Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

At last a kind old man directed me sensibly, warning me at least three times that the distance was long and the hospital might not take me. I set off anyway, thinking a lot about how any distance these people thought was a long walk was likely to be way too long for me.

I walked until I felt terribly tired, and I believe I would have been tired even if I had not been all set to fall over before I started out. Then I saw the cherry trees, fragrant ghosts towering through the twilight and still in full bloom though the bees had gone home to their hives. Beyond those trees, I knew, stood Volitain’s house. Was Volitain a doctor? I could not remember, but he had sure acted like one when he had treated my stings.

It was all I could do to walk to his door and bang his knocker twice. After that I just listened, and it seemed to me I heard, barely (only barely) heard, somebody crying inside. Soon the crying stopped.

The door was thrown wide. Until that moment I suppose I thought Volitain’s death’s-head face could never look surprised. If I did, I had been wrong. His eyes flew wide and his jaw dropped. Then he took me by the arm and pulled me into his parlor. “Were you set upon by thieves?”

“By Kleon,” I said.

“Ah! I see.” Volitain chuckled. “And now you’ll stay away, and Kleon will be shot. He will be shot, at least, if you confess your escape to the police. Will you do it?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t want that.”

“Ah! You are afraid of him.”

“Sure I am, but that’s not the reason. His wife was cheating with me. We were pretty open about it. He had a right to get mad.”

“You let him beat you.”

“I didn’t. I fought him, and I would’ve beaten him every bit as bad as he beat me if I could.” I thought back to our fight and remembered things Martya and I had done before the fight and told Volitain, “I’m not going to claim it would have been right, but it’s the truth.”

“I see.”

“Can I sit down? I’m tired.”

“Certainly! Certainly! Here. This chair.”

I sat and leaned back. The upholstery felt as soft as a pillow.

Volitain tapped my chest here and there. “Have you been spitting blood?”

“Sure. From my tongue. I guess I bit it during the fight.”

“That’s not uncommon. Does it hurt you to talk?”

“Not much. No.”

“Good.” Volitain straightened up. “I’ll stop asking you questions for the moment. Your face is bruised and cut. He kick you, eh? He does not seem to break the facial bones.”

“I tried to protect it.”

“Naturally. We always do. I will provide the local anesthetic and clean the worst. I see nothing here that needs stitches.”

When he had finished patching me up, he said, “I take it you do not go back tonight?”

I shook my head.

“Where will you sleep?”

“Here, if you’ll let me.”

“I will not. I help if I can, but you cannot sleep here. My decision I will not defend with argument. This house is mine, and I decide. You must sleep elsewhere. Where will you go?”

“To a hotel in that case.”

“By this you sign a death warrant for Martya’s husband. His name…? I hear you say it.”

“Kleon.”

“Kleon will be shot. A moment ago you do not want that.”

I was silent, trying to think.

“A foreigner without luggage, with a bandaged face? They will ask for payment in advance, most polite. You will provide it. As soon as they show the room, they telephone the police.”

“I was told there were no telephones here—no telephones in Puraustays.”

“There are but few, yet the better hotels have them and the police. If the hotel does not have the telephone, a boy will run with a note. The police will pound on your door and soon after Kleon dies. Somewhere else?”

“The Willows then.”

“More reasonable—if you have the courage to sleep.”

“I do,” I said. The honest truth was that I felt I could sleep anywhere.

“That is very well. You are hungry?”

I shook my head. “I’m too tired to be hungry.”

“You ate last when?”

“Lunch, I think it was.”

“Thus you tire, my friend. Wait here.”

I fell asleep as soon as he left the room.

When Volitain woke me, he had lit every lamp. The windows were dark, though no darker than the coffee he had made for us—strong coffee with sugar but no cream, and a plate of rolls still hot from the oven.

“Eat and drink,” he said. “For you are two blankets and a pillow. We must carry them. It is not far.”

“Nothing is far,” I said, and got ignored. “Nothing but the hospital.”

The rolls were dark and heavy. I smeared them with Volitain’s dark yellow butter and found them delicious. He had baked a dozen perhaps, or a baker’s dozen. He ate one. When we left, three were left on the plate.

He had brought a tin lantern like the one Martya and I had bought earlier, and he carried the blankets—they were rolled up tight—slung on his right shoulder and tied beside his left hip. I carried the pillow, which was big and awkward but weighed less than a shoe. A blister on my foot had broken. I was vaguely aware of it, and the pain in my ankles and the throbbing of both legs. “Vaguely” is what I wrote because I do not know a better word. All three seemed like something happening to somebody else a long, long way away.

My key turned easily in the lock I had oiled. “If you are wise,” Volitain said, “it is here you sleep. If you go farther into the house you may be lost.”

I agreed because agreement was simpler.

“I am going to take my lamp. This you see. I wish to leave it with you, but I myself have need of it.”

He took off the blankets. I pulled them free of the string with which he had tied them, and together we spread them on the floor. I lay down on them and he pulled the free side over me. I think I was asleep before he had gone out the door.

I woke shivering, I suppose three or four hours later. There was a fireplace near the place where I lay, and I remembered that there had been fireplaces in the big room beyond it—also that Martya and I had bought matches and flashlights after our early lunch. Feeling certain there would be deadwood between the willows, I got a flashlight and went out.

The moon had risen, but its pale light was helpless among the crowding trees. Even so, I was able to collect a good deal of fallen wood, some of it dry and some pretty wet. Back inside I laid a fire. I had hoped that broken twigs and splintered wood would do for kindling. I wasted a bunch of matches before I gave up on that, took off my shoes, and lay down again. All that I can remember about that second sleep is that I had scary, horror-movie dreams that seemed terribly real. Now they are gone, which is fine with me. Sometimes I wish I could forget things that happened in that house later.

When I woke up the second time, a fire filled the big room with flickering shadows.

I sat up. Had I gotten the wood to burn after all? Scooting to get away from the heat, I stood up and stared. Leaping flames hissed, crackled, and exploded in sparks. Only a few sticks of wood were left. A long look at my watch said it was half past two in the morning.

Sleepy and scared, I turned away from the fire. The ghostly shapes all around the room were nothing worse than crummy old furniture under dirty white dustcovers. Then I remembered the mummy. She waited under one of those filthy sheets. Our ladders and tools lay all around like they were waiting to trip me. I picked up the flashlight I had used when I collected the wood, searching that big, ruined room for the eyes that seemed to reach out and touch me.

It was not until I turned back to the fire that I saw the man in black. He was sitting motionless in a nook not far from it and looked like he was thinking hard.