Universe 1 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Terry Carr

  “Ghosts!” shouted Roxane, sitting bolt upright.

  “Oh yes, but it’s nothing, some native foolishness, people walking about with their feet on backward-”

  Roxane sprang to her feet and began walking nervously around the tent.

  “If there are ghosts out there,” she said, “I won’t let him go.”

  “But his Imperial Majesty-”said the ghost, coughing faintly.

  “Never you mind about that,” she said. “I know what’s what and I know-”She turned to him suspiciously. “What kind of ghosts?”

  “Kind?” said the ghost, puzzled.

  “I’m stupid,” said Roxane spitefully. “I believe in ghosts.”

  “Ah, but,” said the man, as if he had made an astonishing discovery, “so do I!”

  “Really?” said she.

  “Ah yes.-I’ve seen too many not to believe in them. But the kind I believe in are not those Indians with their feet put on backward or your Persian demons and afreets that suck blood but a kindwell, a kind-’

  “A Greek kind?” asked Roxane, fascinated.

  “No, I think a universal kind,” he said with a slight, guilty laugh, stroking her hair. “The kind, you see- You see, when a poor wretch dies, some unfortunate idiot, many times he dies with an unfulfilled passion, something that tormented him all his life but something he never mastered or settled with. And this poor fool, he finds after his death that he’s not one of the blessed dead that lie in the ground or end up in the fire and are gone, that’s it, the lucky ones. Most of these men-and women, too, you know-most of them are nothing much, no force of character, you might say, so they simply blow about with the wind like old rags, drifting from place to place.”

  “Ooooh-yes-yes-” whispered Roxane.

  “Now for most of us,” he went on, cupping her face in his hands, “that’s it, you see, but for a few-” He smiled enchantingly. “A few have too much feeling to stand for that; they want too much, and these are the dead you hear about in songs and stories, who come back to pay off debts or wreak vengeance, you know, or take care of their children. And some-ah, some! they have a driving passion, a force that won’t let them rest. They have hard bodies like you and me. You can see them, too. And you can find them-why, anywhere! In the marketplace at high noon, in temples, theaters-”

  “They don’t cast shadows!” Roxane broke in eagerly.

  “Ah, but they do,” he said, “indeed they do and sometimes” (with the same slight, guilty laugh, picking up his cloak and cradling it in his arms) “sometimes they even carry their shadows around with them. They do all sorts of odd things. But they are poor folk, after all, you know.”

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “Why?” he said lightly. “Why, because they only live while their passion is unsatisfied, you see. And as soon as they get what they come back for, they die for good. But they must come back, you know, they can’t help themselves. They want it so much. You know yourself” (here she shuddered) “what it feels like to go about wanting something desperately, don’t you?”

  “Oh, I do!” sadly.

  “Well, there you are.” He stopped, looked tenderly at her, and then, as if it were the natural sequence of his discourse, kissed her, pulling her up to him by the shoulders.

  “Ah, that’s wrong!” cried she, bursting into tears because she had a husband but nobody, really, and he-smiling-because she reminded him (perhaps) of three or four memories picked out of his memories of women or perhaps all of them, because he had loved and pitied everything living when he himself was alive.

  “Little one wants to go home, doesn’t she?” he whispered, holding her against him. “Little one’s lonely? Eh?” kissing her hair.

  “Yes, yes,” she sobbed, pushing him away. As if she were coming out of an enchantment, she looked at him doubtfully, ready to run away.

  “Madam,” he said briskly, “if you would permit me-I mean to utter no treason against his Imperial Majesty, but a man of affairs, a man preoccupied with questions of state-a busy man, in short -why, such a man may neglect those nearest and dearest to him without the least design. He may not even realize that he is so doing, his mind being preoccupied as it is.”

  “Ah?” said Roxane, bewildered but sure there was something s good coming.

  “In such cases,” said the stranger, with a bland smile, “a short absence may be the best- ah, madam, forgive me offering you advice, but as, an old friend of the family, as it were, I feel-”

  “Well-” said Roxane, trying to look like a grande dame.

  “I feel,” he continued, “that if your husband could be presented though not in reality, of course-with the prospect of losing you -if he could be made to imagine it, so to speak, he would at once realize the void, the gap, if I may say it, the absence in his life and he would-with a rush of feeling, of repentance, as it were, though far be it from me he would immediately regret that his business affairs had taken him so often and so far away from you.”

  “Well, ye-es,” said Roxane.

  “Many men,” continued the stranger, with unction, “many men only realize their true feelings when those feelings are threatened, as it were. They-

  “Yes, but how?” Roxane broke in impatiently.

  “How?” he said.

  “How could I do it?”

  He bowed (as best he could from a sitting position).

  “How?” she repeated anxiously. “Come, tell me and do stop beating about it like that!”

  “Madam has seized the thought at once,” said the stranger admiringly.

  “I always do,” she said, “I’m very quick, but really, if you won’t-”

  “A minute, a minute.” He cleared his throat. “Could you not-’; he said, and then: “There is an Indian village a few miles from this camp.”

  “Yes indeed,” said Roxane promptly.

  “You have never been to this village,” he said, “but you can go there easily enough. In daylight, of course. The path is wide and unmistakable. If you don’t mind staying with one of the farmers -a comparatively rich and luxurious household, of course-”

  “Pooh! I don’t care,” she said.

  “Well then, that’s that! Stay for a night and he’ll go wild without you. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he gives up this Indian project, too. You’ll get a good deal more attention from him from now on.” He spread his hands. “That’s it.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Roxane, then “Oh!” again in delight. She sprang to her feet. “I shall,” she said, “this very night. Thank you.” She started to run out of the tent, exclaiming “Yes-I must-- and then she turned around abruptly, saying, “Don’t tell!” He took her hand and she cried “Really!” quite unaffectedly, snatching it away with a disgusted expression. He bowed low-a real bow this time -and the princess rushed out.

  Left to himself, the dead man appropriated two items of his former master’s property: a pen and a piece of paper. With the appropriately serious expression, he began to write a letter, a letter such as those written to husbands by adventurous and fleeting wives who are only too delighted to be running away with somebody interesting, but who write of the whole matter in terms of the deepest and direst compulsion. He was laughing soundlessly to himself by the time he had finished. Ah! that kiss had been sweet! but only for old times’ sake, he thought. The static qualities of death oppressed him; he felt that mutability was mankind’s only hope, even though it took the flowers and pleasures of one’s time. Most terrible about the dead was the way in which they did not, could not, could never, could never even hope to change. Change, he thought, with unspeakable anguish. Outside the tent, as transparent to his sight as the sky, the sun was beginning to set. Little Roxane would be in her Indian village by evening, very curious, very delighted to see how the peasants lived and playing alternately the milkmaid and the great lady. He envied her. He envied Alexander, he envied every common soldier, he envied every dog, every rat, every louse on that inhospitable, rocky eminence. They could be hungry. T
hey could be in pain. They might not walk through the worst of Alexander’s battles no more in danger than the rain that rotted the bodies of the dead. Did men want little or get much? He could not tell. With the mild, ingenuous face and diffident manner that had made him so popular in Alexander’s court, he wandered about the tent with the letter in his hand. Dinners were cooking all over the camp, three and a quarter miles of dinners. The thought of so much human busy-ness caused him considerable pain. He moved unsteadily and blindly against Alexander’s campaign table, and then as the innocent maps and memoranda stared up at him in the gloom, his brow cleared. He dropped the letter on the center of the heap. Alexander would look for his lady in the woods, not in the village, misled by the fanciful instructions of a dead man, and in the woods- his blind face stirred with a painful rage. That damned fool! The sentry who would find it would run to him-not a moment too soon; that would be seen to -and Alexander, who knew perfectly well that his wife detested writing and could not spell, would-! The ghost bent over in a silent fit of laughter. Oh, the emperor would call himself an idiot but he would go! He despised his wife, no doubt, but he would go! He would know it was a trap, but he would go! What had the Athenian philosopher said? Ghosts hate crowds? Ah yes, that was it. In silence and in little company and most of all at night-The fool! Men were easiest to manipulate alone, in silence, and in the dark; that was all. Even that great fool, that king of fools, that king of kings . . . Laughing still to himself, the emperor’s friend walked toward the tent wall, his cloak folded over his arm. He could have gone out any way he chose, but he chose to melt through the wall like a mist, astonishing anyone who saw him. No one saw him.

  When Alexander received his wife’s letter he was lying on a divan after supper, hearing one of his tame philosophers read him a discourse on the immortality of the soul. It did not please him. He had drunk moderately at table. He received the letter curtly, read it abruptly and gave vent to his feelings with a roar of rage.

  “My lord!” exclaimed the tame philosopher.

  “Damn her!” cried the king.

  “The immortality of the soul-” ventured the philosopher, trembling.

  “Damn the immortality of the soul!” shouted the conqueror, his neck swelling. He began to put on his armor. He dashed to the wall, seized his shield and rushed out, looking in again only to snatch up his sword from where it stood by the entrance to the tent. His face was scarlet and distorted, like a djinn’s.

  They searched the area north of the camp, taking no chances; they shouted to each other; someone found footprints but they were not the proper size. Soon, through his own impetuosity and his soldiers’ fear of becoming separated, the emperor and one of his philosophers, a historian, one Aristophorus, found themselves ahead of the search party. They were in a little glade.

  “Rest yourself, rest yourself,” said Alexander, and the old man, tottering to a fallen log, said “Yes, my lord.” He was carrying a torch. He took off his sandals and sat, his back hunched over, his beard pointing at his knees.

  “Why don’t they shout?” said Alexander suddenly. “I told them to shout.”

  “They will catch up with us, my lord,” said the philosopher, rubbing his feet, “no doubt.” Alexander repeated “No doubt” and wandered to the other side of the glade, into which a faint radiance had already begun to creep from the rising moon. He peered into the darkness.

  “I can’t see any lights,” he said.

  “According to Aristotle,” said the philosopher contentedly, “the eye sends out rays which are reflected by objects in its path, thus producing sight. But when the rays are reflected strongly by any object-and those objects composed of the element of fire are most vigorous in the exercise of this property-then other objects appear but weak and faint in comparison.”

  “Put it out!” said the young man, and as the old one only stared at him uncomprehendingly, Alexander seized the torch himself and thrust it upside down against the earth. Immediately the darkness around them seemed to rush in as if the circle of light had been snapped like a hoop; Alexander leaned between two trees at the edge of the little clearing.

  “I can’t-” he said, and then, conscious that he had spoken more softly than before, “I can’t see a thing.”

  “They will catch up with us, my lord,” said the old man. With the moon rising and the firelight gone, something very peculiar was happening to the little glade; objects were melting and changing; they ran one into the other as if nothing in the universe were stable. The clearing looked like the bottom of the sea. Alexander walked rapidly back and forth for a few moments, then turned (as if the place were affecting his nerves) and stared at the old man.

  “I’m afraid to talk out loud,” he said, as if stating a fact, and then he said sharply “Who are you?”

  “What, my lord?” said the old man, startled, but his imperial master did not answer, only shook his head as a man does who has found a mote in his eye. He walked about again and then stopped as if the indistinct light-and the masses of shade confused him; he said, “I hear no one.”

  “Why no, my lord,” said the old man placidly, stroking his toes, “I daresay they have passed us by and we must wait until morning.”

  “Fool!” said Alexander. He stopped in the middle of the glade irresolutely. Then he said, “Get out of here, old man.”

  “My lord?” said the philosopher mildly.

  “Get out of here!”

  “But my lord-!”

  “Get out! That’s a command! You’ll find the others soon enough.”

  “Will you-”began the philosopher, but Alexander (who had drawn his sword) waved him imperiously away.

  “Get out!” he roared.

  “But my dear lord-” (shocked,) and then the king urged him with such fury that the old man flew out of the clearing with his sandals still in his hands. He saw the lights of the soldiers’ torches at once, as Alexander had said he would, and they spent the rest of the night looking for the emperor, but they did not find him.

  Left alone, and doubly uncertain of himself, Alexander turned back into the glade, only to see his friend lounging against a tree in the moonlight at the opposite end. The moon had risen and it bathed the little glade in livid quicksilver; the king felt his nerves give way; he had an impulse either of love or of despair that made him want to bury his head in his friend’s knees and beg . . .

  “I like a light in which I can judge distances,” he said grimly.

  “There are no distances here,” said the dead man. “Here things are very close together.”

  “My wife?” said the conqueror.

  “Quite safe.” They looked one another over for a few moments, the one erect and bristling like a dog, the other curved against his tree as he had curved against every surface, every command, every necessity in his short and easy life.

  “Your fine world!” said Alexander contemptuously, indicating the clearing with a gesture that was almost-but not quite-a snap of the fingers.

  “No,” said the dead man, smiling urbanely, “yours. The real world. Like the bottom of the sea. As you look at my features they seem to swarm and melt. They could be anybody’s.”

  “Imagination!” with scorn.

  “Ah, the imagination . . . the imagination, which the philosophers say gives color to everything.” The dead man detached himself from his tree and moved noiselessly into the clearing, over grass the color of mercury. “My dear friend,” he said lightly, “my dear, dear friend, you must remember that I am dead and so I look at things from a very special point of view. I know, you see, the torments of desire after death, desire too late to satisfy desire, and I want you to avoid the same fate as myself. You must not spend eternity longing for your wife and your cook and your mattress maker, for you neglect them; you know you do.”

  “Bah! Don’t want them,” said Alexander.

  “No?” With the same fixed smile the dead man moved toward him, like a walking corpse or a man in a dream.

  “Keep awa
y!” cried the king in horror.

  “Why?” said his friend gently. “Because I have a white face? Because I look like a leper? My face is white, my dear friend, through an excess of passion. My movements are slow because I . am dead.”

  “Damn you, what do you want?” cried Alexander, breathing hard.

  “Want? The man who killed me.”

  “I never-never-!” cried the king passionately.

  “Never? Never?” Color came flooding into the dead man’s face, making it look black under the moon. “Never intended? Never meant? Oh no, I daresay! No one ever intends to kill a pet! One wrings the poor bird’s neck in a moment of sheer, unthinking irritation, isn’t that right? One kicks the clown and behold! the poor fool falls downstairs and breaks his neck. Bah! One shatters a vase, merely.” They looked at each other for the space of a minute and then-as if the outburst had broken his mood and reassured him.