Innocents Aboard

by Gene Wolfe

  And a grey bitch-wolf came out of the dark and fawned on the

  Only Son!

  —KIPLING

  The Eleventh City

  April 18, 2003

  Franklin A. Abraham, Ph.D., Chair

  Comparative Religion and Folklore

  U. of Nebraska Lincoln

  Lincoln NE 68501

  Estados Unidos

  Dear Frank,

  I am in the little town of San Marcos del Lago, in the province of Córdoba. You can write me here poste restante. I have asked that my mail be forwarded from Buenos Aires, but you never can tell. E-mail should reach me if phone service is ever restored.

  This is the happy hunting-ground of the folklorist, exactly as Adolfo promised—not only is there the rich folklore of the Native American tribes of the Chaco (who are actually inclined to be rather close-mouthed with a stranger) but Spanish folklore and Spanish-American folklore, which is often a strange mixture of the two. Every day I rove the town or range the countryside on horseback, a method of operation I find much more effectual than driving around in my rented jeep. At night I haunt the cantinas, nursing a cerveza or three and buying one for anybody with a good story. The plentiful fruits of my labors you shall read when my book appears. What will follow in this present letter is somewhat different. I give it to you now in the hope of obtaining your advice. To tell the truth, I do not know what to do with it. Is it American or Spanish-American? Is it folklore at all, properly considered? Advise me, Frank, if you have any counsel to give.

  From time to time I have seen an elderly man, quite well dressed, drinking in the cantina closest to this house. Somebody or other told me that he was a gringo, too (he is from St. Louis originally, as it turns out) and so I made no effort to engage him in conversation. He is generally quiet, pays cash, and keeps to himself. His name is Wendell Zane, he asked me to call him Dell, and for the present that is all you need to know about him.

  As I was riding past the old Catholic cemetery yesterday evening, I was accosted by a madwoman. The sun was low, the shadows were long, and the incident was unsettling to say the least. She shouted at me in a language that was neither Spanish nor English, shrieked like a banshee, and tried to pull me off my horse; and when my horse bolted, she threw stones at us in much the same way that a rifle throws bullets. If this were some tale of romance, no doubt she would be beautiful. Believe me, Frank, she is anything but.

  In the cantina that evening I mentioned the incident to the barman, suggesting as diplomatically as I could that she be confined for her own protection. He shrugged and said that it had been tried many times and was perfectly useless. “Soon she gets away, señor, always.” He glanced at the man I had been told was a fellow American as he spoke. “She is so strong! Nothing can hold her.”

  Later Dell introduced himself. My recorder was on by that time, so I can give you his story as he told it:

  I’m a civil engineer, Doctor Cooper, and I came down here when they were running the new line to Tucuman. I was pretty close to retirement already, and I made friends here and got myself a young wife—that’s why I’m in San Marcos—and what with one thing and another, I never went back. The trains here run over a couple of bridges I helped design and build, and I could say the same thing just about anywhere north of La Pampa.

  Anyway, it happened the second year I was here. Or maybe it was the third, I’m not sure anymore. I was ready to pack it in after a long day on the job when I heard a funny noise way down the track, and all the men stopped work to cross themselves. I asked about it, and they said it was el jabalí encadenados, the pig-in-chains. They said it ran up and down the tracks all over the world and brought bad luck wherever it went. Well, I told them I’d done a lot of work around railroads in the States and I’d never heard of it. And they said maybe it hadn’t gotten there yet, because it had been looking around their country for a long time.

  Next day we lost Pepe Cardoza and two more. It was one of those damned stupid accidents where the plans say you’ve got to build A before you even start on B, but somebody decides he’ll go ahead with B anyhow, because A is waiting for parts. The welds cracked and the beams fell, like any damned fool could have told you they would. And they fell right on three good men. That night I heard the noise again, and I—well, I got out of bed and got my clothes on and went out on the line to have a look.

  After a while the girl I was shacking up with then caught up with me. This wasn’t my wife, you understand. I hadn’t met my wife yet when all this happened. This was just a girl, not bad-looking, who had slept around some. A friend had told me to buy her a couple of drinks and she might show me a good time that night. So I did, and I sort of hooked on to her, or she hooked on to me. Her name was Jacinta.

  Anyway my shutting the door woke her up, and she thought I might be sneaking out to see another woman. So I told her about the pig, a sort of ghost pig according to the men I’d talked to, and she said she’d heard of it and she knew a woman that was real good with ghosts, she’d talk to her tomorrow but it would probably cost me money. I said all right, we’ll try her if it’s not too much.

  So this old witch was there waiting for me when I got back the next day. I told her about the pig-in-chains, everything the men had said, and she said there were a lot of things like that and she’d have to find out. She threw her head back and sang to herself without much music in it, drumming on the table. That lasted a long time. I remember Jacinta and I about did for a pack of cigarettes waiting for her to stop it and tell us something.

  Then she shut up. It was dark out by that time. This is going to be sort of hard to tell you about.

  [Here I assured Dell at some length that I would give full credit to whatever he might tell me.]

  It got to be too quiet. Usually you could hear somebody singing in the cantina down the street, and street vendors, and so forth and so on; but there wasn’t any of that anymore. Just quiet little noises that told you there were other things in the room that you couldn’t see. It was like rats in the walls, only you knew it wasn’t rats. There was an electric light over the table, just the bare bulb, we used to have them all over, and it got dim. It didn’t go out, but it didn’t give near as much light as it should have either. It was like the voltage had dropped.

  Then the witch got to talking to the things we couldn’t see. Some of it was in Spanish, and I remember her saying, “Qué busca él?” over and over. A lot of it was names, or at any rate that was how it seemed to me. Funny names, and maybe they were Toba names. I don’t know.

  Finally she came out of it. You’re not going to believe any of this, and I didn’t either. But this is what she said. She said that back when Christ walked this earth he had put devils into a bunch of pigs, and the pigs had drowned themselves to get rid of them. The men who owned the pigs had tried to save them, and they had saved this one, pulling it out of the water before it died. After that it couldn’t kill itself anymore, because the devil inside wouldn’t let it. The whole story’s in the Bible somewhere. I looked it up and read it once, but that was a long time ago.

  [As did I, Frank, after Dell and I separated. Slightly condensed from the Fifth Chapter of the Gospel According to Mark:

  [Now a great herd of swine was there on the mountainside, feeding. And the devils kept entreating Him, saying, “Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.” And Jesus gave them leave. And the devils came out and entered into the swine; and the herd, in number about two thousand, rushed down with great violence into the sea, and were drowned.

  [But the swineherds fled and reported it; and people came out to see what was happening. And they came to Jesus and saw the man who had been afflicted by the devil sitting clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. And they began to entreat him to depart from their midst … . And he departed and began to publish in the Ten Cities all that Jesus had done for him. And all marveled.]

  This pig, she said, was still alive. The devil inside wouldn’t let it die, and because t
hat devil was in it, it knew more than any man. People had tried to catch it and pen it up and they had even fastened big chains around its neck, but it had broken all those chains and run away, always looking for somebody that would free it from the devil Jesus had put into it. It brought bad luck, naturally, because it carried that devil with it wherever it want.

  I asked her if she couldn’t do something about it, and she said she’d try but she’d have to have a piece of the blessed sacrament to work with. She said the priest would never give her one because he didn’t trust her. Jacinta said she’d get it, steal it some way.

  To make a long story short, Jacinta did it the next Sunday, and the witch tacked it onto a long cross she’d made out of two sticks that she could use about like a leveling rod. After that we’d make a date, her and Jacinta and me, and wait along the tracks someplace at night, usually for three or four hours. It must have gone on like that for about a month before we finally got it.

  It didn’t look like a pig, not to me anyway. There was a green glow, with something dark behind it that I never could see right. But it stopped when the witch stepped out onto the tracks with her cross, and she talked to it a little and the dark thing said, “Cast me into the woman.” I had never heard a voice like that before, and I’ve never heard another one like that since. I don’t want to, either.

  There was a lot of talk about that between Jacinta and the witch and me. But eventually the witch did it, putting it into Jacinta like it wanted. After that, we never heard the pig-in-chains again, and I don’t think anybody else has heard it either.

  And that’s all there is to tell, Doctor Cooper. You saw Jacinta today, so you know the rest.

  That was his story, Frank. I asked him whether she had consented, and he said she had, that the witch had promised her she would be wiser than anyone alive and would live forever, and she had believed her. I did not ask him how much he had paid the witch or what had become of her, but he volunteered the information that she had died not long after that. He did not say how, but there was a certain dark satisfaction in his voice when he talked about it.

  As I said earlier, Frank, I would appreciate your advice. Is this folklore? The madwoman is real enough; I saw her and was stoned by her. I still have the bruises. If it is folklore, is it Spanish-American? I heard it from an American in this godforsaken little town in Argentina, and I suspect that I might have heard much the same tale from the barman if Dell himself had not been present.

  Should I put it in my book or just try to forget about it?

  I trust that everything is going well back in Lincoln. Give Joe and Rusty, and the whole department, my regards and tell them I will see them again in the fall and regale them with my adventures. Although I should not say it, I can hardly wait to get out of this place.

  Sincerely,

  Sam Cooper

  P.S. I spent most of this morning wandering around the town, but this afternoon I rode out to the cemetery to look for the madwoman. I did not find her; but between the road and the closest grave markers someone had sculpted a surrealistic and truly horrible pig from mud and straw, with padlocks and broken chains lying at its feet. That was Jacinta’s work, I believe; no sane person could have done it and remained sane. I have photographed it.

  The Night Chough

  Silk was gone, the black bird reminded itself. There was no point in thinking about him.

  No, it itself had gone.

  Which was the same.

  A gleaming pool caught its eye, reminding it of its thirst. It looked at the water and its margins, seeing no danger, dropped from the threatening sky to an overhanging branch and scanned its surroundings.

  Croaked. Sometimes hungry things moved when you croaked.

  Nothing moved here.

  Water below. Cold and still and dark. Cool. Inviting.

  It fluttered across to the highest point on a half-submerged log, sharply recalling that it was hungry, too. Bent, stretching its neck, spreading dark wings to keep its balance. Its polished bill was the color of old blood, not quite straight. That bill was beautiful in its cruel way, but the bird was too accustomed to it to admire it anymore—so it told itself, and turned its head to see it better, knowing (as most birds did not) that it was the bird in the water as well as the bird on the log, just as the log itself was partly in the water and partly above it.

  “Good bird!” The bird pronounced judgment. “Pretty bird!” These were its own words, not words that forced themselves past its throat at times, the words it spoke that were not its own. “Good bird,” it repeated. “Bird see.” Speaking as humans did was an accomplishment that had earned it both food and admiration in the recent past, and it was proud of its ability. More loudly it said, “Talk good!” And stooped to drink.

  There was someone else in the water, a blank and livid face that stared into its own with sightless blue eyes that looked good to eat. The bird pecked at them, but refraction disturbed its aim. Its bill stabbed soft flesh instead, flesh that at once sank deeper and vanished. The bird whistled with surprise, then drank as it had intended.

  Already a third countenance was forming, a young woman’s snarling face framed by floating tendrils of dark hair. This new young woman had a profusion of arms, some with two elbows and some with three—some, even, that required no elbows at all, arms without hands, as sinuous as serpents. She struggled to speak, mouthing angry phrases without sound.

  “Bad bird!” It had not intended to say that, and was angry at itself for having done so. “Bad bad! No eat!” It had not intended to say those things either.

  “Bad eat!”

  It had been trying to drink again, tilting back its head at the moment that the words emerged; it nearly choked. “Bad talk!” it sputtered.

  Then, “Bad god! No talk!”

  “Is somebody here?” A slender young man was approaching the pool, threading his way dolefully among fragrant incense willows. “Anybody besides Lily?” He carried an instrument for landing large fish, a pole topped with a sharp iron hook.

  Reminded of its owner, the bird inquired, “Fish heads?”

  “Who is that?” The young man looked around. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “Good bird!” It was still hoping to be fed.

  “I see you.” For a moment, the young man almost smiled. “What are you, a crow?”

  The bird repeated, “Good bird!” and flew up from the log to light on a branch nearer the young man.

  “I’ve never seen a crow with a red topknot like that,” the young man told it, “or a crow that talked, either. I guess you must be some new kind of crow they’ve got here.” He groped the dark water with his hook, heedless of the distant rumble of thunder.

  “Fish heads?”

  “Yes,” the young man agreed. “I’m fishing for Lily’s head. I suppose you could say that.” An audible swallow. “And the rest of her. I’m hoping to hook her gown, actually. This hook is sharp, and I’m afraid it may tear her face, if that’s what we find.”

  The black bird whistled softly.

  “When I heard you, I was hoping there was somebody else here, somebody who would help me pull Lily out of the water. Water lily. That’s funny isn’t it?” Tears streamed down his cheeks.

  “No cry,” the bird urged, its usual stridency muted.

  Still weeping, the young man plunged his pole into the dark water, groping its inky recesses with the hook, which he drew out from time to time bringing forth mud and tangled, rotting sticks. “She’s here in this pond,” he told the bird. “Serval said so.”

  The bird recalled its vision. “Girl here. In pond.”

  “She was walking into town,” the young man spoke half to himself. “Walking to the fair. They stopped her. Serval did, and Bushdog and Marten. They made her go with them, and they took her here.”

  He paused, and there was that in his eyes that made the bird flutter nervously. At length he said, “They made her do everything they wanted. That was what he said, what Serval said, drinking
last night at Kob’s. He bragged about it. He boasted. I had it from Moonrat and Caracal, independently.”

  Suddenly, he laughed; and his merriment was more frightening than his anger. “Listen to me! Just listen! ’Independently.’ I’ve been reading for the law you see, dear birdie. Going to be an advocate and buy Lily furs. And pearls. And a big house of her own. All—all …”

  He had begun to weep again. “All so she’d love me. But she did already.” His voice rose to a frenzied scream. “She told me so!” He dropped his pole and sat down, heedless of the muddy ground, his face in his hands; the bird, who had more than a little experience of emotional outbursts, edged cautiously nearer.

  At length the weeping stopped. The young man pulled something wrapped in a clean rag from a side pocket of his jacket. Unwrapping the rag revealed a thick sandwich, which he opened to inspect the meat inside. “Mother made me take this,” he told the bird. “I don’t really want it. Would you like a piece?”

  “Bird like!”

  The young man removed a slice of meat and hooked it on a twig, then sat down to re-close and re-wrap his sandwich.

  “Find girl?” Those words had not been the bird’s own, and it shook its head angrily.

  “Not yet.” The young man shrugged. “Of course there’s a lot of pool yet. I’ll keep looking.”

  He returned the sandwich to his pocket. “This might not be the place. Moonrat may have gotten it wrong.”

  The meat was dangerously near him, in the bird’s opinion; and it occurred to the bird that the situation would be much improved if the stirring of the pool with the hook and pole were resumed. “Girl here!” it declared. “Find girl.” Again it recalled its vision. “Big wet. Have arms.”

  The young man stood up. “I don’t have any,” he told the bird quite calmly. “If I had arms, a slug gun or even a sword, I’d kill them for killing her, all three of them.”