by Gene Wolfe
“They would not rob a spy, would they?”
“They rob everyone. Who will arrest them? No, you are foreign, from a weak nation far away.”
I told her she was right.
“If you escape you will return there. Could you bring with you another, perhaps?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s never easy but it might be possible.” It seemed to me it was the smart thing to say.
She smiled. “This is too short an answer, you see? You must answer me much more long, and who does not know ja? Now for you a new question. These kind border guards who did not take your clothing, did they not take also your money, and did you before they came change some into our money? Is there other wealth of you that might be drawn upon, and do you still have it? Do not look at this money, this wealth you have, before you make the answer.”
“I won’t,” I promised. “As to the currencies about which you asked me, I have dollars from my own country and euros. What I mean by this is that I have some of each. Don’t you use euros—”
Somebody pounded on the door. Kleon looked frightened and the girl spat like a cat. “It is Aldos, the swine-dog. You must answer our door. It will confuse him.”
The big man who had pounded it looked confused for less than a second. After that he shouted in my face, but I could see fear in his eyes. I talked to him in German, saying I could not understand him, but that I would try if only he would talk slower and keep his voice down.
He did not. When I backed away, he came at me. When I came at him, he backed away.
The short man, Kleon, came to stand beside me. From his tone, I believe he must have cursed the big man. His voice was low and bitter.
At last the big man stammered and stopped, jamming his clenched fists into the pockets of what looked like a pair of old golf pants. He was wearing an undershirt too, but his was dirty. Part of it was covered by an old wool vest.
Behind me the girl said, “He says our chickens get into his garden. We do not have chickens.”
Her husband nodded almost imperceptibly to that. He spoke in his cursing tone to the big man, advancing toward him, making wild gestures that almost brushed the big man’s nose. I advanced, too.
For a minute the big man rallied, shouting louder than ever. Then he turned and stamped away.
“I suppose somebody’s chickens must get into his garden,” I said to the girl.
“Ours did once or twice,” she acknowledged. “Kleon had chickens before we were married.”
Kleon spoke bitterly before retreating into his house and slamming the door behind him.
“He says he was rich once, that one may be rich or wed but not both.”
I said, “I’m sure that isn’t true.”
“For him, yes.” The girl smiled, making me feel like I was a lot younger than she was. (Really it was only two or three years.) “He has locked us out.”
I stared.
“You do not believe? Try the door.”
I did. It would not open.
“You see? I have hear the bar drop into place. We are cast out!” She grinned at me. “Are you afraid?” She had a great grin.
“A little bit,” I admitted. “Is there an American Consulate? If there is one, I’d like to go there.”
“Soon he thinks better.” It was like she had not heard me. “Martya is with him, he will think. She will tell him he need only go to the police. He will say ‘I am his prisoner! He lock me out!’ Then the police will come and shoot him. He is right about this, but we will not go to them right away. Do you like these trees? The bushes?”
“They’re really nice,” I said.
“This bush here…” She caressed it. “It will bloom for us before the moon is old. For a week it is the most pretty one in Puraustays. Our trees give nuts. I do not know the German name, but the wood burns well. A hot fire and slow. A little stick burns for a long, long time.”
“I see.”
“Some have fruit trees. This is nice because of the fruit. Apples, pears, cherries are all good. These burn well, too. I think you have these in your land.”
I said we did.
“But you, yourself? You have such trees?”
I tried to explain that I did not have a house, I lived in an apartment because I was on the road so much.
“If you had a house, you would have fruit trees. You are a fruit tree man. This I see.” She had begun to walk, and I followed her. “My father had fruit trees but he is dead.”
“My father is dead, too,” I said. “He was with the State Department, so I grew up all over the world.”
“Here?”
“No, not here. Mostly Germany, France, and Japan.”
“Here there are three kinds of men. A fruit tree man like you, he is strong.” She held up her clenched fist. “Strong, or perhaps he has the good friends.” She drew an imaginary pistol. “You are such a one, I think.”
I said I had a lot of friends in America.
“If a man who is not strong plants fruit trees, his neighbors take the fruit.” She raised her chin, a proud daughter. “No one took my father’s fruit!”
“That must have been nice.”
“Yes, yes! Once Kleon had fruit trees. They took his fruit and he could not stop them. Now we have nut trees, so we eat the nuts.” She pointed. “Do you see those?”
We had reached the edge of her husband’s block, and she was pointing at the next one. The trees there were oaks. I said they looked fine.
“No, no! He is weak. No one takes acorns.”
“I see.”
“When a man dies his neighbors cut his trees to burn. My father is dead half a year before anyone is so brave.” The girl sighed. “I take you now to a man who has fruit trees. If there is for you a consul, he will know.”
2
THE STORY
They were cherry trees mostly, Martya said. Whatever they were, they were beautiful, tall trees in wedding gowns. The smell made me think about God and heaven, and the bees that swarmed over them about hell because I got stung twice before we got to the door. “Volitain will put wet tobacco on those,” she told me. “It will take your pain.”
He was pale and starvation thin, with straight black hair, as courtly and polite as Kleon had been abrupt and hostile. “Enter!” He bowed from the hips. “Enter and welcome! Any friend of dear little Martya’s, a brother is to me.” The look that passed between them told me Martya had tried to make him.
“He is bee-bitten.” Her tone was flat, and her face held no expression. “Put tobacco on them.”
“I see…” Volitain stalked over to a table in his parlor, which looked as big as Kleon’s entire house. In the table drawer he found a magnifying glass.
“That will not help!”
Volitain bent over the sting on my cheek. “Sit here, please. Now incline the head, eh? I must have light from the window.”
I did what he said.
“The sting is here. It must be drawn. The hand we see next, eh?” He moved my hand to bring it nearer the light. “Here, also. Wait a moment. Drink good wine.”
He left us, slipping into some interior room through a door that was not quite open.
I asked, “Does he always do that? Not open the door?”
“He has no wife. The room where he go will be soiled, I think. He does not wish you to see it.”
“Or you,” I said.
Martya shrugged. “There is wine here. He desires us to drink. A woman brews tea, a man has wine.” She went to a sideboard. “Is Tokay, I think. We drink it much here. You will drink?”
I nodded and she poured. It was pungent and a little too sweet.
Volitain returned with tweezers and iodine. “The bee that stings, dies,” he murmured. “One would suppose that evolutionary processes would soon end such deaths. Is the hive stronger without him?”
I said, “Ouch!”
“First the face, because it must pain most. The hand next, where the pain is not so much.”
I managed
to keep quiet.
“You are hungry? I have little cakes. Martya?”
I looked at my watch. It was one p.m.
Martya said, “I will make for us the sandwiches if you allow it.”
“There is little,” Volitain said. “We go to a café.” He had finished with the iodine and was taping on moist tobacco.
Martya looked at me, shrugging. “Volitain has much money, but he does not spend. Never for me, this money. Never for you, also, I think. You will pay?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be glad to.”
Volitain shook his head. “You will not. You must not listen to our sour chit. I say the café and I pay.”
Martya giggled at that. She had drained her glass, so I thought it had probably been the wine.
“Now we will go out,” Volitain was saying. “The bees sting you if you think of them, so not. Think of pleasant things alone and you shall be safe.”
It sounded silly but I tried it, thinking what kind of food a café here might have. Sandwiches, sure. Soups and salads … I tried to concentrate on those, but I could not keep my eyes off Martya’s hips. They were to die for, and she was leading the way.
“You see?” Volitain said. “You were not stung. Of what do you think?”
“Strabo’s commentary on the Euxine,” I told him. One of my professors used to talk about it.
“Ah! It is interesting, no doubt. I must read it.”
“I’m a lot more interested in finding out why Martya’s pestering you with me.”
“She does not tell?”
I shook my head. There were no sidewalks, so we had to walk in the street. A man on a bicycle zoomed past us, staring at Volitain and pedaling faster and faster. “He’s scared of you,” I told him.
“He hates me.” Volitain sighed. “Hating me, he supposes I hate him. Supposing I hate him, he expects some hurt. Expecting hurt, he fears me. His fear make him hate me all the more. Is that not a sad circle?”
I said yes.
“As you say, but I am not in it. God may make him a king or give him a knife. All is one to me.”
I was watching for the long building I had seen when I first got to the city, the yellow brick building where the Mounted Guards stabled their horses in peacetime, but I did not see it. Here the streets were wider, and a lot of the buildings had shops on the ground floor.
We went into one of the biggest, following a path of well-worn cobbles and passing shoppers who carried their new stuff in string bags. Inside was a big atrium roofed with colored glass. There were balconies up the sides, and they were lined with shops like the floor we were on.
“The cafés here are.” Volitain indicated the level where we stood. “Those who eat in them grow fat, then the steps are not convenient.”
“Also,” Martya added, “they are drunk and fall down them.”
“We have logic in my country, you see. The most valuable things are sold highest, so we say their prices are high. Suppose a robber comes. He must descend many steps while those he robbed shout that he be stopped.”
“And throw chamber pots.” Martya was scanning the cafés. “You will pay, Grafton, so you are to choose.”
I was tired of walking, so I said, “The closest.” Do not come to this country unless you are ready to walk one hell of a lot. If you bring your bike, you will have to double-lock it every time you park it. You had better be ready to fight for it, too.
“This one is not good,” Volitain told me. “Too many come, and we have things to speak of. That one over there. You will like it.”
“It is a place for feeling,” Martya said as we trudged across the atrium. “Most quick I feel Volitain’s hand on my leg, and he my scissors.”
I could not follow what Volitain said to the hostess, but his gestures made it clear that he wanted the booth in the corner. After a little argument he got it. The high backs of the seats in all the booths went up until they just about touched the ceiling, and our booth had a green cloth curtain to close the end that was open to the table area.
Martya translated the menu and we ordered. “Is there an American Consulate here?” I asked Volitain. “Martya said you would know.”
Volitain shook his head. “I do know, and there is none. In other cities, perhaps, but not in this Puraustays of ours. There is the Amerikan ambassador at the capital. It may be there is a consulate also. That I do not know.”
“She also told me you were well connected and you’d help me.”
“I am not.” Seeing Volitain smile was like watching a skull grin. “Even so, I help you—if I can. You have the troubles with our secret police, the JAKA?”
“With your border patrol. How did you know?”
“You are foreign. Many foreigners are arrested. Also dear little Martya brought you to me. Those are enough.”
“What can you do?”
A glance passed between Martya and Volitain, and he said, “Not so much, it may be. First I must know your trouble. Tell me.”
I told him all about my arrest, pretty much like I have told you here.
“You have done nothing.” Volitain sighed and leaned back.
“Damn straight! So why was I arrested?”
“They needed someone. That is all.” His voice had sunk to a sleepy whisper. “They must show their superiors they are active, alert. Arrest someone. They wish also to punish dear little Martya’s husband. Arrest someone. You sleep in a place no one watches.”
I nodded.
“So you are chosen. They can say whatever they wish.”
“They took my passport.”
“Of a surety. They always do.”
The waiter arrived with our food. When he had gone and Volitain had drawn the curtain, I said, “How can I get my passport back? Would it help if I were to notify the American embassy?”
“I will not deceive you,” Volitain said. “I do not deceive.”
Martya sniffed.
“They may return it to you when you do nothing. That happens sometimes.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
Volitain spread his hands. “You must discover the correct official, then you must win his friendship. It is most often done with money. Martya thinks you have money, and that is good, but you do not have enough for that. Not here. In Amerika?”
“Maybe.” I thought about it. “I have some there and I might raise some more. How can I get it here?”
“Someone will have to bring it for you. Diamonds are best.” Volitain hesitated. “They will have to be well concealed. He must pass the customs, you understand. Not only ours, but other nations’.”
“Unless he flies in.”
“Let him attempt it.” Volitain’s sleepy whisper had nearly faded away. He straightened up and considered the meat rolls steaming on his plate. “I wish him well.”
I remembered the canceled flights and the flight that had gone on to Ankara without landing here. “It seems just about hopeless.”
“Fortunately”—Volitain pointed his fork at me—“there is the third way. You might grow rich here. If you wish to return to Amerika there is no difficulty. Our officials fear the rich. It is the same with you, eh?”
I said it was.
“Now let us turn the page. You may choose to remain with us. Much is here for the man of wealth. I offer a plan.”
I probably looked like I did not believe him. That was the way I felt.
“I will not deceive you, for I do not deceive. My plan will make me rich, too, if it succeeds. It may be it fails. Failure is at least as likely as success. Will you close your ears to me?”
I shook my head.
“That is well. You are Kleon’s prisoner. It is not a handicap, and may favor us.”
“We together.” Martya squeezed my hand.
“Exactly. There is a treasure, or there may be. The explanation will take some time.”
I chewed and swallowed a mouthful of fadennudeln. “Then get going. I want to hear it.”
“It require you to pay
some money. Not much.”
“Yeah, I figured. And?”
Volitain cut a meat roll and studied it. “You think I take your money. I do not. I say first that if we find this treasure, together or separately, it is to be shared equally between us three. It is understood? If Martya finds it alone, she must share with us. If I find it, and nothing you know of my finding, I will share with you and Martya. If you find it, you must share with both of us.”
I said, “Okay,” and the three of us clasped hands.
“Now we are partners,” Martya said. “Tell him of the judge.”
“Hear me. The year is eighteen sixty. A young man called Eion Demarates leaves home after a quarrel with his father. Twenty years pass, and he return a rich man. His father is dead. His mother likewise. There are brothers, sisters. All want his gold, but Eion Demarates give them nothing. There are old quarrels.”
I nodded again to show I understood.
“He builds a fine house for himself. He has servants, a carriage with four horses, and many other things. We go forward. The year is eighteen eighty-eight, eh? Hear me, for this you must understand. In eighteen eighty-eight, our money was not rubbish.” Volitain got out his wallet and scattered bills over his meat rolls. “Rotting garbage, this is. My dolmades are not so bad as this. In the year of which I speak, it was not so. Our money is silver and gold.”
“Ours, too,” I said.
“You were robbed in that case, just as we were.”
Martya said, “If you don’t want those, I’d like one.”
Volitain said, “You are my guest,” and she speared a bill and a meat roll with a single thrust of her fork. He stared for a moment, then laughed.
Grinning, Martya licked a little grease from her punctured loot.
“An ancestor of mine was the judge here at that time.” Volitain was wiping the rest of his bills with his napkin. “We have half a dozen judges in Puraustays now. In that year, the city was smaller and there was little crime. We had only one, the ancestor of whom I speak. Demarates went to bed, eh? His valet helps him to undress, warms the bed, builds up the fire, does all those things. When his master is in bed the valet wishes him a good rest, puts the little cap on the candle, and goes out. Death finds his master asleep and does not wake him. A physician is brought, an inquest is held, all that. Nothing bad is found.”
