Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

Other beggars were gathering. Skip flourished his walking stick and glared.

Chelle said, “I’m going to buy him something to eat. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to come.”

Skip pointed. “There’s a place over there, the Sea and Shore.”

Sadly, the beggar shook his head. “They not let me go in, mon.”

“You must eat somewhere,” Chelle said.

“Park? We go park, lady?”

“You can eat there?”

The beggar nodded. “My name Achille.”

Achille led them down several wide and quiet streets flanked by buildings with badly fitted doors and flaking paint. The park boasted palm trees, shade trees, huge green bushes with big pink roses, and a small fountain, a fountain that, amazingly, still played. They chose a shady stone bench not far from the fountain, Chelle with Skip to her left and Achille to her right. One vendor sold them spiced meat and boiled corn wrapped in corn husks, another cool water mixed with papaya juice.

“I suppose we’ll get typhoid,” Skip said, “but they can cure that pretty quickly.”

“Could he stay in business if it made people sick?”

“Perhaps not.”

“Then it won’t make us sick, either. Achille’s really hungry. Did you notice? I thought I was ’til I saw him.”

“I take it the Army fed you well enough.”

Chelle nodded. “We worked twelve or fourteen hours a day, ate like wolves, and slept like babies. This was on Johanna, which was where I was.”

“It was habitable.”

“Sure, real Earth-type. That’s why both sides want it so bad.” Chelle turned to Achille. “That enough?”

He nodded.

“Good. The gentleman here gave you a nora?”

Slowly Achille nodded again.

“I’m not going to take it away from you.” Chelle held out a bill, displaying it between mismatched hands. “This is a hundred noras. See the numbers in the corners? I’m going to give you a chance to earn that much. If you can do what I ask, you get a hundred noras. If you can’t—or won’t—you don’t.”

Achille nodded.

“I want to buy a pistol, a good one. You take me to somebody who’ll sell me one right now, with a little ammo, no questions asked. Do it, and I’ll pay you a hundred noras.”

Skip said, “Are you sure this is wise?”

“Hell, no. But somebody’s tried to kill my mother. You ever try to buy a gun back home?”

He shook his head.

“Neither have I, but people used to tell me how tough it was if you couldn’t get a license. One guy I knew—this was before we went up—stole an Army gun, got it out, and sold it. He got three thousand and said the guy he sold it to was going to offer it for six. So I could buy one, maybe, but it would take a hundred-day or more.”

“I could—”

Chelle interrupted. “I know. You could steer me to somebody back home. If we got caught they wouldn’t do a lot to me. I’m tail and a vet and all that shit, but you’d lose your law license. This is better.”

“You’ll have to go through customs when we leave the ship.”

“Sure. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.” She turned to the beggar. “What about it, Achille? Can you do it?”

“Other side mountain? You go?”

Chelle nodded.

“I find good mon. Good driver. You wait.” Achille trotted away.

Chelle stretched. “How do you suppose he lost his hands?”

“Cut off for stealing.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, which is why I grabbed on to him. He must have been in the EU.”

Skip shook his head. “I doubt it.”

“Well, it’s sharia law, and that’s only in the EU.”

“Not now,” Skip told her.

Achille returned, riding in the front seat of a battered taxi brown with dirt and rust. “This Hervé. Hervé drive us.”

Hervé looked as old as his taxi, and lugubrious. “Go north side mountain?”

Skip said, “Correct.”

“Come back?”

“Yes.”

“Hundred nora.”

Achille began to argue frantically, an argument that lasted five minutes or more. At last he said, “Ten nora.”

The driver spoke to Skip. “Thirty for each.”

Another argument.

When it was over Hervé held out his hand. “You pay now.”

Achille whispered something to Hervé, who got out and opened the door for Chelle. Skip walked around the taxi and got in on the other side.

Winking over the back of the front seat, Achille whispered, “I say we go Tante Élise.”

“She must be a good woman,” Chelle remarked.

“Strong, this woman. Mos’ strong!”

* * *

There were goats in the road during the long drive up the spine of the island, and once a pig. Once, too, they passed a young woman, graceful, brown, and barefoot, who was carrying a huge bunch of green bananas on her head. From time to time they stopped briefly at remarkable views; and when at length they reached the highest point on the island, the Rani appeared no bigger than a toy boat in a bathtub.

“I want to get out and stretch my legs,” Chelle announced. “Can I do that, Achille?”

“Better we come not so late.”

“Just for a minute.” Chelle got out.

Skip asked, “Are you afraid the store will close?”

“Start cer’mony. You go temple?”

“Would you come, too, if we do?”

Achille nodded.

“Then I will. It might be interesting.”

“You got dance, mon. Unter Boy lash you proper if no dance.” Achille laughed aloud. “Sharp spur got old horse cut caper. You dance?”

“I dance,” Skip affirmed.

“We go temple. I say, good mon, good lady. See pray. Buy after. Give hundred nora?”

“Chelle will,” Skip told him. “I won’t.”

* * *

The moon was up by the time they arrived. When the ancient taxi rattled to a stop, they heard chanting and the feverish thumping, rumbling, and tapping of drums. Skip paid. “Wait here. We’ll hire you again for the ride back, and give you a ten-nora tip. Will you wait?”

“I wait,” the driver said, and sprawled across the front seats. When Skip turned to look at him a moment later, he saw the flare of a match; it was followed by a puff of cigar smoke.

The temple was walled with rough masonry, although open to the night sky. A gate of weathered slats wound with barbed wire swung wide to admit them. Inside, a throng of ragged men and women danced in an intricate pattern around a score of flickering candles. Achille joined their dance at once.

“What’s this?” Chelle whispered.

“Church,” Skip told her. “Let’s dance.” He took her arm, but she hung back.

A boy of twelve or so ran toward them, yelling and flourishing a rattan.

“What’s he saying?” Chelle’s eyes were wide.

“Dance or he’ll—” The rattan flashed down. Skip tried to block the blow with his arm, with only partial success, and noticed that Chelle did not wince. “Hit us,” he finished. “There are no spectators, only participants. Would you care to dance?”

They did, following the chant as well as they could, stepping this way and that, clapping, gesturing in time with the drums. The dance went on for a time that seemed very long indeed.

As though at some secret signal, it stopped. The tall woman who had led the dance sprang onto the seat of a chair with astounding agility and began to shout to the night sky—almost, to howl.

Achille insinuated himself between Skip and Chelle. “She Tante Élise. Sell gun.”

Mopping his face with his handkerchief, Skip said, “We’ll see.”

“What’s she saying?” Chelle asked.

“Call dead,” Achille whispered.

“Ghosts?”

Skip said, “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of ghosts.”

“Hell, no. There aren’t any.”

The other dancers were resting now, some squatting, some sitting on the grimy stone floor. Skip and Chelle sat, with Achille squatting behind them.