Gene Wolfe - There Are Doors

One night he dreamed he was actually sitting at that desk. The floor moved beneath him, gently rocking, rising and falling with a motion he saw echoed ever so faintly in the well of black ink into which he dipped a feather pen. “My Dearest Heart,” he wrote. “My good friend Captain Clough, of the China Doll, has promised to post this in England. She is a clipper, and so …”

There was a hail, and hurrying feet drumming the deck over his head. He sat up, and in a second or two he was laughing at himself, though there was something within him—some part that was still the old captain—that was not laughing.

The next day an ugly middle-aged woman made him show her the desk. “The chair’s missing,” he said. “It really ought to have the chair.”

“That’s all right,” she told him. “I can get one made for it. It’s simple enough.”

He told her the price, trying to sound as though he thought it too high.

“Not bad,” she said, poking and prying.

He lowered his voice. “They should take off three hundred in January.”

The woman smiled, the smile of a cat that feels a bird in its claws. “Fine, have them send me a check.”

When he had written the order and turned it in, he glanced up at the clock. The woman had used a store charge, and for a moment he dared to hope that the sale would not be approved.

It was ten till six, ten minutes until quitting time. Next week—only next week—the store would stay open till ten, and on alternate weeks he would have to come in at two and remain until ten. There would be temporaries who could not make change, and temporaries who had taken their jobs to steal. Not too many of either on his floor, thank God.

The first warning chime sounded.

At the second, he strolled into the Employees’ Lounge to get some coffee. The windows were dark. He walked across to them, surprised that it had gotten dark so soon. They had gone off Daylight Savings, of course. He had forgotten.

People had been talking for weeks about what a beautiful fall they were having, about Indian Summer. It seemed to him, looking through the dark glass at the bent, hurrying figures on the sidewalk, that winter had arrived at last, and that it was likely to be a hard winter. He had a heavier coat, a long wool coat of a gray so deep it was almost black, put away somewhere. He reminded himself to get it out.

The bus was as warm and stuffy as ever, and a brisk block-and-a-half walk from the bus stop to his building did no more than cool him off; by the time he had reached his apartment, he had wholly forgotten his decision. Next day the wind was gone and the weather was, or at least seemed, considerably warmer. The city was far enough south that really severe winter weather was exceptional.

Next week was the exception. Before it was over he had not merely remembered what he had meant to do, but actually cornered the custodian and demanded the carton he had left in storage.

“Got your woolies in it, huh?” The custodian chuckled. “Hope the moths ain’t et ’em.”

“That’s right. I should have sealed it with tape.”

The custodian nodded. “And sprinkled in some moth flakes. That’s what I’d a done.” He was sorting through the two dozen keys he carried on his belt. “Here ’tis.”

It would not fit the keyhole; he selected another. The third not only entered but turned the lock with a protesting click.

“When folks move out I always remind ’em about this place,” the custodian said. “But if they got anything here they forget about it anyway. Lots of people have put stuff in here, but you’re the only one I recollect that ever wanted something out. No.” He paused, one hand on the knob, and raised a finger of the other. “Miz Durkin got that old dress of her sister’s out, that she was going to give her friend. Only the friend didn’t like it, and it went back the next day.”

They entered, and the custodian pulled a string to turn on the light. The room was nearly full. “See what I mean? Pretty soon I have to throw a lot of the old stuff out. Only I don’t want to—you know somebody’s goin’ to say I stole. ’Course I won’t throw out anythin’ that belongs to somebody still lives here.”

He nodded, trying to recall the carton. Had it been from a grocery?

“Don’t see it, huh?”

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

“Might be in back of this, or under it. I just put this in about a month ago.” The custodian tugged at a large suitcase, and after a moment he helped, moved by pity for the old man’s feebleness. As they shifted the suitcase, it struck him that it had been a long time since he had felt pity for anyone except, perhaps, himself.

His carton had indeed been under the suitcase. He picked it up, thanked the custodian, and carried it to the elevator. While he waited, it occurred to him that the custodian had as much right to be considered an antique as the desk he had lost; that just as the desk had been older than most desks, so the custodian was older than most men. Yet nobody cared, no one would make the least effort to save the old custodian from the flames of the crematorium. Eventually, he thought, old people will be preserved like old furniture. Collectors will cry to think of the things we’ve thrown out.

The elevator doors opened, and he dropped the thought down the shaft while he got the carton inside and pushed the button. Now that he had the carton—it was one of the movers’, of course—he was no longer certain it contained winter clothing, though he had no notion of what it might contain instead. He tried to recall the day he had moved from the YMCA. He had not owned an overcoat then, he felt sure; he had worn his windbreaker to work that winter, keeping his suit-coat in his locker.

When he shouldered open the door of his apartment, nothing seemed familiar; it was as though someone had moved his sofa and chairs, his very rooms, while he had been at work. His living room had doubled to become an L; his kitchen had grown as if its stainless sink and Formica counter had been mixed with yeast.

He put the carton on the floor. His fireplace was gone—he could not understand how that could have happened. He recalled lying there in front of the fire, drinking brandy with somebody, with some girl, a woman. Had the fireplace really belonged to the woman? No, not a woman—she had said so. Had she taken it with her when she left? That was impossible.

There had been another apartment, of course, an apartment in which he had lived before this one but after the Y . Strange that he could recall moving out of the Y so well but could not remember moving into this place at all.

He had been ill. He had forgotten that. Or to be honest, had been pushing that out of his mind. No doubt the company had transferred him to the uptown store so he would be among people who didn’t know about his breakdown.

Not that they hadn’t found out soon enough. He remembered the girl from Better Dresses asking him when he had sat next to her at the picnic. It had been a mistake; she had been like all the rest, a single woman looking frantically for the kind of man who would never consider her if she found him, a handsome, wealthy, athletic college man who was sensitive, intelligent, cultured, and completely blind to what she was.

He laughed softly to himself.

And yet was he any better? Yes, he thought. Yes, I am. I’m willing to admit what I am.

But what am I? Surely not God, and it was God who said, “I am”. He remembered that, but he could not remember how he knew it; it might have been in one of those Biblical epics, Charlton Heston turning back the Red Sea.

He hung up his topcoat, his jacket, and his tie and put on water for coffee; his feet hurt, as they did at the end of each day. While he pulled off his shoes, he found himself wondering whether there was any brandy left—not from then, not from that night. He could not remember when it had been, but it had been a long time ago.