by Paula Guran
When I was done he said. “All right. You want to go back to Borneo, do you? Very well. It will take money.”
What is that?
“Money? The professor told you about that the first time I met you. Remember? Gold coins?”
Why do I need them?
“Because the captain—the big boat man—won’t take you to Borneo without them. Now, my uncle keeps an eye on all the important things that happen here in Paris, and he knows of a caper that is perfect for us.”
What is that?
Goujon said his uncle knew of an old woman, a fortune-teller, who was going to buy a shop. I didn’t know what most of those words meant but Goujon just waved a hand.
“Never mind. All that matters is this: On Friday she will have a big bag full of gold coins in her house. If we get them there will be enough to send you back to your Malayan hellhole and for me to live here for many years.”
He told me that the woman was a mama and her child lived with her, but the child was grown. They lived on the fourth floor of a house.
“My uncle says there is no way to get into the building but through a window on the fourth floor that can be entered from the yard; I have seen it and you could do it easily.” He made the playing sound. “Easy as climbing a tree.”
That night he let me out of the cage. We went outside where he had a closed wagon waiting. Two horses pulled it. The man in front was so frightened I could barely smell the horses.
“Come inside, Jupiter,” said Goujon.
I didn’t want to. It was dark and small and the air was cold.
“If you run away, you will never get home. Do you understand that? You can’t get home except by boat and only I know which boats go there.”
I will go.
Goujon turned to the driver. “Rue Morgue. Jupiter, what’s wrong? Calm down.”
Why are we going to the dead house?
“The dead . . . the morgue? No, morgue is just the name of the street. We won’t be going to the morgue at all. Just calm down and get in the carriage. Please.”
We traveled through the place Goujon called Paris, although sometimes he called it France. The windows were shuttered but I could hear and smell. It was like the boat ride; too much to remember.
The house where the woman lived was not the dead house. Goujon told me the dead house was far away and I shouldn’t think about it.
This house was bigger than the professor’s had been.
“The door is always locked.”
What is that?
“Locked? Closed so no one can get in. Like your cage or your room back in the Professor’s house in Borneo.” He led me to a yard at the rear of the building. “Look at the windows on the top floor. The woman lives there with her daughter. Could you get in?”
I looked up at it and felt happy. I had never been able to climb so high.
I can.
“Are you sure, Jupiter?”
I can. Now.
Goujon put a hand on my arm. “Not now. She will not have the coins until the end of the week. Let’s go back home.”
I pulled my arm away. Practice.
“Practice? That makes sense. But not here.” He leaned out of the box and spoke to the man who helped the horses.
“We will go to an empty building I know. You can climb there without being seen.”
We went. The building was not as tall as the one where the woman lived, but it was still wonderfully high. I stretched out my arms and began to pull myself up the outer walls.
I felt my heart beating. I had done nothing like this in my life. I had only climbed the trees and walls in Professor’s house. I never wanted to stop. I swung from one piece of wall to another. Swung again and caught a window with my leg. I could have gone on forever.
Goujon yelled. “Jupiter! We have to get going! It will be morning soon.”
I wanted to ignore him. He said we were going home, but where was home? The cage?
“Jupiter! There’s no food here. If you don’t come with me you will never get back to Borneo!”
He was right. I climbed to the top once more and then rushed all the way to the street beside him.
Goujon’s face changed. “You liked that, didn’t you?”
Yes.
“It was very cruel of that professor to keep you locked up like that. Jupiter, what’s wrong?”
I never thought Professor was cruel to lock me up. Why didn’t he let me climb the trees outside his house?
I got in the wagon. When we went into the house Goujon said: “I won’t ask you to get in that cage again, Jupiter. We have to trust each other, yes?”
Yes.
Each night Goujon took me out to practice at a different empty building.
“That metal tree is a lightning rod, Jupiter. There is one on the roof of the fortune-teller’s house, near the chimney. It is much higher. Can you climb it? Yes? Very good!”
I enjoyed the practice so much I did not want it to end, but on the third night Goujon said, “I think you are ready, Jupiter. Tomorrow the old woman will buy another house. So tonight we must move, eh?”
Yes.
I didn’t know why the old woman wanted another house. But I was sure she didn’t need it as much as I needed to go home.
When the carriage arrived, the street was empty and silent. I could hear that no one moved inside. I could smell how nervous Goujon was.
“Ready, Jupiter?” he whispered. “Excellent, excellent. I will be down here waiting. I’m sure the women are asleep by now.”
I climbed the tall lightning rod. It was easy. The shutter was open against the wall. I grabbed it with both hands and swung across to the open window. That was easy too.
Inside the room was one bed, the kind Goujon sleeps on, the head against the window. I squeezed through the window and landed on the bed.
The old woman sat in a chair beside the bed, a metal box full of papers on the table beside her, and she slept. Her eyes were closed, and she growled.
I crept to her. The bags of gold coins Goujon described were lying on the table beside her. I tried to pull one but there were strings on it, and they were wrapped around her wrist.
She growled again. What could I do?
I went back to the bed and stuck my head out the window. I tried to sign my problem, but Goujon didn’t understand. Finally he climbed up the pole, badly, and reached the top.
I crawled out the window, hanging onto the sill, and when our heads were as close together as they could get he looked up and me and whispered, “What’s wrong?”
Woman asleep. Bags tied to hand.
Goujon took one hand off the pole and almost fell. He pulled something from his pocket and held it up to me. “Razor. You know how to open it?”
Yes. I had seen him shave.
I reached down to take it. I opened the razor and made sure I knew how to hold it. Then I crept back to the woman. I took hold of the first string and started cutting. The woman kept growling.
I caught the bag so it didn’t make a sound. I put it on the floor. Then I started to cut the other string.
I heard a door close. A young woman had come in. Her back was to me and she was doing something to the door.
What could I do?
She turned and saw me. She screamed.
The old woman woke. She saw me and screamed.
Now I was scared. I wanted to scream too.
Before I could back away the old woman hit me in the face. Then she grabbed me by my fur. I tried to push her away but the razor caught her in the throat. Her eyes went wide and blood squirted out poured down.
I smelled blood. I was scared. I dropped the razor and jumped back. The old woman fell to the floor.
The daughter screamed louder than ever.
Outside from below the window, I heard Goujon shouting, “My God! You devil! What have you done?”
The daughter would not be quiet. I put a hand over her mouth.
She bit me.
I put my hands on her
throat. I made her quiet. She fell down.
“Get out of there, Jupiter! Take the coins and come!”
I was scared. I had never done anything so bad before.
I tried to pick up the old woman by her fur but pieces of it came out. I grabbed her by the middle and rushed up the bed to the window. I held the woman outside so Goujon could see her. Maybe Goujon could help her?
His eyes went wide. “What have you done?” he yelled, frightening me. I lost my grip and the old woman fell out the window to the yard below.
“My God! What have you done?” Goujon slid down the lightning rod. He ran from the yard. I heard the carriage with the horses pull away.
I lifted the daughter and looked for a place to hide her. The door was locked. I didn’t want to throw her out the window.
There was no fire in the fireplace. I hid her in there.
I heard people running up the stairs, banging on the door.
I left the coins on the floor and climbed out the window, and it slammed shut behind me. I climbed up to the roof.
I kept going from roof to roof until I could not hear the screams, or smell the blood.
Before the sun rose I found a forest. There were many trees and a grassy place with a path where people walked. I climbed into a tree and hid.
I had not meant to hurt anyone, but I think those two women were dead. I had killed them like the hunters killed Mama. Like Goujon killed Professor.
Professor whipped me once for hurting one of his helpers. This was worse. What would happen now?
I stayed in the tree all day. People walked by on the path but they never saw me. I don’t think they were looking for me.
After dark I went down and searched for food. I found a place where there had been many kinds of food and carts. I found bins where old food was piled and found fruit I could eat. Then I went back to the trees and made a nest.
That’s how I lived for many sleeps.
The food was bad. It was making me sick. Professor could make me better but he was dead. Goujon killed him but maybe he did it to help me.
One night I knew I couldn’t stay there anymore. I climbed down and followed the smells back to the place where Goujon lived.
The door would not open but I knew what to do. I climbed in a window on the top floor. Goujon was in a bed growling like the old woman had done.
That made me sad.
I touched him on the arm. He woke with a jerk and sat up. He was afraid.
“Jupiter! Is that you?”
I touched his hand.
Goujon leapt out of the other side of the bed. “Wait, just wait.” He lit a lamp.
“It is you! I thought you were lost forever. Where have you been?”
Food and water.
“Of course! Where are my manners? Come with me.”
I ate. He drank something that smelled spoiled.
I told him what happened.
“What an amazing adventure, Jupiter. I never would have thought you could survive for so long in this city. I am glad to have you back.”
Are the women in the dead house?
“Yes. You know you killed them, don’t you?”
I didn’t mean to.
“Yes. But I doubt anyone else would believe it.” He put down his glass. “Listen, Jupiter. There was one man clever enough to realize that only an animal like you could have broken into that house. A strange fellow named Auguste Dupin who lives in a ruined house with his boyfriend, I suppose. You should see the place! Nothing but moldy furniture and books, hundreds of books.
“This Dupin is both a genius and a fool, I think. He tricked me, convinced me that he found you, but he wasn’t clever enough to realize that you are an animal who thinks. And that’s the point, Jupiter. Do you know what they do to murderers in France?”
What is that?
“A murderer? Someone who kills people, like you did. They kill murderers; chop off their heads. Do you want them to chop off your head, Jupiter?”
My hands trembled as I signed no.
“And I don’t want them to cut off mine, either. Understand me, Jupiter. If you are a mere animal then you are not a murderer. But if you are smart enough to help me steal then you are smart enough to kill, and they will kill you for it. Do you understand, Jupiter?”
No.
He sighed. “If they see you signing they will know how smart you are. Then I will be killed as a thief and you as a murderer. But if you don’t sign, if you can keep from ever letting anyone see you do it, then they will think you are just a brute, and neither of us will be punished. What do you say, Jupiter? Can you keep the secret?”
Could I? Could I pretend to be as empty and silent as the horses and the dogs?
“Jupiter?”
I didn’t answer. I have never answered.
Goujon had no money to send me home. I understood. This is my punishment.
He couldn’t sell me as a talking beast but he sold me to the Jardin des Plantes. There are many animals here.
I live in a box of bars in a big house that is always cold. That is my punishment, too.
There are other apes, but they don’t like me. The Professor made me different and they can tell. So I live in another building, alone.
Goujon came once and talked to me. I didn’t answer.
He thinks I am afraid. He thinks I pretend to be an empty beast because they will kill me if they find out I can think.
I am not afraid. But after I killed those women I knew I had to decide.
What am I?
Professor tried to turn me into a man. I am not a man. I will not be part of a man.
So I must be a beast. I have decided.
Beasts do not speak. Beasts do not sign.
Yesterday there were a lot of excited men in front of my cage. They were all facing one man, who was pointing at me and talking. I couldn’t understand what they were saying until one of them called him by name: Dupin.
That was the man Goujon told me about, the one smart enough to realize an Ourang-Outang killed the women, but not smart enough to know that I was also smart.
Now he was telling everyone how he figured out that it was me and the men were telling him how clever he was.
He looked at me and I thought: if I sign now and he is so clever he will know that I am signing, even if he cannot understand the words. Would he tell everyone or would he be ashamed that he was mistaken?
My fingers itched to sign: You are the fool.
But I am a beast. Beasts are silent. I let him pass me, still thinking that I cannot think.
There are more people outside my box now. They yell at me and make the playing sound. I do nothing.
They look at me and I look back. I look back.
Robert Lopresti is the author of more than sixty mystery stories, so it is no surprise he wrote this retelling of the very first detective story. His latest book, Greenfellas, is a comic crime novel about a mobster who learns about climate change on the day he becomes a grandfather and decides to save the environment. Lopresti’s short stories have won the Derringer and Black Orchid Novella Awards, as well as gaining an Anthony nomination. He is a librarian in the Pacific Northwest. “Street” is his third published fantasy story.
Even the newspapers had started to notice the high incidence of death in that area of the city. It was odd, these clusters of death . . .
THE GREYNESS
Kathryn Ptacek
Angela gazed down at her husband’s body in the hospital bed and wondered what it was like to be dead.
This isn’t what I should be thinking, she told herself, and yet it was. She reached out and placed her fingertips on his arm. Warm. Her fingers trembled as she watched his chest, waiting for him to draw in that next breath, waiting to hear the exhalation, waiting, waiting, waiting.
They were all waiting out in the hall for her, too . . . Waiting ever so politely before they bustled in, before they intruded upon her last time with her husband.
They told me to take as
long as I wanted. She put her other hand up to her mouth to stifle a giggle. As long as I wanted—an hour, a day, a week? How long was too long? Too short? What if she swept out of the room right now? Would they think less of her? Think she wasn’t a very good wife?
She rubbed her fingers across his skin. It still felt like him. She bent down and kissed him and closed her eyes and remembered all the times they had embraced and explored each other with their lips and tongues.
Her husband hadn’t been old, hadn’t been young, hadn’t been sick. Apparently something was going on inside Ben, something that she hadn’t noticed, something no one realized. Had he known? she wondered. If so, he hadn’t said anything, but then he wouldn’t have. He would not have wanted to worry her, to make her wonder what was going to happen.
She inhaled deeply. All she smelled was the antiseptic tang of the hospital room, but beneath it lay a faint odor. Death? She opened her eyes, but didn’t see the grim reaper or anything remotely like it lurking in the corner. Again, she almost laughed. Why would she see that now when her husband died an hour before? His spirit or soul or anima or whatever was gone—it had slipped away into the night, and left his shell, had left her behind.
She traced the curling hair on his forearm, smoothed a rough patch of skin—hadn’t she suggested he have his doctor check it out?—intertwined her fingers with his . . .
Beneath her palm resting on the top of his hand she felt a brief warmness, and for a wild moment she thought he was alive, that he was moving. But she opened her eyes and all the joy that had surged through her in that instant drained, and there lay his body. Dead. Dead is dead.
Only then did she laugh, loud and long, not even stopping when the two nurses and administrator with all the pesky paperwork stepped into the room and gaped at her. She laughed even harder—papers to fill out when her love was dead. She laughed until the tears washed down her cheeks.
Days blurred by . . . all the little things, all the big things she had to do. All the things she and Ben hadn’t thought about, because, surely, death was a long way away.
That’s what he always said, but every so often she saw something in those yellow-brown eyes—those wolf eyes—that said otherwise. But she had thought he was just fearful, as she was, and so they never talked about what had to be done. More papers to fill out; the meetings with the lawyer; arrangements, arrangements, arrangements. She was self-employed, so there was no boss to call to say she wouldn’t be returning to work for a while.
