Star SHort Novels - [Anthology]

by Edited By Frederik Pohl

  Mine I can name; he comes now, soft leather awhisper on marble, his very stride abhorrent magic, the pressures of the unalive against the never-living. Atlantes, hated Atlantes, of the soft eyes and stone mouth, Atlantes who, controlling me, would alter fate itself.

  “Rogero, is all well with thee? Such a cry . . . like a great wind tearing the rocks.” (His beard is full, he is too wise, he has no soul.)

  “Ay, all is well!” I tell him scornfully. “Would I were such a wind, to tear and be torn on the rocks, and gladly, under the open sky; and never again to know a slow death of silks and sweets and boredom, the like of this . . . give me my sword.”

  “Ay, I will. And an enchanted shield to blind thine enemies, and a steed to master earth and air; this castle to shelter thee and all in it for thine own, and my powers for thy convenience—and all for a word.”

  Atlantes is tall; yet, rising, I may make him lift his beard to face me. Going to him, thunder-furious, I may come close, yet unlike other men he will not flinch. I may not strike him, nor anyone here nor any thing, so cautiously is he bemagicked. “For a word!” My voice stirs the hangings and sets the great stone halls athrum. “You call my faith a word, my fealty, my every drop of blood and all my days. I will never be your knight, Atlantes.”

  And of all things, I hate his smile. “Thee will, Rogero, unless thy choice is to languish here forever instead. My plans for thee are better ones than fate dictated,” he says, and laughs at me. His voice booms inside my skull as my voice boomed a moment ago within the castle. “This is thy destiny, knight: that a maiden shall free thee, and that through her thou shalt embrace a new faith of sobriety and humility, and spend thy days accursed with earthbound slowness like a tortoise, dressed like a wren-hen; swordless and somber and chained.”

  I think about this, and look at the carvings, the silks, the aromatic mounds of fabulous fruits. At last, “Maiden?” I ask.

  “Just the one for such adventures,” he says laughing again, for he has trapped me into responding. “And a just return for thy kind of stubbornness. She shall hold her faith a greater thing than thy flesh; she shall prefer to walk like a peasant rather than be borne like a gentlewoman; she shall scorn satin and lace and cover herself like a winterbound tree earth-hued and hard-barked. And worst of all, she shall have more brains than thee.”

  “Surely you speak of some afterlife, some penance for a great sin!”

  “Na, lad! Thine afterlife is in other hands than mine. ‘Tis all thy destiny, lad. Thou may’st not take whatever part of it that pleases thee, and cut the rest to fit thy fancy. The maid will not come here; but should she come here she shall not free thee; but should she free thee, thou wilt indeed finish thy life like a clip-winged hawk, hobbling about amongst the sweating serfs and calling them thine equals.”

  He reasons right; and fury from inside me pounds my hair-roots. And as the anger mounts, my mind’s aswirl again; I seem to be here in this hall with the wizard, yet there, in the dream, in that dusty box of poverty and miracles inhabited by the painter who may not paint. I fight against it, even clinging to this hated hall, holding to the familiar enchantments like Atlantes’ hippogriff and unbearable shield, his castle set in everlasting afternoon, and the silent and invisible chains by which he holds me; these, to me, are real, for all they are magic, and not beyond understanding like the painter’s chamber with its window overlooking swift horseless chariots, its squat black demon-sculpture which first shrills, then speaks with the voices of people outside the room; its music box no bigger than my two fists, with the glowing golden eye and the sound, sometimes, of a hundred musicians; and all the marvels which are part of his poverty. Again I am he, myself, and he again one, the other, then both, then neither, and again my brains churn in transition. My mouth holds the aftertaste of grapes and mead, then the blue smoke he sucks constantly from his little glowing white sticks; I taste one, the other, both, neither.

  I turn from Atlantes and his hated smile and throw myself across the yielding mound of silks and furs. And far away I hear the golden clarion of a bell, the great gong of the castle’s magic gate. I hear Atlantes’ odd gasp, half surprise, half pleasure; I hear his soft feet on the hard marble. Who comes, who comes a-ringing, challenging, and unwanted—and unafraid of this castle and its many devils? If I am the knight, Rogero, I will watch from the window; if I am Giles, the painter, and I think I am, I will let the goddam doorbell ring. Whoever heard of a doorbell in a magic castle? What magic castle?

  Here’s a dirty bed, and there a dirty window, and over yonder the cleanest canvas yet; now wait, wait—Giles is my name, paint is my trade, if I was a knight, I’d have me a blade. Give me my sword!

  What sword? Will you for God’s sake get away from that doorbell so I can hear myself think? I almost had it then, that business about the knight, whoever he is—or is he me?—and his magic mountain, or is that really a furnished room? Ah, shaddap with that doorbell already!

  “Whaddayewant?”

  All it does, it rings.

  “Who is it?”

  Ring, ring.

  All right, you asked for it, I’m going to snatch that door open, I’m going to haul off, no questions asked, and punch the nose that’s ringing my doorbell. Twist the knob, snatch the door, knock the ringer, to the floor. Blam, a dead ringer.

  So sometimes a tenth of a second is as long as a paragraph or your arm. The door is open and I’m standing still and tight like a kid looking through a knothole, being with and of the ball game but standing quiet, watching. I watch my hand fly through the door, making a fist on the way, I watch it reach her cheekbone and curl and compact there, pudgy and hard. Back she goes, not falling but standing straight, across the narrow lighted hall and against the wall, wump-thump! She is a little brown thing with hair unwonderful, beautiful lashes opening now to make her eyes round and glazed, and that’s about all there is to her. “Mmmmmm,” she says, and slowly slides down the wall to sit, slowly bends her head to one side, the hair ahang like a broken wing. “Well I told you to get away, ringing that bell!” “Mmmm,” she breathes.

  So I scoop her up, and up she comes, light as a leg o’ lamb and common as cabbage, and I kick the door closed and I throw her on the dirty bed, akimbo-crumpled and immodest as a dropped doll, and who cares?—not the artist, who’s seen better and wastes no time on the likes of this; not the man, for he is, as the saying goes, not quite himself just now. Here’s a dry paint rag to be wet at the sink and wrung out, and pressed against the smooth beige-brown brow over the smooth lids with the ‘tender row of feathers over the seal . . . lashes, I will admit, lashes she has. She has damn-all else but my God! those lashes.

  And the rag, coming away, leaves a stain on the brow, verdigris. One can pretend she is a brazen head, skinned with old silk, and the bronze staining through. But only until her eyes open; then there is no pretense, but only a dowdy girl on my bed, a pallor ‘pon my unpalatable pallet. She gazes past the green-brown stain and the anger of her brutalized cheek, and she has no fear, but a sadness. “Still nothing?” she murmurs, and I turn and look with her, and it’s my empty canvas she is sad for and “Still nothing,” half whispering about.

  “I am going to punch your face again.” It is a faithful promise.

  “All right, if you will paint.”

  “I’ll paint or not, whatever I feel like,” I am saying in a way that makes my throat hurt. Such a noise it makes, a Day-Glo fluorescent dazzle of a noise. “Giles is my name and paint is my trade, and you keep your nose out of it. Your nose,” I say, “looks like a piece of inner tube and you got no more side-silhouette than a Coca-Cola bottle. What you want to be ringing my doorbell for?”

  “Can I sit up?”

  By which I discover I am hanging over her close, popping and spitting as I bellow and peal. “Get up, get out!” I touch my neck and the scarlet swelling of an artery there, I spin to the easel to strike it but cannot touch it, so go on to the wall and drive my fist against it. It is better than a ch
eekbone which hardly leaves a mark.

  “Oh please, don’t hurt yourself. Don’t,” she says, her voice high and soft-textured around the edges, like light through a hole in worn velvet, “don’t!” all pitying, all caring, “don’t be angry . . .”

  “Angry I am not,” I say, and hit the wall again, “angry; I’m a devil and dangerous to boot, so don’t boot me. You,” I say, pointing at her, and there is blood on my hand, “are a draggletail; bad lines, wrong tone, foreground distracting—” (that would be my easel)—”background unappetizing.” (That would be my bed). “The whole thing’s not composed, it’s—it’s —decomposed. Where’d you get that awful dress?”

  She plucks at it, looks at her hand plucking, makes a faint brief frown, trying to remember. She can’t remember, and she is not afraid, she is only trying to answer my question.

  “Well don’t bother; I don’t care where you got the dress. What do you want?”

  Up come the lashes. “I want you to paint again.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t, don’t,” she whispers. “You’ll hurt your throat. I know everything you’ve painted. You’re getting good; you’re getting great. But you don’t paint any more.”

  “I asked you why; you didn’t say why, you just said what happened.” She looks at me, still not afraid, still puzzled. This girl, I think, is not only homely, she is stupid. “I asked you why—why? What do you care?”

  “But I told you!” she cries. “You were going to be great, and you stopped. Isn’t that enough?”

  “No, not for people. People don’t want things like that, greatness, goodness.” I begin to be more angry at people than angry at myself. Much better, Giles—much better. “People want their work done easily. People want kisses and to feel important. People want to be amused and to be excited safely. People want money. Do you want money? Here’s a quarter. Here’s forty cents, even. Get out of here, people.”

  “I don’t want money. I just want you to paint again.”

  “Why?”

  Down go the lashes, away goes the voice like a distant wind. “I saw them clustered around your Spanish picture,Candlelight Malaga—two young people, holding hands very hard, very quiet; and an old man, smiling; and there was a little boy tugging at a woman’s sleeve: ‘Ma? Ma?’ and when she said, ‘Yes, dear,’ she kept her eyes on the picture so he cried. I saw a man come away from Garret’s, where your Smoke was hanging, and he laughed and said to all the strangers, ‘All I have to do istell her: she’ll love me, it’s right there in the picture.’ “ She spreads her square unwomanly hands to say, “That’s what I mean, it’s proved.”

  I don’t care about the people, the crying child, the man who speaks to strangers, and all the rest of them. I never painted for them, I painted for—for—but it wasn’t for them. So they’re all intruders, and for them I’ve done enough, too much already. If what they have taken was really in the pictures, they have robbed me. If what they took was not there, they are fools. Must I paint for thieves and fools?

  All this comes to me clearly, but there is no way to say it to the girl. “It’s for those things,” she says, as if my silence means I am agreeing with her. “So paint again.”

  “Paint, how can I paint?”

  “Why not? What’s the matter?”

  “It’s my head:” I hold it, hard. My elbows knock together; I speak at her, peek at her through the wedge. “I’ll tell you because it doesn’t make any difference. I’ll tell you,” I say painfully, “because you don’t make any difference.” (And oh, no, she wouldn’t wince.) “When I painted, I was Giles, Giles yesterday and Giles today, so that where I stopped I could start, and even find the stopping place by tomorrow. And tomorrow I’d be Giles, and knew it so well I never thought about it. Now . . . now I’m Giles. Before that I was— somebody else, and before that I was Giles again. And being Giles now doesn’t matter, because soon I’ll be someone else again, and after that, Giles. You don’t understand that.”

  “No,” she says. “Neither do you.”

  “Right, so right; the first right thing you’ve said, no compliments intended, whatever’s-your-name.”

  “Brandt.”

  “Brandt. Miss Brandt, surely, there being limits beyond which the most foolish of men will not go. Painting, Miss Brandt, is a thing having a beginning, a middle, and an end; and the beginning is part of the end of the painting before, and the end is part of the beginning of the next picture. I am Giles, and being Giles I suppose I could paint; but before—an hour or a while ago—say when you were ringing my doorbell, you and your fat nerve—I was somebody else. And soon my brains will scramble and words will mean two things or three, and yonder is either a naked canvas or a far granite wall, and under me a dirty bed or a mound of silks and furs, and what I want will be to paint or to regain my sword; I will be Rogero and Giles, one, the other, both neither; until suddenly Giles is gone, the easel, the painting—no, not gone, but like a dream, not really remembered because not really real.”

  “Let Rogero paint,” says the fool girl as if she believes me.

  There’s a noise like one-third of a scream, one-half of a howl, and it’s mine. “Rogero paint? He can’t paint! He couldn’t believe in it, couldn’t think it, wouldn’t know a tint from a T square. Listen, you; listen to me: can you imagine me as a knight, imprisoned on a magic mountain, surrounded by spells I not only believe in—I must because they’re real—jailed by a magician who rides a hippogriff? A hippogriff, Miss Unimportant Q. Brandt, you hear? A shining hippogriff whose dam was a brood mare and whose sire was a gryphon—a gryphon whose mother was a lion and whose father was an eagle. This hippogriff is real, real as the spells, real as the magic mountain, real as the knight that you, Miss Interfering W. Brandt, can’t imagine me being.” (Have I been climbing, running? I am out of breath.) “To that knight,” I say when I can, “my telephone and my radio are laughable wonders without foundation in fact, my inability to paint is of no importance except to give me his sympathy; he too is captured and fettered. He can do as little with my brushes as I might do with his sword. And you, Miss Unbeautiful Brandt, could only be the most piddling of small nastinesses intruding into his unbelievable fantasy. Now you know; now I’ve told you. There’s nothing you can do, nothing you can believe, and your coming here or not coming means nothing. If you came to help, you’ve failed. If you came to fight something, you’re beaten.”

  There is a time for wondering, wondering what someone will say, and this is it, and it is good. Good as anything could be now, where that is real or this is real, never both. For I lie under a weight and I cannot move it, and when it disappears I am no longer myself, and it is good to defeat someone, something, even an unimportant, unlovely girl; even when in the defeat there can be no victory for me, nor a lessening of the weight. So I wait, wondering in which of several possible ways she will acknowledge her defeat; and here it comes from the usual lips and the eyes behind the unusual lashes; here:

  “May I use your phone?”

  Because I said she doesn’t matter, I may not let this matter either; I step away from the phone and turn my back, and soft footsteps pass me and soft fingers take up the hard phone; there’s a chorus of clicks, composed in syncopes, seven measures long. And a ring, and a ring.

  What portals open to this lady’s ringing, this Brandt for the burning? What dilates to this dialling, this braw, bricht, moonlicht nictitation? My God, my God, here it comes again, the words like lyings in their layers, and I am he, and he is—either or, both, neither. Of these, “or” is king; I wear a coat d’or, that dry, exclusive little word. For we are desiccated to the preposition that all men are created sequels. The “or” is golden but my heart has been read, my mind has been lead; read, lead; just the color of Floradora orange-youth.

  “Hello,” says the telephone tinily because it can speak two syllables without moving its open mouth; “Giles,” says Miss Brandt, “just Giles,” and the telephone laughs and says, “Okay.”

  So
ft footsteps on the wooden, or is it marble floor, and the ring has been answered with a shout of laughter; and soft-footed, swift, Atlantes strides to the casement and the curtains of cloud leave the court, the mist melts away from the meadow below, the great golden gate is agleam in the sun, and gone is the gloaming. “Rogero!” he cries (but am I not Giles, imprisoned in a dream, who says he is where a felon needs a friend? Aiee! Sharper than a serpent’s truth is an ungrateful Giles!) “Rogero, come and see thy destiny!” and in Atlantes’ laugh lies such a triumph, such a scorn, I can only come and see. I go to stand beside him.