The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  She nodded.

  “I came here,” said he gently, “in the satisfaction of a certain hobby, and I made all that you see in this room—all the little things you were looking at a moment ago—and I made the tower, too. Sometimes I make it new inside and sometimes I make it look old. Do you understand that, little one?”

  She said nothing.

  “And when the whim hits me,” he said, “I make it new and comfortable and I settle into it, and once I have settled into it I begin to practice my hobby. Do you know what my hobby is?” He chuckled.

  “My hobby, little one,” he said, “came from this tower and this machinery, for this machinery can reach all over the world and then things happen exactly as I choose. Now do you know what my hobby is? My hobby is world-making. I make worlds, little one.”

  She took a quick breath, like a sigh, but she did not speak. He smiled at her.

  “Poor beast,” he said, “you are dreadfully cut about the face and I believe you have sprained one of your limbs. Hunting animals are always doing that. But it won’t last. Look,” he said, “look again,” and he moved one fat hand in a slow circle around him. “It is I, little one,” he said, “who made everything that your eyes have ever rested on. Apes and peacocks, tides and times” (he laughed) “and the fire and the rain. I made you. I made your husband. Come,” and he ambled off into the shadows. The circle of light that had rested on him when Alyx first entered the room now followed him, continually keeping him at its center, and although her hair rose to see it, she forced herself to follow, limping in pain past the tables, through stacks of tubing and wire and between square shapes the size of stoves. The light fled always before her. Then he stopped, and as she came up to the light, he said:

  “You know, I am not angry at you.”

  Alyx winced as her foot struck something, and grabbed her knee.

  “No, I am not,” he said. “It has been delightful—except for tonight, which demonstrates, between ourselves, that the whole thing was something of a mistake and shouldn’t be indulged in again—but you must understand that I cannot allow a creation of mine, a paring of my fingernail, if you take my meaning, to rebel in this silly fashion.” He grinned. “No, no,” he said, “that I cannot do. And so” (here he picked up a glass cube from the table in back of him) “I have decided” (here he joggled the cube a little) “that tonight—why, my dear, what is the matter with you? You are standing there with the veins in your fists knotted as if you would like to strike me, even though your knee is giving you a great deal of trouble just at present and you would be better employed in supporting some of your weight with your hands or I am very much mistaken.” And he held out to her—though not far enough for her to reach it—the glass cube, which contained an image of her husband in little, unnaturally sharp, like a picture let into crystal. “See?” he said. “When I turn the lever to the right, the little beasties rioting in his bones grow ever more calm and that does him good. A great deal of good. But when I turn the lever to the left—”

  “Devil!” said she.

  “Ah, I’ve gotten something out of you at last!” he said, coming closer. “At last you know! Ah, little one, many and many a time I have seen you wondering whether the world might not be better off if you stabbed me in the back, eh? But you can’t, you know. Why don’t you try it?” He patted her on the shoulder. “Here I am, you see, quite close enough to you, peering, in fact, into those tragic, blazing eyes—wouldn’t it be natural to try and put an end to me? But you can’t, you know. You’d be puzzled if you tried. I wear an armor plate, little beast, that any beast might envy, and you could throw me from a ten-thousand-foot mountain, or fry me in a furnace, or do a hundred and one other deadly things to me without the least effect. My armor plate has in-er-tial dis-crim-in-a-tion, little savage, which means that it lets nothing too fast and nothing too heavy get through. So you cannot hurt me at all. To murder me, you would have to strike me, but that is too fast and too heavy and so is the ground that hits me when I fall and so is fire. Come here.”

  She did not move.

  “Come here, monkey,” he said. “I’m going to kill your man and then I will send you away; though since you operate so well in the dark, I think I’ll bless you and make that your permanent condition. What do you think you’re doing?” for she had put her fingers to her sleeve; and while he stood, smiling a little with the cube in his hand, she drew her dagger and fell upon him, stabbing him again and again.

  “There,” he said complacently, “do you see?”

  “I see,” she said hoarsely, finding her tongue.

  “Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “Then move off,” he said, “I have got to finish,” and he brought the cube up to the level of his eyes. She saw her man, behind the glass as in a refracting prism, break into a multiplicity of images; she saw him reach out grotesquely to the surface; she saw his fingertips strike at the surface as if to erupt into the air; and while the fat man took the lever between thumb and forefinger and—prissily and precisely, his lips pursed into wrinkles, prepared to move it all the way to the left—

  She put her fingers in his eyes and then, taking advantage of his pain and blindness, took the cube from him and bent him over the edge of a table in such a way as to break his back. This all took place inside the body. His face worked spasmodically, one eye closed and unclosed in a hideous parody of a wink, his fingers paddled feebly on the tabletop and he fell to the floor.

  “My dear!” he gasped.

  She looked at him expressionlessly.

  “Help me,” he whispered, “eh?” His fingers fluttered. “Over there,” he said eagerly, “medicines. Make me well, eh? Good and fast. I’ll give you half.”

  “All,” she said.

  “Yes, yes, all,” he said breathlessly, “all—explain all—fascinating hobby—spend most of my time in this room—get the medicine—”

  “First show me,” she said, “how to turn it off.”

  “Off?” he said. He watched her, bright-eyed.

  “First,” she said patiently, “I will turn it all off. And then I will cure you.”

  “No,” he said, “no, no! Never!” She knelt down beside him.

  “Come,” she said softly, “do you think I want to destroy it? I am as fascinated by it as you are. I only want to make sure you can’t do anything to me, that’s all. You must explain it all first until I am master of it, too, and then we will turn it on.”

  “No, no,” he repeated suspiciously.

  “You must,” she said, “or you’ll die. What do you think I plan to do? I have to cure you, because otherwise how can I learn to work all this? But I must be safe, too. Show me how to turn it off.”

  He pointed, doubtfully.

  “Is that it?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, “but—”

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes, but—no—wait!” for Alyx sprang to her feet and fetched from his stool the pillow on which he had been sitting, the purpose of which he did not at first seem to comprehend, but then his eyes went wide with horror, for she had got the pillow in order to smother him, and that is just what she did.

  When she got to her feet, her legs were trembling. Stumbling and pressing both hands together as if in prayer to subdue their shaking, she took the cube that held her husband’s picture and carefully—oh, how carefully!—turned the lever to the right. Then she began to sob. It was not the weeping of grief, but a kind of reaction and triumph, all mixed; in the middle of that eerie room she stood, and threw her head back and yelled. The light burned steadily on. In the shadows she found the fat man’s master switch, and leaning against the wall, put one finger—only one—on it and caught her breath. Would the world end? She did not know. After a few minutes’ search she found a candle and flint hidden away in a cupboard and with this she made herself a light; th
en, with eyes closed, with a long shudder, she leaned—no, sagged—against the switch, and stood for a long moment, expecting and believing nothing.

  But the world did not end. From outside came the wind and the sound of the sea-wash (though louder now, as if some indistinct and not quite audible humming had just ended) and inside fantastic shadows leapt about the candle—the lights had gone out. Alyx began to laugh, catching her breath. She set the candle down and searched until she found a length of metal tubing that stood against the wall, and then she went from machine to machine, smashing, prying, tearing, toppling tables and breaking controls. Then she took the candle in her unsteady hand and stood over the body of the fat man, a phantasmagoric lump on the floor, badly lit at last. Her shadow loomed on the wall. She leaned over him and studied his face, that face that had made out of agony and death the most appalling trivialities. She thought:

  Make the world? You hadn’t the imagination. You didn’t even make these machines; that shiny finish is for customers, not craftsmen, and controls that work by little pictures are for children. You are a child yourself, a child and a horror, and I would ten times rather be subject to your machinery than master of it.

  Aloud she said:

  “Never confuse the weapon and the arm,” and taking the candle, she went away and left him in the dark.

  * * *

  —

  She got home at dawn and, as her man lay asleep in bed, it seemed to her that he was made out of the light of the dawn that streamed through his fingers and his hair, irradiating him with gold. She kissed him and he opened his eyes.

  “You’ve come home,” he said.

  “So I have,” said she.

  “I fought all night,” she added, “with the Old Man of the Mountain,” for you must know that this demon is a legend in Ourdh; he is the god of this world who dwells in a cave containing the whole world in, little, and from his cave he rules the fates of men.

  “Who won?” said her husband, laughing, for in the sunrise when everything is suffused with light it is difficult to see the seriousness of injuries.

  “I did!” said she. “The man is dead.” She smiled, splitting open the wound on her cheek, which began to bleed afresh. “He died,” she said, “for two reasons only: because he was a fool. And because we are not.”

  And all the birds in the courtyard broke out shouting at once.

  Rosario Ferré (1938–2016) was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, to a family of some wealth and prominence. Her father was the founder of the New Progressive Party and the third elected governor of Puerto Rico. When her mother died in 1970, Rosario took over the First Lady’s duties for the final two years of her father’s term. She attended Wellesley College, Manhattanville College, and the University of Puerto Rico and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. She founded the literary journal Zona de carga y descarga, publishing the work of little-known Puerto Rican writers as well as the work of political reformers. Her first collection of stories, Papeles de Pandora (1976), established her reputation for mixing traditional tales, classical mythology, and a feminist sensibility. She wrote her first novel, The House on the Lagoon (1995), in Spanish, then decided to translate it into English, which led her to change it to such an extent that she then retranslated the English version into Spanish; the English-language edition was nominated for a National Book Award. “The Youngest Doll” originally appeared in Zona de carga y descarga in 1972.

  THE YOUNGEST DOLL

  Rosario Ferré

  Translated by Rosario Ferré and Diana Vélez

  EARLY IN THE MORNING the maiden aunt had taken her rocking chair out onto the porch facing the cane fields, as she always did whenever she woke up with the urge to make a doll. As a young woman, she often bathed in the river, but one day when the heavy rains had fed the dragontail current, she had a soft feeling of melting snow in the marrow of her bones. With her head nestled among the black rock’s reverberations she could hear the slamming of salty foam on the beach rolled up with the sound of waves, and she suddenly thought that her hair had poured out to sea at last. At that very moment, she felt a sharp bite in her calf. Screaming, she was pulled out of the water, and, writhing in pain, was taken home on a stretcher.

  The doctor who examined her assured her it was nothing, that she had probably been bitten by an angry river prawn. But days passed and the scab wouldn’t heal. A month later the doctor concluded that the prawn had worked its way into the soft flesh of her calf and had nestled there to grow. He prescribed a mustard plaster so that the heat would force it out. The aunt spent a whole week with her leg covered with mustard from thigh to ankle, but when the treatment was over, they found that the ulcer had grown even larger and that it was covered with a slimy, stonelike substance that couldn’t be removed without endangering the whole leg. She then resigned herself to living with the prawn permanently curled up in her calf.

  She had been very beautiful, but the prawn hidden under the long, gauzy folds of her skirt stripped her of all vanity. She locked herself up in her house, refusing to see any suitors. At first she devoted herself entirely to bringing up her sister’s children, dragging her enormous leg around the house quite nimbly. In those days, the family was nearly ruined; they lived surrounded by a past that was breaking up around them with the same impassive musicality with which the dining room chandelier crumbled on the frayed linen cloth of the dining room table. Her nieces adored her. She would comb their hair, bathe and feed them and when she read them stories, they would sit around her and furtively lift the starched ruffle of her skirt so as to sniff the aroma of ripe sweetsop that oozed from her leg when it was at rest.

  As the girls grew up, the aunt devoted herself to making dolls for them to play with. At first they were just plain dolls, with cotton stuffing from the gourd tree and stray buttons sewn on for eyes. As time passed, though, she began to refine her craft, gaining the respect and admiration of the whole family. The birth of a doll was always cause for a ritual celebration, which explains why it never occurred to the aunt to sell them for profit, even when the girls had grown up and the family was beginning to fall into need. The aunt had continued to increase the size of the dolls so that their height and other measurements conformed to those of each of the girls. There were nine of them, and the aunt would make one doll for each per year, so it became necessary to set aside a room for the dolls alone. When the eldest turned eighteen, there were one hundred and twenty-six dolls of all ages in the room. Opening the door gave the impression of entering a dovecote, or the ballroom in the Czarina’s palace, or a warehouse in which someone had spread out a row of tobacco leaves to dry. But the aunt did not enter the room for any of these pleasures. Instead, she would unlatch the door and gently pick up each doll, murmuring a lullaby as she rocked it: “This is how you were when you were a year old, this is you at two, and like this at three,” measuring out each year of their lives against the hollow they left in her arms.

  The day the eldest turned ten, the aunt sat down in her rocking chair facing the cane fields and never got up again. She would rock away entire days on the porch, watching the patterns of rain shift in the cane fields, coming out of her stupor only when the doctor would pay a visit or whenever she would awaken with the desire to make a doll. Then she would call out so that everyone in the house would come and help her. On that day one could see the hired help making repeated trips to town like cheerful Inca messengers, bringing wax, porcelain clay, lace, needles, spools of thread of every color. While these preparations were taking place, the aunt would call the niece she had dreamt about the night before into her room and take her measurements. Then she would make a wax mask of the child’s face, covering it with plaster on both sides, like a living face wrapped in two dead ones. Then she would draw out an endless flaxen thread of melted wax through a pinpoint on her chin. The porcelain of the hands and face was always translucent; it had an ivory tint to it that formed a great con
trast with the curdled whiteness of the bisque faces. For the body, the aunt would send out to the garden for twenty glossy gourds. She would hold them in one hand, and with an expert twist of her knife, would slice them up against the railing of the balcony, so that the sun and breeze would dry out the cottony guano brains. After a few days, she would scrape off the dried fluff with a teaspoon and, with infinite patience, feed it into the doll’s mouth.

  The only items the aunt would agree to use that were not made by her were the glass eyeballs. They were mailed to her from Europe in all colors, but the aunt considered them useless until she had left them submerged at the bottom of the stream for a few days, so that they could learn to recognize the slightest stirring of the prawn’s antennae. Only then would she carefully rinse them in ammonia water and place them, glossy as gems and nestled in a bed of cotton, at the bottom of one of her Dutch cookie tins. The dolls were always dressed in the same way, even though the girls were growing up. She would dress the younger ones in Swiss embroidery and the older ones in silk guipure, and on each of their heads she would tie the same bow, wide and white and trembling like the breast of a dove.

  The girls began to marry and leave home. On their wedding day, the aunt would give each of them their last doll, kissing them on the forehead and telling them with a smile, “Here is your Easter Sunday.” She would reassure the grooms by explaining to them that the doll was merely a sentimental ornament, of the kind that people used to place on the lid of grand pianos in the old days. From the porch, the aunt would watch the girls walk down the staircase for the last time. They would carry a modest checkered cardboard suitcase in one hand, the other hand slipped around the waist of the exuberant doll made in their image and likeness, still wearing the same old-fashioned kid slippers and gloves, and with Valenciennes bloomers barely showing under their snowy, embroidered skirts. But the hands and faces of these new dolls looked less transparent than those of the old: they had the consistency of skim milk. This difference concealed a more subtle one: the wedding doll was never stuffed with cotton but filled with honey.