Mike comes every week, does he?’ Boney asked, moving a pile of mail from the seat of a leather swivel chair.

  ‘Yup.’ She glimpsed what he might be driving at. ‘I mean just temporarily. Really, really, you know, I don’t intend to hang on here the rest of your life. It’s just until . . .’

  Until what?

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Boney said, having laboriously cleared himself a seat, and taken it. ‘You’re more than welcome. I was only wondering – i
f you are pretty sure you’re not taking up again with Mike – how you’re fixed for money.’

  Rosie sat down on the chaise longue.

  ‘The little school,’ Boney said.

  ‘That wasn’t really steady.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What I was going to suggest – well, let’s start from the beginning.’ He leaned back in the chair, it creaked stiffly, seeming as old and in need of oiling as Boney. ‘You understand about the Rasmussen Foundation.’

  ‘Well, I know there is such a thing. I mean I don’t really know how it works.’

  ‘It’s just the family money, what’s left of it, that was put into a nonprofit corporation, and used for funding worthwhile sorts of things. Things my brother or I were interested in or that the community needed.’ He grinned his ivory-toothed grin, and gestured toward a trio of steel filing cabinets that stood incongruously against the wood paneling. ‘That’s our business nowadays, you see,’ he said. ‘Giving away money, instead of making it.’

  ‘Whom do you give it to?’ Rosie asked, wondering for a moment if he intended to offer her a grant, and how he would justify that.

  ‘Oh, people apply,’ Boney said. ‘You’d be surprised, the requests we get. Most of it goes to the same people every year, continuing grants: the Blackbury Jambs Library, the wildlife sanctuary, the Parr Home. The Woods.’

  He glanced up at her, the wrinkles rising along his spotted pate.

  ‘There’s a board of directors,’ he went on. ‘They meet once a year, and approve the grants. But it’s me who sends them the proposals. They pretty much approve what I send them. If they’re all in the proper form, and all.’

  ‘You’re not going to give me one, are you,’ Rosie said laughing. ‘For being a good guy and a help to the community?’

  ‘Well, no,’ Boney said. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, exactly. What I was coming to was that in the last couple of years the proposals just haven’t been getting to the board.’ He slowly laced his hands together. ‘And there’s other business that’s not getting done, that ought to be done.’

  ‘You need help? If you need help . . .’

  ‘I was going to offer you a job.’

  Boney at his big desk, hands folded in his lap, head almost lower than his shoulders, was dark against the tall windows and the snow. It struck Rosie for the first time with clarity that Boney was certainly, and not long from now, going to die.

  ‘I should help out,’ she said. ‘Just for room and board. I would. I’d be happy to.’ A lump had begun to form in her throat.

  ‘No, no,’ Boney said. ‘There’s too much work. A full-time job. Think it over.’

  Rosie thrust her cold hands in between her knees. There was, of course, nothing to think over.

  ‘I hope,’ Boney said softly, ‘you’re not insulted. Working for wages for the family. I do it, Rosie. It’s sort of all that’s left.’

  Now tears gathered swiftly in her eyes. ‘Sure I’m insulted,’ she said. ‘Sure. Say, listen, isn’t it really freezing in here? Do you ever start up that fireplace?’

  It was clad in green serpentine, and a brass screen in the shape of a peacock stood before it. There was a brass basket of kindling and logs, and a set of brass tools, and a box of long matches. ‘I never do,’ Boney said, rising effortfully and going to look at the fireplace as though it had just then opened up in the wall. ‘Mrs. Pisky doesn’t like to see them lit. Sparks on the rug. Smoke in the drapes.’

  Rosie had knelt before it and moved aside the peacock. She pulled open the flue. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘Okay,’ Boney said doubtfully. ‘If you’ll take the blame.’

  ‘I will,’ Rosie said. ‘How about some paper?’

  Boney turned back to his desk, and after sorting briefly through the mail, brought her most of it. ‘One thing, when you’re thinking it over,’ he said, ‘that I thought might interest you. You remember I told you that Sandy Kraft once worked for the Foundation.’

  ‘I think you said so. What did he do?’

  ‘Oh, research. Various things. In the old days.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Anyway. Now his copyrights are owned by the Foundation. And every now and then we get some interest in them. The reprint rights. And I thought, since you seemed so interested in them yourself.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She set fire to the mail and kindling and wood with one of the long matches. The chimney drew nicely. ‘I see.’

  ‘And more,’ Boney said. ‘More than that.’ He stroked his bald head. ‘His house. It belongs now to the Foundation, and nobody has been in it since he died. To see what’s there.’ Rosie couldn’t see his eyes behind the fire reflected in his blue glasses. ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘So. Think it over, why don’t you, and if you think . . .’

  ‘Boney,’ she said. ‘I’m on.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Well, we’ll have to talk about hours, and salary and all . . .’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Rosie said. ‘I mean yes, of course we will, sure. But I’m on.’ She smiled at him reassuringly.

  ‘Hmp,’ said Boney, looking down at her where she knelt on the hearth, pleased or a little disconcerted by her swift decisiveness. ‘Well. Okay.’ He put his hands in his pockets. ‘Good.’

  He turned away to the bookshelves behind her. Rosie began to notice things in the room she hadn’t noticed before. The steel filing cabinets seemed somewhat to be bulging, just able to contain their contents. There were several cardboard boxes in the corners, which seemed to be full of waste paper, or maybe unanswered mail, neglected proposals.

  The Woods, huh. Mike had hinted that The Woods was in some financial difficulties. She warmed slightly to think she might have some power over them. If only an expediting power. Or a delaying one.

  ‘This,’ Boney said, returning with a book he had taken from the shelf. ‘You might be interested in this.’

  It was called Sit Down, Sorrow, and it was by Fellowes Kraft.

  ‘A limited edition,’ Boney said. ‘A memoir. Just a couple hundred copies printed by a small press. You might learn something there.’

  ‘Well,’ Rosie said. ‘Wow.’ There were a few photographs tipped in. The deckle edges of the fat paper it was printed on were crumbling in tiny splinters. Rosie opened it and glanced at a page.

  I am sometimes asked how one can keep at his fingertips all the details not only of historical event but of dress and food and custom and architecture and commerce that are needed to make a historical novel convincing. Well, I suppose enough notebooks and aides-memoire of various kinds can be used, but in my case, even though I don’t have a particularly capacious brain, I carry all that I need within, for I have these many years practiced a system of mnemonics that has proved capable of retaining an almost limitless number of facts in an ordered way, and which works in what strikes many people as a very curious manner indeed.

  ‘It’s too cold now,’ Boney said, and it took Rosie a moment to understand that he was still talking about Fellowes Kraft’s house. ‘It’s too cold now, with the heat off and the electricity. But in the spring.’

  ‘Sure,’ Rosie said. What was that expression in Bitten Apples, that they used for the old Queen? In her crazy white makeup and red wig and jewels and rings . . . A fabulous monster. That’s what Boney is, she thought, watching him warm his old claws at the fire she had made. A fabulous monster.

  ‘In the spring,’ he said, seeming to have fallen partly asleep. ‘In the spring. You’ll go in, and see.’

  ‘Each of the twelve signs,’ Val said to Beau Brachman, squatting uncomfortably on Beau’s floor and dying for a smoke, ‘each of the twelve can be sort of summed up or reduced to a single word.’

  ‘One word?’ said Beau, cheek in hand and smiling.

  ‘Well, one verb, I mean, with I. Like “I do” or “I can.” Every sign has one, that sort of sums up that sign.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Beau said. ‘Like . . .’
>
  ‘Like I’m about to tell you,’ Val said.

  She had been brought into the Jambs on this sloppy January day by Rosie Mucho, who had left Val to make her visits while Rosie did business with Allan Butterman, her own and Boney’s; later she and Val were to go together to the Volcano in Cascadia and consume plates of South Seas tidbits and drink Mai Tais in the bead-curtained lounge, while Rosie caught Val up on her troubles and triumphs.

  ‘Aries,’ she said. ‘The first sign. Aries says I am. The first sign, right, the youngest of all. Then Taurus, Taurus says I want. Material desires, see, very big with Taurus. Get the idea? Gemini, Gemini says . . .’ She suddenly looked at Beau sideways and raised an admonishing finger. ‘You’re not listening,’ she sang out warningly.

  ‘I hear you, Val,’ Beau said. ‘I hear you.’

  ‘I know you think this stuff is bullshit.’

  ‘No, I just think . . .’

  ‘You think the whole thing is a big prison. That’s what you told Mama.’

  ‘I know it’s a big prison. Destinies. Stars. Signs. Houses. Little words and verbs. All that you’re saying, Val, with all of that stuff, is This is the way you’re stuck. But you’re not stuck. There’s a word for all of this stuff you work with: Heimarmene. A Greek word. It means fate or destiny, but it means prison too.

  And the thing is not only to understand where you’re at – what your sign is and your destiny right now – but to break through it too, break through the spheres that bind you in.’ He had gotten excited enough to rise from his crosslegged ease. ‘I have all those twelve signs in me, Val. I have all those verbs. All those seven planets, or eight or nine. They’re all mine. If I want to be a Taurus, I will be. Or a Leo or a Scorpio. I don’t have to work through all twelve in endless lifetimes. That’s what they want.’ He gestured upward. ‘But it’s not so.’

  ‘They?’ Val asked.

  Still smiling, Beau slowly put his forefinger to his lips. Silence.

  ‘You nut,’ Val said, marveling. She laughed aloud. ‘You crazy nut.’

  ‘Oh listen,’ Beau said, struck by a sudden thought. ‘Are you by any chance going to the bank today? The one on Bridges Street, is that yours? Because can you make a deposit for us? We’re holding all these January checks we just got . . .’