Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

“Let’s move along to Papa Zenon. Maybe we’ll come back to Martya later. Papa Zenon came to see you when?”

“Yesterday, before you came. About ten o’clock, perhaps. I had said my morning mass and eaten breakfast.”

That reminded me of the archbishop and the bell tower. “Do you say mass every morning?”

“I try to. As priests we are required to say a mass every day and to read our breviary. On weekdays I try to say mine very early, so those who wish to hear mass may attend before going to their work. I had shaved and dressed, said mass, eaten breakfast, and looked through the newspaper when Papa Zenon knocked.”

I nodded. “You let him in?”

“I did. I was in the parlor going over the parish accounts. Mrs. Varagos was in the kitchen, washing up.”

“What did Papa Zenon say?”

“He introduced himself. His Excellency had called him away from his parish in Puraustays, and we talked a little about that. He asked about the hand, whether I had read the tattoos. I explained that I had read some of them, but not all of them. We talked for a time about their wording, whether they were prayers or curses. He feared they might be invocations addressed to demons. After that, he asked many questions about the young woman you call Martya. He even inquired about her shoes. I remember that.”

I nodded. “What did you say about them?”

“That they were plain black shoes such as many women wear. She had told me she was a poor woman, but—what was it I said?”

I told him never mind, and to keep going.

“I was going to say that she could not have been as poor as many here, since her shoes looked new. Also the shawl in which she had wrapped the hand is of good quality. Have I mentioned the wax seals?”

I nodded.

“They are very plain, but I showed them to Papa Zenon and he seemed interested in them. The pieces are still attached to the shawl, you understand. She broke them but did not tear them away.”

“You’ve still got them?”

“They are here.” Papa Iason stood up. “I’ll show you.”

He took out the shawl. It was larger than I expected, with a pattern of ivy leaves and a long dark green fringe. There had been three seals, all of red wax. The stamp on all three was a plain cross.

Papa Iason pointed to it. “The same seal made all three impressions. I have compared them carefully, and it is so. There is no writing, not even a trace. Either the seal that imprinted them is very old or it was cut by someone who knew nothing of the making of seals. I think the latter.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He got a wooden dowel and cut this with a pen knife. Probably he drew the cross on first, then cut around it. He did a pretty good job, but he was no pro.” I had already stopped looking at the seals and was looking at the shawl. It looked new, and it felt warm and rich.

What Papa Iason said next was exactly what I was thinking. “That is not the shawl of a poor woman.”

I should not have said, “Hell, no!” but I believe I did.

“It is of silk and lamb’s wool woven together. My cassock is wool and much rougher than this. But in a shop where such things are sold, I have seen cassocks of cloth like this. They were very costly.”

I spread the shawl out and saw a little label sewn into one side. I could not read it, but I borrowed paper from Papa Iason and copied it down. When I was sure I had all the letters right, I asked him to translate it for me. Here it is in English:

I said I thought the streets here did not have names, and he said, “They do not. It is the lily and the civet that bother you?”

“Sure. If they’re not street names, what are they?”

“There will be a sign. It will say ‘Lily and Civet,’ and there will be pictures on it. A lily is a flower.” He shaped a trumpet with his hands. “A civet is a kind of cat. Its fur has stripes and dots.”

“Got it. Do you know where this place is?”

He shook his head. “Look where costly things are sold.”

So I was back to the dress shops and so forth. Maybe I had walked right under that sign already, but if I had I did not remember it. I wanted to take the shawl with me, but he did not want me to and got mad, so I let him keep it.

Maybe you will say that I ought to have gone looking for Best Millinery, but I was tired and knew it was a long way back to Naala’s building. What was worse was that the sun was about down, which meant the shops would be closing. The streets were not as crowded as they had been, and every so often you could hear somebody pulling down one of those rolling grills over a shop window.

The good part was that it was getting cooler. Just the little fire in Papa Iason’s parlor had seemed like way too much to me, but a stiff wind off the lake played with dust and dirty papers in the street, the sun was as good as gone, and I felt like I would wish pretty soon that I had the wool sports jacket Naala had wanted me to wear.

I was thinking a lot about that when I heard my own voice. It is a funny sensation if it happens when you’re not expecting it, and that time it stopped me dead. After a minute or two I realized that I was talking about the Legion, and that I was hearing a radio. Somebody had an apartment over the street-level shop in the building I was passing, and he had left his radio on and his window open a little. I listened for maybe a minute more before it hit me that it was not a good thing for me to be doing if a cop passed by.

So I got moving after that and told myself I was not even looking for a sign with a lily and striped cat on it, there would be plenty of time for that tomorrow morning. Only I was looking for it. I could not help it. All that I was really doing was telling myself I was not.

Then I saw it. Just when I was practically out of downtown and could feel a couple of blisters on my feet, I saw it. The cat had pushed aside the lily to look out at you. Under my breath I said, “Oh gosh, isn’t that cute !” Meaning I would have liked to set it on fire.

There were doors to two shops, and a third door with a little sign I could not read. Both shop doors were locked, so I figured the third one would be, too. But I shook the handle like you do and the door opened right up and showed me a flight of stairs.

So okay. I went up, and there was a little hallway there with two more doors. They were locked, but they had glass in them. I looked into both shops, and I could see inside pretty good. Later I found out that was because there were skylights. I will say more about those in a minute. The first shop I looked into made me think of the one that had taken Rosalee in. There were hats on fake heads and beautiful silk dresses on dummies. Bras and lacy underpants, too. All that stuff.

The second one had the darnedest jumble of junk I ever saw. There were boxes and books and about a hundred dried roots on a string and something that looked sort of like a man’s head. It had a mustache and a scrawny beard, but it was not much bigger than my fist. My brain started itching when I saw all that, but I was way too tired to be even a little bit smart.

Well, I went back down the steps and the door at the bottom had locked. In the States a door like that would probably have had some way you could open it from inside. This one did not. There was a sort of brass box on it, and the bolt came out of there and into a smaller brass box on the frame, and that was it.

So I sat down on the steps and rubbed my feet, and cussed it, and tried to think. I could have kicked that door down, but it would have made a racket and drawn a crowd, and by the time I got it open there would be a cop out there. Maybe two or three.