The Land Across

by Gene Wolfe

  Of course we both went to sleep eventually. When I woke up the first time and looked at the clock, it was five a.m. Or that is the way I remember it. I had a headache, but I found some aspirin and took two before I went back to bed. I knew it was aspirin from the smell, and the taste when I bit one.

  You will probably think I was worrying about the hand the whole time. Well, you are right, but you are wrong, too. I had jerked my own hand out of that pocket as quick as I could get it loose. Boy, did I! After that I kept trying to believe it had not really happened. Most of the time I did, but sometimes I knew it had been real.

  When we finally got up that morning it was almost time to meet Papa Zenon. We got dressed as fast as we could, no shaving or anything, and off we went. I had on the wool sports jacket. I never put my hands in the pockets, but I could tell from the way the jacket hung that pocket was empty. About the time we got to the café, I patted the outside and it was empty all right.

  Papa Zenon was there already, with coffee and a plate of Eggs Minsk in front of him. He put down the one he had been eating, stood up, wiped his hand with his napkin, and shook hands with us, Naala first. A real gentleman.

  We sat down and he offered us his eggs. Naala shook her head but I took one.

  Papa Zenon sat, too. “The anchovies, I suppose. Many people object to those.”

  “I like them,” Naala told him, “but I have not been up long. For me, coffee first. After it, pastries.”

  I bit into mine. They are sort of like eating a deviled egg, only hot from the oven.

  “You have just left your beds? If so, it was I who made you leave them. I apologize.”

  “I set the time,” Naala said. “You did not reply to my letter.”

  Papa Zenon smiled. “It seemed unnecessary. I am here.”

  “So are we. Now we fence, you and I. The foils clash. They separate to clash again. Tell me, for what prize do we contend?”

  “For command, perhaps, if we join forces.” He was still smiling.

  “That cannot be. I cannot put myself under your orders, nor could you, a priest, put yourself under mine.”

  The waitress was at Naala’s elbow. She and I ordered, and the waitress left.

  “I watched His Excellency this morning.” Papa Zenon sounded like he was talking to himself.

  “You rise early, in this case. Grafton and I were up late, and so slept late also.”

  “May I inquire what kept you up?”

  “You may, and later I may tell you.”

  Papa Zenon chuckled. “Let me guess. A young woman died at the Harktay yesterday. You spoke to members of her family.”

  “We did not, but I wish very much to know why you think it might be so. I find this interesting.”

  Papa Zenon spread his hands. “From you, I withhold nothing. Can you say the same?”

  “I will say this. If we join forces as I proposed, I will withhold nothing.”

  “Then I am the more generous. Yesterday evening, I spoke with His Excellency. Another priest was present. His Excellency mentioned the hand, which the other priest wished to see. His Excellency explained that he had given it to an operator of the agency we know, and happened to say also that you had turned it over to a young foreigner who was assisting you. At this the other priest looked a trifle surprised.”

  “Yes?”

  “When we were alone I asked why, and he told me he had been asked to say the funeral mass of a prisoner. When he inquired as to the circumstances of her demise…” Papa Zenon paused. “It is always prudent to do this. There is a danger of unseemly speech in the homily. One seeks to minimize it.”

  Naala’s coffee had arrived. She spooned sugar into it, but her eyes never left Papa Zenon’s face.

  “He learned that the unfortunate woman had not died unattended. A foreigner associated with the agency we have had reason to speak of had been at her bedside, or so he was told. A young man.”

  “Her name was Yelena,” I said. “I don’t know her last name.”

  “You were there to extort information from her.”

  I shook my head. “Just to ask her a few questions. She was awfully weak, though. She couldn’t tell me much.” Maybe I should have shut up after that, but the look on Papa Zenon’s face forced it out of me. “I held her hand while she died.”

  Everybody was quiet for a minute or two after that. I guess I could have been looking around the Great Square Café then, so I could give you a big description of it now, the army officer and the girl he had probably paid to spend the night with him and all the rest of that shit. But the truth is that I was just staring down at the tablecloth and thinking about Yelena and sugar bowls. In the States we have sugar bowls at home because we trust the people there. In restaurants you get your sugar in little paper packages, because the government knows better than to trust you. Yelena had probably died because somebody made a crazy mistake. America is full of crazy people who might put anything into a restaurant sugar bowl if they got the chance, and maybe you are one of them. Cocaine or sand or powdered bleach. Rat poison. Anything. It had always seemed to me that life in America was a whole lot better than life where I was then, but in some ways it has to be a lot worse because it drives so many people crazy with hate. I have gone on a lot about a crazy country, and while we were quiet and the café was emptying out and quieting down I wondered if my own country was not crazier.

  Naala touched my arm. “Papa is speak to you. You do not hear him, I think.”

  I apologized like you do.

  “I do not ask what she tells you,” Papa Zenon said, “but I would much like to know what questions you asked her.”

  I asked Naala if we were partners.

  “Already partners I do not think. You may tell him if you think it wise. Or not. You must decide.”

  I nodded. “I’ll tell you, Papa, if you’ll tell me how you knew Martya was here.”

  “This I must tell before, I think, because you do not trust me. I must speak first?”

  “That’s all right. I’ll trust you.”

  “Ah! I win the bargain.” He grinned. “We priests are bad bargainers, all of us. Rarely do I win. Tell me and I tell you what you wish to know. Also I show you. That is better.”

  Two things happened at once then, neither one of them in words. Naala stiffened up, and I felt the hand come out of my left jacket pocket. At first I thought it was hers, but it was not. I sipped coffee, choked a little, coughed, and sipped some more.

  “You are disturbed, my son.” Papa Zenon sounded really sympathetic. “I have spoil your breakfast. I apologize.”

  “Not me, Papa. I was just trying to remember all the questions. I think I’ve got them now. I asked how she was feeling, and didn’t people get her mixed up with Rosalee. You probably know who Rosalee is.”

  “You will tell me?”

  “Sure. She’s Russ Rathaus’s wife. She and Yelena looked quite a bit alike, which was why I was talking to Yelena.”

  Papa Zenon nodded. “I see. If one cannot question a witness one questions another who resembles her. Science progresses.”

  Naala said, “We explain this later, it may be.”

  “After that, I asked Yelena if there was anybody who might want to kill her.”

  Papa smiled. “I see.”

  “She said no. Then I asked if there was anybody who hung around her a lot when she didn’t want him to. We call those guys stalkers in America, but I don’t think I told Yelena that.”

  “Your next question?”

  “There wasn’t any. She wanted a nurse, and I tried to get one for her but nobody came. Then she wanted to sit up, so I cranked up her bed. After that all I did was hold her hand, but she jerked it away just before she died. She was shaking and everything by then.”

  Naala put her arm around me, and the hand squeezed my left thigh. There was some talk I missed after that. I did not really start paying attention again until my food came. I know how that sounds, but that is how it was.

  Naala
was saying, “It is like this. We believe those who say the Unholy way free Rathaus. We seek him, yes. But it is not him we desire, or not so much. It is they. You also, for His Excellency. But what is His Excellency to do but summon us? He commands no police.”

  “He will investigate,” Papa Zenon said. “He wishes to drag them from their dark places, not just a few but every one of them. If so many cannot be imprisoned, they can at least be made known. Let their neighbors understand what it is they do.”

  I said, “One of the things they did was kill Yelena.”

  Nobody said anything for a minute, so I said, “She was some sort of criminal, I guess. I don’t know what kind, and I don’t even know her last name. But I mean to get them for it. Only right now, here and now, I mean to straighten you out. Your Unholy Way didn’t free Russ. He freed himself, and they’re trying to kill him for it. When we find him—which we will—maybe we’ll find out enough about them to keep him safe, and that’s what I want. He was my friend, and he’d do the same for me.”

  “Already I know what you believe,” Naala said. Her voice was gentler than I had ever heard it. “Also what the JAKA believe.”

  I felt the hand stir.

  Papa Zenon said, “It may be good for us to differ on certain points. It is when one side corrects the other that both progress.”

  I said, “Thanks, Papa. After that, you don’t have to tell me how you knew Martya was here if you don’t want to. But if you do, I’ll sure listen.”

  “Photographs.” Papa Zenon was smiling the way you do when something hurts. “His Excellency was able to provide me with photographs of three persons I may be sure are among the black magicians. He asked me to look at them, and to identify them if I could.”

  Naala glanced around the café, which was starting to fill up. “You will show them to us?”

  “Yes. We are partners already, though we have not yet agreed. So much information already has been shared. In a moment I will ask you to show me the hand.”

  “Ah. What if I refuse? Does our partnership remain?”

  I put my left hand on the hand then. This was under the table where they could not see me doing it, but the hand was there. It seemed like something dead to me, cold and flaccid, until it started to tremble.

  “It does.” Papa Zenon was answering Naala’s question. His eyes shone, and I had the feeling that the mouse would run but circle around behind us. He would be friendly and understanding if Naala cooked up some bullshit to explain why we did not want him to see it, and pretty soon he would come up with a way to put pressure on us.

  Naala said, “Let us see these pictures.”

  “I will. You understand, I hope, that I am not the only investigator His Excellency has looking into this matter. There are several of us, but he fears that one may be a spy. Which one he does not yet know. For that reason and others, none of us knows the identity of the rest.”

  “It is a poor system,” Naala told him, “but it is one we, too, are often forced to employ.”

  Papa Zenon had reached down and pulled up a scuffed black leather case with a zipper. He unzipped it and got out three photos maybe three by five, all old-fashioned black-and-whites. He offered them to Naala first.

  She shook her head, but when I spread them out to look at, she leaned over so she could look, too. The first one was Russ and the second one was Rosalee.

  The third one was Martya.

  I gave them back to Papa Zenon and said, “Okay, that answers a question Naala and I have had for quite a while.”

  That got me the elbow. “Her he knows in Puraustays?”

  “He met her there, yeah. He caught up with Martya and me in some café, and the three of us talked about a lady we wanted underground. He did it after I was gone.”

  I turned to him. “You still say that? The suitcase and everything?”

  Papa Zenon nodded. “I told you the truth.”

  “I know you must have said some prayers. Maybe you sprinkled holy water on the suitcase or in the grave. Something like that. Martya must have been there, since I wasn’t. Did she have fits or anything?”

  “Ah!” Papa Zenon grinned. “You think she may be a vampire. Or you think I think this.”

  “Did she?”

  He shook his head. “Vampires and certain others are said to react so. Mere witches do not. Do you know how a witch proceeds when she wishes a consecrated host?”

  I said, “I guess she steals it.” The hand had slipped into mine.

  “Of course. But how?”

  “Breaks into a church at night, maybe. Or maybe she could bribe a priest if she had money.”

  “It is easier than either. She attends mass, receives communion, and holds the host in her mouth until she can remove it without being observed. If she can hold a host in her mouth and escape unscathed, what is holy water to her? Ask whether I think your Martya a witch.”

  Naala said, “Do you?”

  Slowly, Papa Zenon swung his head from side to side. “I do not. I have many reasons. Do you wish them?”

  I said, “I don’t. I knew her pretty well and lived in the same house. I’d have seen something. Besides, she was scared, really scared, one time when we were in the Willows after dark. A witch wouldn’t have been, or I don’t think so.”

  “Nor do I. She sins, as do we all. But witchcraft?” He looked as though he wanted to spit. “Not she.”

  Naala said, “The other two photographs. Them you know also, I think.”

  “I do not, but I believe you may. Identify them for me, and I will tell you anything you wish to know.”

  “For the man, I also can show a photograph. You will find his name on it.”

  It was a prison photo, of course. Naala took it out of her purse and handed it to Papa Zenon.

  He looked at it, then at me. “This is your friend, you say.”

  I nodded. “Right. He is.”

  “He does not say the black mass?”

  I made it firm. “Hell no!”

  “And the other?” Papa Zenon held up the photo.

  “That’s Russ’s wife, Rosalee.”

  “He has escaped. She also? It must be that they are together.”

  I said, “Maybe, but I don’t think so.”

  “He will come to her, in that case. Or she will fly to him. You do not know where she is?”

  “For sure? No.”

  “But you suspect.”

  I shrugged.

  Naala said, “You tell us that if we identify those in your pictures you will tell us anything. We have done as you wished, and I have the question.”

  Papa Zenon nodded. “Ask.”

  “I ask a small question first. Where is Rathaus? Do you know this?”

  Papa Zenon put down his cup. “I do not. If I did, I would tell you.”

  “The big question, in that case. Do you think Papa Iason knows this? I do not ask for proven fact, only for your opinion. Does he know?”

  “I have no idea. I ask in return, why should he? Why is it you think he might?”

  “Rathaus is his father.”

  I have seen some surprised people, but I do not think I have ever seen one who looked any more surprised than Papa Zenon did then. He froze. His mouth opened a little and stayed that way, and it looked like his eyes were going to pop right out of his head.

  Naala said, “You must tell him, Grafton.”

  “How much?”

  “All. We hide nothing.”

  “Okay.” I scooted my chair closer to the table and sat up straighter. “Naala figured it out, not me. At first I didn’t believe her, but pretty soon we found out Russ had come here three years ago to see Papa Iason ordained.”

  Papa Zenon got out his pictures again and stared at Russ’s while Naala and I ate. After a while he nodded.

  “Again I ask,” Naala whispered. “Does he know?”

  “This I have answered,” Papa Zenon said. “For you I have a better question, but it is one neither of us can answer. If he knows, will he tell?�
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  I said, “Maybe you two can’t answer that one, but I can. No. He won’t.”

  “This you cannot know,” Naala told me.

  Papa Zenon said, “That may be true, but he believe he can.” He spoke to me. “Why do you say this, Grafton?”

  I sipped a little coffee while I pulled my thoughts together, glad that it was my left hand that the hand was holding. “Let’s start here. Papa Iason isn’t a good man. I told Naala that already, and it’s true. He’s a bad one trying to be good, like a lot of us. In English, we’ve got an expression, ‘So good he’s good for nothing.’ Papa Iason isn’t like that.”

  Papa Zenon said, “I agree.”

  “Russ is his father, and he knows it. I’m not going to take the time to explain how we know about them, but we do. If he knows where Russ is, he also knows Russ hasn’t done a damn thing that ought to land him in prison. I’ve talked to Papa Iason enough to get to know him a little. Send his innocent dad off to rot in prison? No. He’s not that kind. He’d die first.”

  “That is a big word, ‘die.’”

  Papa Zenon had spoken very softly, but we stared just the same. Or anyhow, I did.

  Naala said, “Yes,” almost as softly. Then, “How best to do it?”

  They had lost me, and I guess my face showed it. Papa Zenon said, “If Papa Iason believes his father dying, he will hurry to him. A priest, a large man, all in black. It would not be difficult to follow him.”

  “He would take his bicycle, I think,” Naala said. “We have a way to follow that bicycle.”

  I said, “He told us he hitched rides on wagons.”

  She nodded. “It may be so, but I do not think. He wishes to keep the bicycle to himself.”

  Papa Zenon got out his pictures and laid Martya’s on the table. “Might she lie for us if you asked it?”

  I said, “I don’t know, but it doesn’t make any difference. Martya knows where Russ is.”

  Naala set down her cup with a little bang. “You cannot know that.”

  “Sure I do. Russ sent her to Papa Iason with the hand.”

  Under the table, the hand squeezed mine. It meant right on, and I knew it.

  “Just look at it. Here’s Martya, a good-looking girl in Puraustays. She’d love to get to the big city, fame, the bright lights, the club scene, all that stuff. She and I went to some clubs in Puraustays. They’re pretty awful, and she knows enough to know that. Here in the capital is where the action is.”