Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

About then I fell asleep and had a dream that has stayed with me better than a lot of things that really happened. Maybe I should not tell it but maybe telling it, writing it down for you to read, will help me get away from it a little bit.

In my dream I was back at the ruined castle, although it was in better shape in my dream than it really was. I was tied or chained to a wall or something. I could not move. The man in black was in front of me, driving a stake into the ground by hitting it with the back of an axe. At first he tapped it to get it started. When it was started he took his axe in both hands and really slammed it, driving it deep in. Then he turned his axe around so as to hit it with the sharp edge of the blade. Just two or three strokes, and he had cut a point on it. I remember thinking I could not have done that, and I know that is right. I could not have. If I practiced a lot I could learn to do it, probably. But it would take a lot of practice.

He went away then, and I waited, watching the stake and wondering what he was going to do. The sky was very blue, I remember that clearly, the blueness of it and the black of the castle wall. There were just a few little white clouds in that sky, and some black birds that flew but hardly ever moved their wings. They were pretty big, and I wondered what they were.

Then the man in black came back. The axe was gone, and he was carrying something. I could not see the face, but I knew somehow that I would recognize it if I could see it. He was tied like I was on the boat, his hands behind him and his feet tied together with rope. The man in black carried him like he did not weigh anything, like you might carry a dummy stuffed with straw.

He took him over to the stake he had pounded in and sharpened and lifted him, and turned him over so he was looking up at the blue sky and the black birds.

For what felt like a long time he held him like that, then he slammed him down on the point of the stake. I saw the wooden point come up out of him all smeared with blood. Maybe the man in black went away then, because I do not remember him anymore. It was just me and the man with the stake through him, only it was not really a man, it was the doll with Russ’s face. It wiggled around, trying to get off it, but wiggling only made the point go in deeper. I wanted to tell it how it could get off the stake, but I did not know what to say. It seemed to me there was no way it ever could.

Then I woke up.

For a long time after that I lay awake, remembering where I was and thinking about the dream. Finally I got up and went to the bathroom. When I flushed the toilet it made so much noise I felt sure it would wake up Naala, but it did not. I washed my hands and went out into the big room, naked. There was milk and butter in Naala’s little refrigerator, and bread in her breadbox. I ate some and drank a glass of milk, washed up, and went back to bed to think some more.

It seemed to me that this country I was in was the stake. I was stuck on it just like Russ and trying to get off, but I never would. I would die here, like the doll on the stake in my dream. It might be better to resign myself to that, I thought. To accept it. I decided I would try, but there was always a little piece of me that was looking for a way off the stake, a way home.

In the morning Naala asked me to fix our breakfasts. I am not really much of a cook, but I can boil water if you know what I mean. I can do simple things and fix good, simple food. We had poached eggs on toast and one sausage apiece, with hot tea because there was no coffee. (I would have cooked more if there had been more to cook.) Naala did not compliment me on the food, but she did not complain either. She just said to stay the way I was, with shoes and socks and a towel tied around me for a kilt, until she got back. Then she went out.

That was my chance to snoop around the whole apartment and I took it. If I had found anything really sensational, I would tell you here, but I did not. What impressed me most was what I did not find. I did not find any pictures of Naala. None at all. I thought maybe there would be one of her with some guy. Or a school picture with two or three other girls. Something like that. There were not any.

The big handicap I had was that even though I could speak the language a little I could not read it. I found an address book, and I could see that some of the numbers had something to do with location and some were probably phone numbers. But I could not read the names. Nothing like that. There were a few books. One with pictures seemed to be about stage magicians, not how the tricks worked but how they looked on stage. There were pictures of their posters and photographs. I looked at all the faces without recognizing a single one.

Most of the books did not have pictures, so I could not even guess what they were about. There were maybe a dozen books altogether, plus the address book.

I found a douche bag and three condoms, and some pills and so forth that I could not be sure of. I also found a cleaning kit for a handgun. (I could tell it was for a handgun because the cleaning rod was only about a foot long.) There was a good deal of other stuff, of course, pots and pans, cosmetics, a sewing basket, and so forth. But nothing else that really told me anything about her.

There was a radio, too, but no TV. I turned on the radio wondering who was broadcasting for the Legion now, and it was me.

They had gotten me because I was an American. I am sure I said that. The idea was to make the government think they were getting their ideas over to the U.S. and getting new members here and so on. They wanted to look bigger than they were because they were not really very big at all. So they had been broadcasting in German and they had wanted to add English to it.

Maybe they had found out that making the government think they were big made the government want to cut them down to size. I hoped they had and were being more careful, and I was surprised at myself when I found out I hoped that. Pretty soon I got tired of listening to a bad recording of one of my old broadcasts and found some music. Some of it was pretty good, but I figured it was probably Austrian or German.

When Naala came home she had two shopping bags full of clothes for me. They were not as cool as the clothes I would have bought for myself back home, and everything was ready-made. But they were better than most people had where I was.

She said, “You like them. I will not ask.”

I turned off the radio. “Yeah, I do.”

“I see you smile. They have take all you have? In the prison?”

I tried to explain that the Legion of the Light had not brought anything but me and the clothes I was wearing.

“Possessions come and go.” She sat down. “We have them until we lose them or they wear out. Money the same. Perhaps we lose it. Perhaps we spend it. These are the same.”

I said, “Sure. Lose it where I’ll find it, please.”

She laughed. “Now you have again the nice clothes. For these you owe me very much and must tell me something. Rathaus is now free. Where will he go?”

“That’s easy. He’ll go to the American embassy.”

“It is watched. If he go, we have him. Another place.”

“Maybe he got past your watchers. Why don’t you let me check it out?”

“No. He is not there. Where else?”

I thought.

“While you think, we must eat. There is a café I like. You can sit in the trousers that cost me so much?”

I said, “Sure.”

She stood up. “Then come with me. You must not spill food. Or coffee, or any such thing.”

The café we went to is the Tetrasemnos. It was eight or ten streets away, which made me glad she had not bought me new shoes. Maybe I can explain here that the Legion of the Light had taken my money and my watch and so forth but had left me my clothes and my shoes. The prison had taken the clothes but left me my shoes. It got me to thinking that if I ever got my hands on something really fancy I would put it in my shoes. Right then the only things I had in my shoes were my feet and my socks. I had not gone through her bags enough to know whether Naala had bought me new socks, but I hoped she had.