Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

Naala said, “You did not wish us to keep your tricks,” and handed her pencil back.

“That is not the trick,” he told her. I had figured that out already.

“Another I show.” He got down a narrow, wooden box and took a man-doll with no face out of a cardboard box. He let us look into the wooden box, but I was looking at the doll. When he put it in the box, its head and feet stuck out the ends. “I need a knife, a big one. Do you have such a knife, young man?”

I said, “I don’t even have a little one.”

“In the back there is a gas ring and a loaf of bread. You must excuse me.”

He came back with a big bread knife. “Now I cut the box in two without damaging the doll. This you must watch carefully!” He flourished the bread knife so it really looked like it was slashing through the box, but the box was wood and the knife was for cutting bread so I knew it had not.

As soon as he had made the flourish, half the box fell off. He pulled the doll out of the other half and showed it to us. “When the magician uses a big sharp knife this is a very good trick,” he said.

“I want that doll,” Naala told him.

“Please! To me you swore, only a moment ago.”

“I do not collect for evidence. I will pay.” She opened her purse.

He relaxed quite a bit. “It belongs to another trick. I borrowed it for this.”

“It is that other trick I buy from you.”

“Let me get the things.” He took down the cardboard box again and pulled out a plastic lens in a blue plastic stand. “In this way it must be arranged.” He put the doll on the counter and set up the lens to show her. “We must have a picture. Wait. I will find one.”

“I have one here,” Naala told him. “This is the lady’s husband, the Amerikan magician.”

The old guy did a double take, and I do not believe he faked it. “That face I know….”

“Tell us!” Naala leaned toward him.

“He was here,” the old guy said. “Not this year. Some while ago.”

“Twenty-five years ago, perhaps? Twenty-six? Such a number as that?”

“No. That is too long. Two years? Let me think.”

I was thinking, too—thinking that Russ had talked like he had never been in this country before.

The old guy snapped his fingers. “Two years … No, three Christmases ago. He comes the day I reopen. He buys … the snake that foretells the future, and the vanishing cigarettes. In Germany I lived three years, and we talked about it.”

I said, “I guess he showed you one of these dolls and how it worked.”

The old guy shook his head. “That is another man, a man in Amerika. He writes and sends a sample.”

“You said it had been many years since an Amerikan magician had been in your store. Now you say it is only three years. That’s not so long.”

“This man?” The old guy pointed to Russ’s picture. “He is not Amerikan. He is German.”

Back in the police car I wanted to know why Naala looked so pleased with herself. “Do you think Russ’s been after the old guy for help? If he has, the old guy’s the world’s best actor.”

“That I do not think,” Naala said. “Rather I think we have done much and rub my hands. We have showed this woman to him, which was all I wished when we came. Now more. We have learned Rathaus is German, or if he is not German he is enough fluent to make others think. Also Rathaus was here not many years ago, when he uses another name. These three things in the past half-hour, and none of them are nothing. Do you wish for more?”

I nodded.

“We have eliminated one of the three customers. It may be as you think that he has come to one for help. You say it was not that one, with which I agree.”

I was holding the box with the hand on my lap when she said that, and I felt the hand move. That was the first time. It may have moved before, but if it did I had not noticed. Not until I was sitting in the police car when we were taking Rosalee back. It just moved the once, and I told myself I was crazy, I must have tilted the box, and thought about other things.

Such as Rosalee, and what I would give to get her in the sack. She had promised me, and now she was going back. I leaned over toward her a little bit and whispered, and of course I talked English: “You’re going back to jail, but I got you out once and I’ll get you out again. Trust me.”

She did not look happy, but she nodded.

So we let her out at the gate after Naala explained to the guards and told them we would be back to get her again tomorrow. They were mad because we did not have her prison clothes, but Naala was a JAKA operator so they did not say it.

When we were rolling again I said, “What if Russ comes to the prison to try to get her out?”

“This is what I seek to prevent. His son knows we have her. The old man who shows us tricks knows, too. Tomorrow we take her again, perhaps.”

“Why don’t we keep her in your apartment?”

“We must sleep and she would go away. Let us suppose Rathaus learns of us as we wish. He comes by night and all is lost. Be happy that you are no longer in prison. Now I must think.”

So I shut up, but I was thinking, too. The JAKA had gotten me released to Naala’s custody so she could use me to find Russ. Suppose she decided that Rosalee was better than me, which seemed to be where she was headed. I would be back behind bars, right?

Only if Rosalee escaped I would be more valuable than ever. So how could I work that?

Now let us get real. I could escape a lot better than Rosalee. I was not doing it because I had no money, no passport, and no friends.

Except Russ. And Russ was out. He would help me, if I would help him, maybe. How could I get in touch when all I had was a pencil? You will be way ahead of me on that, probably.

I did it while Naala was in the shower. She had told me to shower first, which I did. Then she said she wanted to wash her hair and fix it up in various ways, and if I slept she might wake me up with a kiss.

So fine. Only first I sharpened my pencil with a nice sharp kitchen knife I found, and second I tore a couple of flyleaves out of one of Naala’s books.

Afterward, when we had both cleaned up a little, she told me she had done it a lot for the JAKA when she was younger.

I said, “No kidding? Well, you’re sure good-looking enough, but I wouldn’t have thought…” I just let it peter out, like I was thinking about it.

“We wish information. It is easy when one knows how. First I must get the man to buy us drinks. Two for each is better. There is no man anywhere who will not boast after two drinks.”

“Sure,” I said. “He’ll brag, but will you get what you want?”

“Very likely I do not. Not then. I look impressed but—this is important—it is in such a way I look that he believe I am trying to hide my impress. I lie with him and it is oh, so good for me. Now he wish to impress more than ever. He tells me what he should not tell. When there is no more I caution him. He should not speak of these things to anyone, not even to me. I stop my ears. The least word, I say, might shake the world. Now he is very proud and tell me more.” She laughed.

Women always say the guy goes to sleep first and too quick, and maybe I did. She wanted to be cuddled, but she was too proud to say it. So I cuddled her and pretty soon I thought she was asleep only maybe not. Then I went to sleep for sure, and when I woke up Naala was snoring.

I have known some guys who got very mad because some lady snored with them, but I have always thought that was really, really juvenile. I was not mad, but I had a big problem.

If I just lay there and listened to her, I was pretty sure I was never going to get back to sleep. I would be awake the rest of the night, and it was only a little bit past one, meaning I would be yawning all day. Not good.