Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482)

by Vollmann, William T.

  I asked her: Did you ever eat the fruit of the Tree?

  Look into the warlock’s face, she replied, and tell me what you think he’s eaten.

  When Mortensen returned to the banquet, Goldman’s corpse-women were gnawing soup bones into pieces so that the marrow would come out. They sang: Die!

  Mortensen instructed them: Get ready. Now. Live!

  At once, Goldman sank the pickaxe into Mortensen’s head. He fell without resistance. Happily clacking their teeth, all the dead crowded round to get at the blood.

  Goldman and I looked at each other with relief. Now that Mortensen had crossed to the other side, he would know everything for us, and tell us what to do.

  And so we waited. Sophie sat naked in the weeds, eating Mortensen’s liver. I still halfway expected her to find a jewel inside. The warlock’s eyes were as beautiful as butterflies. Mr. Mooncrow rose horribly tall, and a hundred dead children awaited carnal knowledge.

  Unlike the rest of you, said Goldman presently, I never deceived myself.

  THE GRAVE-HOUSE

  Once upon a time I built myself a house beneath a delightful tree, but late on a certain afternoon I began to get old. The sounds of the evening unnerved me as they had never done before. I drew my curtains in order to feel more safe. Then it got very dark, and I slept a long time. When I opened the door in the morning, I discovered bulldozers digging everything up. A man in a hard hat told me to get out; this property had been condemned for nonpayment.— Why not? I thought. I’m too old for this.

  I bought myself a well-made house in the city and furnished it as comfortably as I liked. This time I made certain that everything was paid for. No noises ever came through the windows. My soft bed whispered ever more sweetly to me at night, and warm air sang to me from the ceiling ducts. I went to the door, but the door said: Do you really want to go out? Stay awhile; you’ll be so much happier here.— Warm sticky drops of something fell on my head. I looked up, and saw that the ceiling was salivating. This house of mine meant to eat me! So I rushed to the closet to get my coat, but the closet said: I wouldn’t do that if I were you.— I pulled at the doorhandle, but the closet remained as tightly closed as the vagina of my first girlfriend, who had never been in the mood. I sat down on the bed to decide what to do. The mattress felt softer than ever, and I became a trifle sleepy.— Now wouldn’t you like a little nap? my pillow whispered. I’ll give it to you just the way you like it.— So I lay back on my soft, soft bed, and my pillow wrapped around my face to kiss me. In an instant I couldn’t breathe.

  After I ripped the pillow’s flabby folds off my mouth, goosedown started whirling around me like malignant snowflakes, seeking to choke me. I leaped up, stepped into my shoes and kicked the closet door until it squealed. When I turned the knob, it opened with a sob and a shudder, wetting my hand with its tears.— I thought you loved me, it said.

  I do love you, I said. Now where’s my coat?

  Wouldn’t you rather play dress-up? The weather report predicts a cold front. If you stay indoors with me today, I’ll show you costumes you’ve never seen. You can be either a king or a queen.

  If I play with you today, will you try to stop me from going tomorrow?

  I’ve always loved you, said the closet. It will never be easy to let you go.

  Well, if I stay here forever, what do you have to offer me?

  What do you mean? What way is that to talk to someone who would give you everything?

  If you’ll give me everything, start by giving me my coat.

  Are you saying it’s over?

  Of course not, I said, stroking the shiny cool doorhandle in just the way it liked. I’m going shopping so I can bring you back some lovely, lovely clothes.

  Do you promise? whispered the closet.

  I promise.

  I put on my coat, but just then the refrigerator spoke my name. It wished to offer me a really, really fancy piece of cheese. The instant I heard that, my mouth began to water, and once that happened, the ceiling dripped more saliva on me. That discouraged my appetite, so I went to the window to investigate the weather. But I lacked means to determine whether or not the closet had lied, because rain was running down the inside of the pane—the tears of my house, which feared that it might not be able to eat me.

  Since the door refused to unlock, I broke the window with the base of a gooseneck lamp whose head kept hissing, swiveling round and attempting to bite me. By now the world had grown dark. I smashed out every last shard, threw that quacking, squawking lamp into the hole, and poised myself to escape from my grave-house. Perhaps I should have departed sooner. The bathroom door kept slamming to and fro, the lights glowed red, and the oven timer was screaming. To tell you the truth, I wished that I could have seen something more than blackness outside. How far down did the night go?— It’s past your bedtime, the house threatened.— Leaping into space, I said to myself: This is the last time I’ll ever allow myself to get old.

  DEFIANCE

  People also tried to defend themselves with hands and feet, and they twisted around and twitched like frogs. After that he had them also impaled and spoke often in this language: Oh, what great gracefulness they exhibit!

  Manuscript no. 806, monastery of Saint Gall (ca. 1462)

  So Abraham took Isaac up onto the mountain, a three days’ journey, and tied him hand and foot upon the mound of firewood, so that he could be roasted after he was bled, but Isaac cried: Why, father?— It seems that Abraham could not answer. The slaughter-knife trembled in his hand. The boy shouted: Father, please, father, there’s a ram in the thicket behind you, caught by both horns! That’s what God intends!— The old man declined to look. Ruthlessly he raised the knife. Swallowing, the boy closed his eyes.— My son, said Abraham, you must look me in the face when I slit your throat. Then God will see that you give yourself willingly.— At this, the child commenced to scream, and so the two bondsmen came running. Until then Abraham had preserved hope that God’s messenger would call down from the sky that he had acquitted his heart and could slay the ram instead. But when the terrified servants panted into sight, the ram tore himself loose, so that there remained only human victims to choose among. What should the father have done? The servants were of unknown blood; for in their infancy he had found them beneath a blasted tree, their mother dead beside an empty water-skin, and he drove off the jackals which were already grinning in their faces. They owed him life, so why not reimburse himself from the both of them, in order to ransom Isaac, whom he loved more than anything but God? Besides, they ought to pay the forfeit for driving the ram away. So he rounded on them with his upraised knife, while Isaac seized the opportunity to untie himself and flee, since after all no one had obtained his consent to this business. He ran eastward of Eden, this being the direction which Cain had chosen before him; and thence the Lord permitted both those outcasts to depart, for He punishes unto the seventh generation, and had He slain Isaac then, there would have been no children to slay. Knowing that he could never again enter his father’s tent, nor lie in the lap of his mother while she groomed his hair, he aged a hundred years, travelling on into the fabulous lands, and God bore with him, for the sake of the seventh generation. And Isaac bowed low before God every day, offering Him the best of everything that he found, but he was not answered. And in the three-hundred-and-thirty-third year of his age he took to wife Dark-Eyes, a princess of the land whom he had allured in defiance of her father, for, being accursed, he owned neither sheep nor goats; no silver pieces lived in his belt; and his home was a certain cave whose entrance he sealed up from within every night, so that the jackals, men and angels who hunted him would wander away bewildered. Dark-Eyes’s father promised him death should he ever visit again, but Dark-Eyes loved him, although why that was she could no longer have said after the first hour of their elopement, when she finally saw his unhooded face. Therefore, thanks to God, she repented that she had given herself to h
im, and during those morbid cave-nights when he would have slept in her arms, she sat against the wall, cursing him and herself. So she perished, without creating a new generation for God to punish. Then Isaac in his grief entreated forgiveness of her dead carcass, covered her face in an old goatskin, the finest he had, and upraised his slaying-knife to end himself, for he hated the days of his life, and resolved to recompense God for what he had stolen from Him. But had he died then, there would have been no seventh generation, and so the Lord made it fall out that a certain proud and beautiful woman now came riding up upon a camel, calling Isaac by his name. Just as his father had done, he fell into hesitation, and presently rolled aside the stones from his cave, at which she lowered her pitcher to him that he might drink the wine of peace, and carried him away to the mountains where a shady, rapid river flashed near as white as sunlight beneath cloudy green leaves whose like he had never known, and here the gates of a marble city opened unto him, for she was a great queen, whose name was Joy. When she had led him into her palace he knelt before her, touching his mouth to her right foot, and swore an oath to serve her forever as her loving consort, since she had returned his life to him, and together they dwelled in happiness for seven times seventy-seven years, making many children, so that someday there would be a seventh generation to torment to the utmost and finally blot out. In his great gratitude he drew water for her like a woman, while she protected him like a man, so that even the angels could not find him (God, of course, knew his whereabouts), and he tilled the soil like a man, and she wove their clothes like a woman, and when they were alone he played the harp for her while she sang in her soft small voice, upraised her little hands, and slowly danced, naked but for three silver necklaces. Then came an easy trifling hour of sleep, which resembled both of their conceptions of death. And every morning she said to him: Drink, and every evening he said the same to her. And he fashioned bracelets to gladden her wrists, and she washed his feet in flower-water. Then one night after her hair turned grey she dreamed of the sharp-toothed tomb which already opened its jaws to receive them, and in this dark mouth of death flickered seven red serpent-tongues of eternal fire fashioned and lit expressly to torture them forever, so that God could receive the payment of the first generation, but Isaac kissed her, saying: So wan a curse as death bestows upon our extreme old age need not be feared, for our very souls are worn out now, from too much living. Speaking for myself, eternal misery can be no worse than what I suffered before I met you.— But she replied: I have never been in anguish as you were, so I lack practice and experience. Husband, I’m afraid!— Then he said to her: I promise to lie beside you forever, and so long as God keeps me in consciousness to be tortured, I will say your name in my heart, and call upon you, and make my love for you a prayer for all the ages, and I swear to keep faith that you will do likewise for me.— So they comforted one another, and when their tomb roared out for them with the voice of seven lions, they entered it willingly, and their children, the second generation, walled them up, at which everyone’s punishment began.

  TOO LATE

  It was getting late when I learned how much I liked the redbrick buildings; here’s one with an octagonal tower! I cried to myself; and although it was cold, the round light-balls of a Christmas tree far within the dark reflections of towers in the panes of brass doors on Yonge Street made me feel vaguely expectant, as if somebody might want to give me a present. Well, the phony snow and plastic evergreens in the window which announced RETAIL OPPORTUNITIES got me over it. I felt colder than ever; in fact, it was so chilly that I could only be warmed by a woman with the sleek fat rounded thighs of a Maillol sculpture. None of the parka’d prostitutes on Wellesley Street were shaped like that, but I followed one for thirteen blocks, just to be certain, and her availability made me happy. What were my fantasies but fantasies? All the same, when she finally got into a man’s car I felt sadder than ever.

  In the door of a once ornate storefront now concealed behind brown papers, a puffyhaired Asian teenager smoked his cigarette. Nodding at him, I went to ZANZIBAR—The Girls Never Stop—IS NUDE HOT EROTIC LADIES SMOKING ROOM INSIDE and stood at the door waiting to see if the sign could be true, and before it got much later I had to admit that it was, for a woman in a camelhair coat clicked rapidly down the street, gripping both shiny black gloves in her naked right hand. The NUDE HOT EROTIC LADIES SMOKING ROOM tempted me, but, fearing the cover charge, I chose instead to stroll along University Avenue, adding my mite to the crowds with folded arms, Santa Claus caps, jackets and red balloons, awaiting the Santa Claus Parade! In their perambulators, babies outstretched their lobster-red mitts at the sun, and I thought: What if they’re right?— So I returned to the octagonal tower, determined to go up in the world.

  The lobby resembled the wide-waisted skirts of a fifteenth-century German cruet, brass or bronze, polished almost to gold, like a creek bottom when the sun strikes right; and the elevator arrived at once—and almost too late just the same, I had better add, for it would soon be closing time. But I pushed the button, and soared so rapidly that the instants nearly went backward! If only I could have gone a trifle faster and higher, I might have lived forever.

  From the fifteenth floor I could see clear into Charlevoix County: wiggly-squiggly lines of delicious coldness, the road, hills and houses, frosted over with raspberry vanilla and blueberry ice cream.

  From the twenty-ninth floor, Canada’s trees rose snowily or not beneath my mountaintops, inviting me to admire the sea-view of Lake Superior. I could almost see a peaceful, stylized woman framed by pale green hills.

  From the thirty-seventh floor I could see all the way to the beginning of the Great North, whose ruffled snow invited me like a loved woman’s frilly underpants between the shadowed knee-hills of frozen sky-stone, and my soul rode away on spectacular waves of snow, ice and clouds like eagle-armies above.

  From the eighty-eighth floor I discovered mountains like immense blue teeth; then a bird’s wing of cloud above the fog.

  The penthouse on the one-hundred-and-forty-seventh floor was windowed all around like a greenhouse. Up here I could easily make out the curvature of the earth. The first telescope angled due north, but maybe it was actually a kaleidoscope, because when I placed my eye against it, everything exploded into sunny blueprint abstractions of an astronomical character. Had I only spent my life learning and reasoning, I might have been able to interpret that message, but it was too late for that.

  There was also a telescope pointed due west, and it showed me the brassy sun fleeing across the Pacific. This comprised futurity, and I longed to see my destiny here. After much labor I finally saw myself on one of the Queen Charlotte Islands, on my ninetieth birthday in a nursing home. I asked the lovely darkhaired nurse to kiss me, but she wouldn’t because I was so old and gruesome. So I begged her to spit in my mouth—that way I wouldn’t contaminate her—and she kindly did. I had to hurry now; this sunbeam was speeding on! For my birthday present I begged her for an injection of potassium to stop my heart; through the dusty window of the nursing home I could not quite read my lips when I made this plea, but because I knew myself, I knew what I was asking. The nurse smiled, stroked my hair and nodded. Just before her needle went in, I understood that after the carrion died, I would rise up from it, take her hand, and she and I would walk away together. She loved me! Wishing to gain some benefit from her love before it was too late, I raised the telescope up into the air, trying to spy on the two of us; but we were already gone, or else she had already buried me; either way, I had missed the train.

  Hoping to do better, I pressed my face against the southern telescope. The instant my eye crossed the border, I was ambushed by grief; scanning streets where I had once been with a woman I had been far too late for, I felt the grief rise up in me like the numbness of an oncoming brain clot; I hoped to avoid focusing on where she lived; but the farther away I swiveled the telescope, the more anxious I became; why wasn’t I going where I should be
? Not caring to miss my opportunity, I finally aimed my gaze at her living room window; she was watching television and eating ice cream with a nice young man who kept kissing her hand; my God, she didn’t even have hair under her arms; they were both too young for me; I’d been born too early, which is to say too late! Raising the telescope despairingly upward, I saw storybook airplanes ascending with live soldiers waving at me through the windows and descending laden with flag-wrapped coffins. Quickly I swiveled the telescope away, incredulous that I had failed to remain with the woman and the country that I still loved. And when I stood away from the telescope, it was as if I were departing from her city in the early morning dark, unable to accept that I had not made myself known to her. For some time, she had still loved me, and grieved in bewilderment that I would not be her friend. I had seen the same uncertain friendliness on the faces of the soldiers who had waved to me. They wanted me to accompany them on their mission; one corporal had even offered me his binoculars as he shot off to his death.

  Needless to say, there remained the telescope oriented due east, where come spring the melting roads of Québec would be chocolate under the snow. I approached this eyepiece with a sense of excitement. And what would you know? I found myself peeping in on Lilian Terrace! That nice girl was in her high heels, and her nipples were very, very pointed. I spied a snowy landscape painting on an easel behind her, her garment draped over the chair. Well, after that, I wanted to be as Canadian as a beaver dam silhouetted beyond constellations of tree-forms rising up into the cirrus clouds and downward (reflectively) into splendid brass-dark pools. To hell with soldiers and ice cream eaters! Never mind that nurse! As for the sunny abstractions, I had time to figure those out whenever I wanted to. I felt so Canadian that I even wanted to take part in the Santa Claus Parade.