Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

The café was up three flights of stairs and was sort of refined and quiet. You got the feeling that not many people went there, and the ones that did went because it was a place where you could sit for a long time and not get hassled. There was a sad guy with a thin mustache who played the violin. That was the only music there. He was good, too, I had to admit. He would play for a while up on a little stage they had there. Then he would start going around to tables. He would stand by your table and play something beautiful. If you gave him money, he would go away, but if you did not he would play something else beautiful. And so on, until you gave him money or you left. I would have given him money if I had any. I did not, and I was glad when Naala gave him something.

So that was the kind of place it was. A man and a really pretty girl were sitting at a table not very far from ours. The girl had a red fountain pen and was writing something on lined paper. She had small neat writing from what I could see of it, with none of the fancy flourishes some girls use. I could see she was not drawing little hearts for dots or anything like that.

The man just watched her. He had coffee and a little stem glass of brandy, and he would sip his coffee without looking at it, always watching her. He looked like he meant to eat her. Every so often a waiter would come by and pour more coffee in his cup, and he would pour a little brandy from his glass into the coffee. He never took his eyes off her to do it, though. When the violinist came around the pretty girl looked up at him and smiled, and the man took a bill from the side pocket of his jacket and gave it to him, but he never looked at him.

Only at the girl. That was after we had been there quite a while.

We sat down, and a waiter brought menus and wandered away. I said, “What’s good here?”

“Are you hungry?” Naala was grinning.

“Hell, yes.”

“Then everything is good. You have thought?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’ve thought a lot.”

“That is well.” She had a mean grin. “Those who work may eat. You understand this? So it is and so it must be. Those who do not work shall not eat. That is so, also.”

“Is thinking work?” I asked her.

“ Some thinking is work. Yes? What is it you think? Rathaus does not go to your embassy. Where is it he goes instead? If you wish to eat, you must tell me.”

“You know about the dolls?”

She nodded in a way that told me absolutely nothing. Maybe she knew more than I did. Maybe she did not know a thing. Most likely it was somewhere between those two, but where was that? The nod did not tell.

“He and his partner made those dolls and sold them, in America at first but later all over the world. His partner was in change of production and R&D. Russ was in charge of sales and advertising. All that stuff. I don’t know if he sold any here.”

“I do not know also,” Naala said.

“My guess is he did. He didn’t tell me that, but I think so anyhow. He didn’t talk like this was some weird foreign country at the edge of the earth. You know what I mean? He talked like it was someplace most people know about. That’s not true, not in America anyway. But that was how Russ Rathaus thought.”

“So you think—?”

I nodded. “If he sold them here, he had connections here. Probably people he had never met face to face. But there’s lots of ways for businesspeople to get together on the Net. They see each other’s faces in their screens, or whatever the other guy wants to show them, a graph or a spreadsheet. Whatever. For Russ it would have had to be somebody who speaks English and is in the novelty business here. There can’t be a lot of guys like that.”

“None, perhaps. That could be.”

“He knew somebody here,” I insisted. “Somebody he’d done business with, somebody who might help him now, when he’s in a bind.”

Naala was quiet for a minute or two. Then she said, “You have thought, so you eat. What is it you like?”

I shrugged and said I would have whatever she was having. She ordered something I had never heard of that turned out to be a thick stew with lots of meat topped with sour cream. When it finally came, we ate it with fresh bread and butter and slices of raw onion. So nothing fancy, but the bowls were big, the stew was wonderful, the butter was soft enough to spread, and the bread was still warm from the oven.

As well as I can remember there had not been even one single time when I had left the table in the prison feeling like I had eaten a good meal, so I tore into this. Maybe I stopped once or twice to wonder whether the meat was beef or lamb. I know that before I was finished I asked the waiter and he said it was both, with some pork, too. Naala grinned and said it was good horse meat and she would never take me to a place where they served mule meat, but she was kidding.

I had about finished when a priest came over to our table. He smiled at us, and I knew right away who he was, but I could not remember his name. He must have known it from my face, because the first thing he said was, “Papa Zenon.”

Whatever it was I said then was meant to be polite. Probably I asked him to sit down, because he sat. “You speak our language now.”

“A little,” I told him. “I know I’m not very good.”

“We are none of us very good, as God knows. You have a new cousin?”

Naala said, “We are friends, that is all. I try to help him. He tries to help me. You will approve of this?”

“Oh, surely—I am sure you do well. You are fine people.” He looked back to me. “The funeral went well. You were concerned, I know. Everything was as you would have wished.”

I knew what he meant and said I would have liked to have been there.

“Another time, perhaps. You help this lady, whose name I do not know….”

Naala introduced herself.

“While she helps you. I will help you both, if I can. What is it you do?”

Naala said, “He is from Amerika. You must know this.”

Papa Zenon nodded.

“Our police do not like foreigners. Many are spies, and our police fear them. He is not a spy, but they put him in prison, a foolish charge so they are safe from him. I have arranged his release. For this he is grateful, I hope.”

“Very grateful,” I said.

“Now I buy the lunch. He has no money, no passport. He owes to the church for this funeral you speak of? He cannot pay, not now. Soon he will have money again, sent from Amerika where he has much. Then you will be paid.”

Papa Zenon smiled. “We do not charge for funerals. The dead repay us with their prayers. Should the living wish to make an offering in gratitude, their offering is accepted in the spirit in which it was given.”

“I’ll make an offering when I can,” I said. “I’ll be glad to, if I can find you.”

“I will not be difficult to find, my son. My church is that of Saint Barachisios in Puraustays. I travel, indeed, but only rarely and only when I must. A shepherd forced from his flock. One worries. One cannot do otherwise.” He licked his lips. “Tell me, do you know where your cousin is staying? Does she assist you?”

I said I thought she was back in Puraustays. I knew Naala would not want me to talk about what we were doing, and I had no idea what story she might cook up, so I asked what had brought him to the capital.

“Would you like lunch, Papa?” she put in. “I have said I pay for his, as I do. I will pay for yours, also.”

“You are kindness itself, but I have eaten. I came to your table only to say that the funeral went well, and the burial. I did not intend to intrude.”

“You do not intrude, Papa.” Naala looked at me as if to say what’s going on here?

I said, “Did you know I was here in the capital?”