The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

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

  Upon entering they are received all of a sudden by a man who holds a kind of large money box in his hands (like the ones held in churches by those wooden surplice-clad altar boys with lifelike gaze and the size of an eleven-year-old child) in which the cost of admission is deposited. Crammed into the space behind the man a dolphin-print curtain reveals, when moved to one side, another space, six time larger and filled with chairs—some twenty in all—which face an opening with no canvas: there the back of the truck shows its closed doors. A single lightbulb hangs from the tent like an enormous drop of honey ready to fall on the audience. Once the seats are all occupied, the man appears and stops further entry into the tent by zipping the curtain shut. Then he turns and passes through the curving border of light outlined on the dirt floor. He walks to the front, faces the public, and begins to speak with an impassive expression in which it is impossible to detect any sentiment or thought, as if he spoke in a dream, or like someone who was releasing words from the ungraspable interior of a memory or a vision. He reaffirms what the loudspeaker had proclaimed earlier (that they are present for a fantastic, incomprehensible, unforgettable spectacle), but on his lips, the assertion had lost that quality of coarse clamorous propaganda, turning instead into a smooth dreamlike recitation. He says they are going to come face-to-face with a being of fable, a glorious sea creature of which the world has heard tell since the beginning of time, although no one has ever, ever seen her. Only now, thanks to the formidable power of the whirlwind that whipped the island weeks before, had she been torn from the icy shadowy abyss in which she reigned and dragged toward the coast where he himself had the fortune to recover her. They, those who listened to him that night, were the first human beings to set eyes on Melusine. “Here she is,” he concludes quickly….He turns his back to the wall of the auditorium and heads toward the truck and opens the doors wide. One, two, three lights go on in rapid sequence, aiming toward the interior where something glazed, sparkling, green-in-blue flashes, framed by strips of gleaming nickel. No sooner does the blindness dissipate than, one by one, they begin to glimpse, peering in, amazed at the proportions of the giant fish tank.

  III

  From time to time he would ask himself amazedly if what was happening was real. Had he torn away those pearls that illuminated his fingers with a luster that stayed in his nails? Contemplating the pearls, had he perceived the control he could attain and thanked his luck which, alone with desolation, had sent him relief? Had it actually occurred to him to sell them (although he saved three or four so as not to lose influence over her), acquire the truck and have the colossal fish tank lodged in the cargo area? Afterward had he really cast the net into that caricature of an ocean (to which she surely must have acclimated herself by now, resigned, reduced to going around in circles like an ornamental fish in its aquarium), to catch the fish that he never imagined in his dreams, a fish of queer unattainable beauty that existed nevertheless because he carried it (carried it?) there in the back, in dark murky water, stirred by the countless jolts and bumps of streets and roads, plowing through the swell of the mountains, from village to village behind the demolition spread by the hurricane? Did he now habitually park the truck at night on the outskirts of the villages, withdrawing into jungles of yagrumos and bamboo, and shut himself up in the back, seated between the bolts of canvas, opposite the gleaming fish tank? Did he then awaken quite numb and open up to the breeze, to the first light of the morning, disoriented, surveying the sky full of birds, the vegetation, astonished that the world was not submerged, that it didn’t partake of the water except for a short while, when it rained; that it was inhabited by people (of which he, unfortunately was one) who fled, opening parasols and umbrellas, or who feared drowning in rivers or in the sea. Was it true that he avoided stopping twice in the same village, because he had realized that those who entered to see her left with their gaze turned in upon themselves, flickering in short bursts, and that with enraptured faces they asked to see her again as if inside they had surrendered the power, the will that they had exercised over themselves minutes before? And was he filled with fear because he knew (knew?) from his own experience the irreconcilable consequences that a second examination of the roseate, phosphorescent breasts (as if made of the most downy sand of the ocean depths); of the scaly hip, embellishing the silvered water in a dancing boil of swishing tail; of the voice, whose echo could take over and settle forever in the hearer’s soul could bring? But he would know that he wasn’t dreaming when what would happen happened.

  That night, for the first time, he recognizes the three men. He has already visited almost all the towns on the island, he has spent weeks going through cities neighborhood by neighborhood. Thousands of people have filed through the tent, casting short, perplexed looks at the crystal coffer of his treasure; it is frankly impossible to remember so many faces of women, children, and men. But he identifies these three as the three that he has seen the day before yesterday and yesterday (yes, it’s them, that’s all there is to it!) entering and leaving during the stops he has made in the last two towns. The great numbers of people, the severe exhaustion that he has already begun to feel—months of travel which have raced by like so many hours, all of it indistinct: alone, driving, making stops, setting up the tent, taking it down and driving, solitary apostle of something that doesn’t know (does it?) for certain what it is, impelled by the unshakable incandescence he harbors—perhaps these are the reasons he hasn’t taken notice of them. Three big brown guys with black mustaches, mustard-colored T-shirts with stains of sweat at the armpits and greasy mechanic’s overalls. He trembles from head to toe. He decides to take drastic action: when he comes to the end of that group, he announces to the large line of customers still remaining that the show has been canceled. The customers protest but they finally disperse, seeing that the man has begun to dismantle the tent. That night, instead of following the planned route, he travels in the opposite direction toward a tiny village in the mountains, far away and not easily accessible. But on the following night, when he opens for spectators, the same three men appear, and this time their swollen lips break into sarcastic little smiles as they avidly pay their entry fee. Now the persecution is a certainty. As best he can, he cancels the show once again and leaves the village after driving about the deserted streets a dozen times to assure himself that no one is following him. That night he hides the vehicle on a road funneled into the brush and shuts himself up in the back to contemplate the fish tank with sponge-like eyes that want to drink in all the water. When he notices the morning light penetrating the crack between the doors, he stands up and opens them. At the very instant he jumps to the ground he hears a motor starting and turning, discovers through the dust cloud it is making the truck moving off. After a second of paralysis he gives chase, but he is unable to catch up. The mermaid thrashes her tail in the silvery water, frightened by the giddy vision of the countryside and that man, ever smaller, waving his arms like an octopus. The man hears bursts of laughter mixed with the dust and monoxide that he breathes while crying out and gasping.

  He will know he wasn’t dreaming when he finds himself alone on that back road. He will know definitely that it wasn’t a hoax, that the creature enclosed in the fish tank was superhuman, when he no longer feels the influence of her presence. It will be as if he himself were a being who spent hundreds of years submerged under the sea, and who someone suddenly took from the water. During the unbearable minute of suffocation another type of world will enter through his terrified and incredulous eyes, a world that, no sooner than he discovers it, annihilates him. He will take a few steps as if trying out the impossible sense of balance coming from this pair of extremities that have replaced his tail. He will open his mouth but rather than bubbles a shout will come out: Melusine. He will begin to run again. Melusine. At some moment on the road he will trip and fall on his face in the dust: four pearls will come rolling out of his shirt pocket. They will roll toward the grass like luxurious insect
s that he will start trapping. With the four of them in the palm of his hand, a lunatic giggle will escape him. The polished luminescence will make him happy, their possession will show him the way, finding her is inevitable, nothing else can happen while he has them. He won’t know the time that has passed walking, sleeping beneath the trees, eating fruit and roots, asking all if they have seen a truck of such and such appearance. Slowly he will go, descending the mountains toward the sea. The sea. His hopelessness will be so great when he faces it that he will hurl the pearls over the precipice. He will regret this immediately. Looking over the rocky edge he will see the truck, smashed at the foot of the precipice, at the very edge of the water where the waves are soaping with foam the already rusting body.

  The back doors were open, one hanging by the top hinge, the heavy panes of glass of the fish tank crushed, and nothing inside, not a trace of her ever having been there. The same thing in the front seats of the truck. The men had disappeared, perhaps the undercurrents had dragged the bodies (how were they going to survive a fall from such a height?) and they would now be three skeletons at the bottom of the ocean, their flesh food for the fish, sea moss and coral beginning to colonize the bones, schools of fish swimming through the rib cage of each one. The truck was pushed nose-first into the waves, up to the shattered windshield. Acisclo sat in the sand, distressed and worn-out. His eyes wandered from the shore to the horizon, from the horizon to the shore, while he called to her with his mind, not wanting to think about the overturning and the violent impact of the fall. The whole rig, months and months of effort lost as if the hurricane had struck again. But nothing was as important to him as the fact that she had disappeared. What was he going to do now? How was he going to be able to live without her company? He would have preferred to find her dead to not knowing where she was. Suddenly he began to crawl around the beach: the pearls, the pearls, if he found them it could be that…But he didn’t see them anywhere. He had thrown them in an attack of frustration, never imagining he would find what he was seeking at the very edge of the sea. No, he couldn’t see them, couldn’t find them. He was an enormous and absurd baby clambering from one side to the other and wailing. After a while he went back to sitting and remained immobile for a long time. The waves wet his heels, there were shadows of seagulls sliding in circles over the sand. When his hope was at the point of evaporating he thought he saw something shiny carried in and out by the surf. He jumped and rolled until enclosing it in his fist. He felt something take hold of his wrist below the water. When he pulled, the milk-white, delicate hand emerged, grasping him with the virulence of a giant clam. At first he tried to free himself, but gave up when in front of his head—which now floated in the sea up to his chin—appeared that magnificent head that looked at him, laughing. It didn’t even cross his mind to shout when a second hand gripped his other wrist with equal force. He felt the viscous tail striking against his legs while she maneuvered into the sea. Then, with his ears already plugged with water, he heard the song, bidding him welcome.

  Rachel Pollack (1945– ) is an American writer of novels, stories, poetry, and comic books and an expert on the tarot. She published her first story in 1971, and her novels include the Arthur C. Clarke Award–winning Unquenchable Fire (1988) and the World Fantasy Award–winning Godmother Night (1996). “The Girl Who Went to the Rich Neighborhood” first appeared in the anthology Beyond Lands of Never (1984) and was reprinted in her collections Burning Sky (1998) and The Tarot of Perfection (2008).

  THE GIRL WHO WENT TO THE RICH NEIGHBORHOOD

  Rachel Pollack

  For Jack Maguire

  THERE WAS ONCE A WIDOW who lived with her six daughters in the poorest neighborhood in town. In summer the girls all went barefoot, and even in winter they often had to pass one pair of shoes between them as they ran through the street. Even though the mother got a check every month from the welfare department, it never came to enough, despite their all eating as little as possible. They would not have survived at all if the supermarkets hadn’t allowed the children to gather behind the loading gates at the end of the day and collect the crushed or fallen vegetables.

  Sometimes, when there was no more money, the mother would leave her left leg as credit with the grocer. When her check came, or one of the children found a little work, she would get back her leg and be able to walk without the crutch her oldest daughter had made from a splintery board. One day, however, after she’d paid her bill, she found herself stumbling. When she examined her leg she discovered that the grocery had kept so many legs and arms jumbled together in their big metal cabinet that her foot had become all twisted. She sat down on their only chair and began to cry, waving her arms over her head.

  Seeing her mother so unhappy the youngest girl, whose name was Rose, walked up and announced, “Please don’t worry, I’ll go to the rich neighborhood.” Her mother kept crying. “And I’ll speak to the mayor. I’ll get him to help us.” The widow smiled and stroked her daughter’s hair.

  She doesn’t believe me, Rose thought. Maybe she won’t let me go. I’d better sneak away. The next day, when the time came to go to the supermarket Rose took the shoes she shared with her sisters and slipped them in her shopping bag. She hated doing this, but she would need the shoes for the long walk to the rich neighborhood. Besides, maybe the mayor wouldn’t see her if she came barefoot. Soon, she told herself, she’d bring back shoes for everyone. At the supermarket she filled her bag with seven radishes that had fallen off the bunch, two sticks of yellowed celery, and four half-blackened bananas. Well, she thought, I guess I’d better get started.

  As soon as she left the poor neighborhood Rose saw some boys shoving and poking a weak old lady who was trying to cross the street. What a rotten thing to do, the girl thought, and hoped the children in the rich neighborhood weren’t all like that. She found a piece of pipe in the street and chased them away.

  “Thank you,” wheezed the old woman, who wore a yellow dress and had long blonde hair that hung, uncombed, down to her knees. She sat down in the middle of the road, with cars going by on every side.

  Rose said, “Shouldn’t we get out of the street? We could sit on the pavement.”

  “I can’t,” said the old woman. “I must eat something first. Don’t you have anything to eat?”

  Rose reached in her basket to give the old woman a radish. In a moment the shriveled red thing had vanished and the woman held out her hand. Rose gave her another radish, and then another, until all the radishes had slid down the old woman’s densely veined throat. “Now we can go,” she said, and instantly jumped to her feet to drag Rose across the road.

  Rose told herself that maybe she wouldn’t need them. She looked down at the silver pavement and then up at the buildings that reached so far above her head the people in the windows looked like toys. “Is this the rich neighborhood?” she asked.

  “Hardly,” the woman said. “You have to go a long way to reach the rich neighborhood.” Rose thought how she’d better be extra careful with the rest of her food. The old woman said, “But if you really want to go there I can give you something to help you.” She ran her fingers through her tangled gold hair and when she took them out she was holding a lumpy yellow coin. “This token will always get you on or off the subway.”

  What a strange idea, thought Rose. How could you use a token more than once? And even if you could, everyone knew that you didn’t need anything to get off the subway. But she put the coin in the bag and thanked the old woman.

  All day she walked and when night came she crawled under a fire escape beside some cardboard cartons. She was very hungry but she thought she had better save her celery and bananas for the next day. Trying not to think of the warm mattress she shared with two of her sisters, she went to sleep.

  The next morning the sound of people marching to work woke her up. She stretched herself, thinking how silver streets may look very nice but didn’t make much of a bed. The
n she rubbed her belly and stared at the celery. I’d better get started first, she told herself. But when she began to walk her feet hurt, for her sisters’ shoes, much too big for her, had rubbed the skin raw the day before.

  Maybe she could take the subway. Maybe the old woman’s token would work at least once. She went down a subway entrance where a guard with a gun walked back and forth, sometimes clapping his hands or stamping his feet. As casually as she could Rose walked up and put her token in the slot. I hope he doesn’t shoot me, she thought. But then the wooden blades of the gate turned and she passed through.

  A moment later, she was walking down the stairs when she heard a soft clinking sound. She turned around to see the token bouncing on its rim along the corridor and down the stairs until it bounced right into the shopping bag. Rose looked to see if the guard was taking his gun out but he was busy staring out the entrance.

  All day she traveled on the tube train, but whenever she tried to read the signs she couldn’t make out what they said beneath the huge black marks drawn all over them. Rose wondered if the marks formed the magic that made the trains go. She’d sometimes heard people say that without magic the subway would break down forever. Finally she decided she must have reached the rich neighborhood. She got off the train, half expecting to have to use her token. But the exit door swung open with no trouble and soon she found herself on a gold pavement, with buildings that reached so high the people looked like birds fluttering around in giant caves.