Little, Big

by John Crowley

“Well, they’re not exactly tenants,” George said.

  “He takes them in,” Sylvie said, looking fondly at George. “They got no place else to go. People like me. Because he has a good heart.” She laughed, stirring. “Little lost squirrels and stuff.”

  “I sort of met someone,” Auberon said, “a black guy sort of, out in the yard ….” He saw that Sylvie had stopped her stirring, and had turned to him. “Very short,” Auberon said, surprised at the silence he’d made.

  “Brownie,” Sylvie said. “That was Brownie. You saw Brownie?”

  “I guess,” Auberon said. “Who …”

  “Yeah, old Brownie,” George said. “He’s kind of private. Like a hermit. Does a lot of work around the place.” He looked at Auberon curiously. “I hope you didn’t …”

  “I don’t think he understood me. He went off.”

  “Aw,” Sylvie said gently. “Brownie.”

  “Did you, well, take him in too?” Auberon asked George.

  “Hm? Who? Brownie?” George said, having fallen into thought. “Nah, old Brownie’s always been here, I guess, who the hell knows. So listen,” he said, definitely changing the subject, “what are you up to today? Negocio?”

  From an inside pocket Auberon took out a card. It said PETTY, SMILODON & RUTH, Attorneys-at-law, and gave an address and phone number. “My grandfather’s lawyers. I’ve got to see about this inheritance. Can you tell me how to get there?”

  George puzzled over this, reading the address aloud slowly as though it were esoteric. Sylvie, hiking her shawl over her shoulder, brought a battered, steaming pot to the table. “Take the bee or the sea,” she said. “Here’s your nasties.” She banged the pot down. George inhaled the steam gratefully. “She don’t eat oatmeal,” he said to Auberon, with a wink.

  She had turned away, her face, her whole body in fact, showing aversion very graphically, and (changing utterly in an instant) picked up with easy grace the child, who was in the process of sword-swallowing a ball-point pen. “Que jodiendo! Look at this implement. C’mere, you, look at these fat cheeks, so cute, don’t they make you want to bite ‘em? Mmmp.” She sucked his fat brown cheeks avidly as he struggled to escape, eyes screwed tight. She sat him down in a rickety high-chair whose decals of bear and rabbit were all but worn away, and set food before him. She helped him eat, opening her mouth when he did, closing it around an imaginary spoon, cleaning the excess neatly from his face. Watching her, Auberon caught himself opening his own mouth in assistance. He snapped it shut.

  “Hey, sport model,” George said to Sylvie as she finished with the baby. “You going to eat or what?”

  “Eat?” As though he had made an indecent suggestion. “I just got here. I’m going to bed, man, and I’m going to sleep.” She stretched, she yawned, she offered herself wholeheartedly to Morpheus; she scratched her stomach lazily with long painted nails. The gold gown showed a small shadowed hollow where her navel was. Auberon felt that her brown body, however perfect, was too small to contain her; she shot out from it all over in flashes and spikes of intelligence and feeling; even her impersonation now of exhaustion and debility exploded from her like a brilliance. “The bee or the sea?” he said.

  A Wingéd Messenger

  Riding racketing uptown on the B train underground, Auberon—with no experience at all of such things to guide him—tried to puzzle out what relation there might be between George and Sylvie. He was old enough to be her father, and Auberon was young enough to find the possibility of that kind of May-December coupling unlikely and repellent. Yet she had been making breakfast for him. What bed did she go to, when she went to bed? He wished, well, he didn’t know quite what he wished, and just then an emergency occurred on the train which threw all that out of his mind. The train began shaking violently to and fro; it screamed as though tormented; it was apparently about to burst apart. Auberon leapt up. Loud metallic knockings beat on his ears, and the lights shuddered and went out. Clutching a cold pole, Auberon waited for the imminent collision or derailment. Then he noticed that no one on the train seemed the least concerned; stony-faced, they read foreign-language newspapers or rocked baby carriages or rooted in shopping bags or chewed gum placidly, my God those asleep didn’t even stir. The only thing they seemed to find odd was his own leaping up, and this they only glanced at furtively. But here was the disaster! Outside the almost comically filthy windows he saw another train, on a parallel track, sweeping toward them, whistles and iron shrieks, they were about to sideswipe, the yellow windows (all that was visible) of the other train rushed at them like eyes aghast. At the last possible instant the two trains shifted minutely and resumed their furious parallel, inches from one another’s flanks, racing madly. In the other train Auberon could see placid overcoated riders reading foreign newspapers and rooting in shopping bags. He sat down.

  An aged black man in ancient clothes, who through all of this had been lightly holding a pole in the middle of the car, was saying as the noise diminished, “Now don’t get me wrong—don’t get me wrong,” holding out a long, gray-palmed hand to the passengers in general, whom, studiously ignoring him, he was reassuring. “Don’t get me wrong. A well-dressed woman’s sumpm to see, now, y’know, y’know, a thing of beauty’s, yunnastan, a joy fevvah; what I’m talkin ‘bout’s a woman who wears a fuh. Now don’t get me wrong—” a deprecatory shake of the head to forestall criticism “—but y’see a woman who wears a fuh takes on the propensities of that animal. Y’see. Takes on the propensities of the animal of whose fuh she wears. Thass right.” He struck a casual, raconteur’s pose and glanced around at his hearers with benign intimacy. As he pushed aside his unspeakable overcoat to place his knuckles on his hip, Auberon saw the heavy swing of a bottle in the pocket. “Now I was in Saks Fiff Avenue thutha day,” he said, “and there was ladies pricin’ a coat made from the fuh of the sable.” He shook his head to think of it. “Now, now, of all th’animals in God’s creation the sable animal has got to be the lowest. The sable animal, my friends, will eat its own children. Y’hear what I’m sayin’? Thass right. The sable is the dirtiest, low-downest, meanest—the sable is a meaner and a lower thing than a mink, people, than a mink, and surely you know where the mink is at. Well! And here was these nice ladies, wouldn’t hurt a fly, feelin’ up this coat made of the sable animal, yas yas, ain’t it fine—” He laughed, delicately, unable to check his amusement any longer. “Yas, yas, the propensities of the animal, no doubt about it …” His yellow eyes fell on Auberon, the only one there who’d followed him with any attention, wondering if he were right. “Mmm-mmm-mmm,” he said, absently, his discourse done, a half-smile on his face; his eyes, wise, humorous, and reptilian at once, seemed to find something amusing in Auberon. The train just then turned a shrieking corner, propelling the man forward down the car. He gavotted away neatly, never falling, though without balance, the bottle-weighted pocket clanking on the poles. As he passed, Auberon heard him say “Fans and furred robes hide all.” He was brought up by the train’s coming to a halt, began to dance backward; the doors slid open, and a final lurch of the train tossed him out. Just in time, Auberon recognized his own stop, and leapt out also.

  Clamor and acrid smoke, urgent announcements that were a garble of static and drowned anyway by the metal roar of trains and the constant echo and re-echo. Auberon, utterly disoriented, followed herds of riders upward along stairs, ramps, and escalators, and found himself still apparently underground. At a turning, he caught a glimpse of the black man’s overcoat; at the next—which seemed intent on leading him downward again—he was beside him. He seemed now preoccupied, walking aimlessly; the garrulousness he had shown in the train was gone. An actor offstage, with troubles of his own.

  “Excuse me,” Auberon said, fishing in his pocket. The black man, with no surprise, held out a hand to receive what Auberon would offer, and with no surprise withdrew the hand when Auberon came up with only the card of Petty, Smilodon & Ruth. “Can you help me find this address?” He read it. The black man look
ed doubtful.

  “A tricky one,” he said. “Seems to mean one thing, but it don’t. Oh, tricky. Take some findin’.” He shuffled off, bent and dreaming, but his hand down at his side motioned with a quick motion that Auberon should follow. “Ever’man I will go with thee,” he muttered, “and be thy guide, in thy mose need to be by thy side.”

  “Thanks,” Auberon said, though not quite sure this was meant for him. He grew less sure as the man (whose gait was quicker than it looked, and who gave no warning at turnings) led him through dark tunnels reeking of urine, where rainwater dripped as though in a cave, and along echoing passages, and up into a vast basilica (the old terminal), and further upward by shining stairs into marble halls, he seeming to grow shabbier and smell stronger as they ascended into clean public places.

  “Lemme see that again one time,” he said as they stood before a rank of swiftly-revolving doors, glass and steel, through which a continual stream of people passed. Auberon and his guide stood directly in their path, the black man unconscious of them as he studied the little card, and the people flowed around them neatly, their faces fixed in angry looks, though whether because of this obstruction or for reasons of their own Auberon couldn’t tell.

  “Maybe I could ask someone else,” Auberon said.

  “No,” said the black man without rancor. “You got the one. Y’see I’m a messenger.” He looked up at Auberon, his snake eyes full of unreadable meaning. “A messenger. Fred Savage is my name, Wingéd Messenger Service, I only am escaped to tell thee.” With quick grace he entered the threshing blades of the door. Auberon, hesitating, nearly lost him, threw himself into an empty segment, and was spun out rapidly into a thin cold rain, outdoors at least, and stepped rapidly to catch up with Fred Savage. “My man Duke, y’know,” he was saying, “met the Duke ‘bout midnight in a lane behind of the churchyard, with the leg of a man over his shoulder. I says hey, Duke, my man. Said he was a woof—only difference was, a woof is hairy on the outside, y’see, and he was hairy on the inside—said I could rip up his skin and try …”

  Auberon dodged after him through the well-drilled march and press of people, doubly afraid of losing him now since Fred Savage hadn’t given back the lawyers’ card. But still he was distracted, his eye drawn upward to heights of buildings, some lost in the rainy clouds, so chaste and noble at the tops and, at their bases, so ignoble, stuffed with shops, lettered, scarred, imposed upon, overlaid like mammoth oaks on which generations have carved hearts and nailed horseshoes. He felt a tug at his sleeve.

  “Don’t be gawking upward,” Fred Savage said, amused. “Good way to get your pocket picked. Besides”—his grin was wide, either his teeth were extraordinarily perfect or these were dentures of the cheapest kind—”they’re not for lookin’ up at anyway by the likes of you, y’know, no, they’re for lookin’ out of by the type of folks inside, yunnastan. You’ll learn that, heehee.” He drew Auberon with him around a corner and along a street where trucks contested with one another and with taxis and people. “Now if you look close,” Fred Savage said, “you see this ad-dress seems to be on the avenue, but thass a fake. It’s on thisere street, though they don’t want you to guess it.”

  Cries and warnings from above. Out of a second-story window, an enormous ormolu mirror was being extruded, hung on guy-ropes and tackle. On the street below were desks, chairs, filing cabinets, an office in the street, people had to step out into the loathsome gutter to get around it; only just then trucks clogged the street, the warnings increased—”Watcha back, watcha back!”—and no one could move. The mirror swung free out into the air, its face which had before reflected only quiet interiors now filled with shuddering, madly-swinging City. It looked ravished, aghast. It descended slowly, rotating, flinging buildings and backward-reading signs to and fro within it. The people stood gaping, waiting for their own selves, overcoated and umbrella’d, to be revealed.

  “C’mon,” Fred said, and took Auberon’s hand in a strong grip. He dodged amid the furniture, drawing Auberon after him. Shouts of horror and anger from the mirror’s attendants. Something was wrong: the ropes suddenly paid out, the mirror tilted madly only feet above the street, a groan from the watchers, worlds came and went as it righted itself. Fred shuffled beneath it, his hat-crown grazing its gilding. There was the briefest moment when Auberon, though looking into the street behind him, felt himself to be looking into the street ahead, a street from which or into which Fred Savage had disappeared. The he crouched and passed under.

  On the other side, still followed by the curses of the mirror men, and by some kind of thunder as well from somewhere, Fred led Auberon up the vast arched entrance to a building. “Be prepared is my motto,” he said, pleased with himself, “be sure you’re right then go ahead.” He pointed out the number of the building, which was indeed an avenue number, and handed back the little card; he patted Auberon’s back to encourage him in.

  “Hey, thanks,” Auberon said, and, bethinking himself, dug in his pocket, and came up with a crumpled dollar.

  “The service is free,” Fred Savage said, but took the dollar anyway delicately in thumb and index. There was a rich history incised in his palm. “Now go ahead. Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.” He propelled Auberon toward the brass-bound glass doors. As he entered, Auberon heard the thunder, or felt the bombblast, or whatever it was, again, only much huger; it made him duck, a long tearing roll as though the world, starting at one corner, were being bisected. As it rolled away, there came a gasp, a groan from many throats together, with high-shrieking feminine overtones; and Auberon braced himself against the unmistakable noise of an enormous, a great glass smashing—unmistakable though Auberon had never before heard a piece that size shivered.

  Now how many years’ bad luck is that for someone, he thought, wondering if he had escaped something.

  A Folding Bedroom

  “I’m putting you in the folding bedroom,” George said as he led Auberon by flashlight through the mostly empty warren of buildings that surrounded Old Law Farm. “It’s got a fireplace at least. Watch that stuff there. Up we go.”

  Auberon followed, shivering, carrying his bag and a bottle of Dona Mariposa rum. A sleety rain had caught him on his way downtown, slicing cleanly through his overcoat and, so it felt, through his skinny flesh as well to chill his heart. He had hidden from it for a while in a little liquor store whose red sign—LIQUOR—went on and off in the puddles outside the door. Feeling intensely the shopkeeper’s impatience at his free use of a place of business for profitless shelter, Auberon had begun staring at the various bottles, and at last bought the rum because the girl on its label, in a peasant blouse, arms full of green cane-stalks; reminded him of Sylvie; or rather seemed to him what Sylvie would look like if she were imaginary.

  George took out his bunch of keys and began hunting through them abstractedly. His manner since Auberon had returned had been glum, distracted, unaccommodating. He talked ramblingly about the difficulties of life. Auberon had questions to ask him, but felt he would get no answers to them from George in this state of mind, so he only followed silently.

  The folding bedroom was double-locked, and George was some time opening it. There was electric light inside though, a lamp that on its cylindrical shade carried a panorama, a country scene through which a train moved, its locomotive almost devouring its caboose, like the Worm. George looked around the room, finger to his lips, as though long ago he had lost something here. “Now the thing is,” he said, and then nothing more. He gazed at the spines of a shelf of paperbacks. The locomotive on the lampshade began to travel slowly through the landscape, caused to move by the heat of the bulb. “See, we all pull together here,” George said. “Everybody does his part. You can dig that. I mean the work’s never done and all. So. This is all right, I guess. That john’s the closet, the other way around I mean. The stove and stuff is off, but eat with us, everybody chips in. Well. Listen.” He counted his keys again, and Auberon had the feeling he was about to be locked in
; but George slipped three from the ring and gave them to him. “Don’t for God’s sake lose them.” He managed a bleak smile. “Hey, welcome to Big-town, man, and don’t take any wooden nickels.”

  Wooden nickels? It seemed to Auberon as he closed the door that his cousin’s speech was as full of antique rubbish and battered ornament as his Farm. A card, maybe he’d call himself. Well: a peculiarity felt more than perceived about this folding bedroom became clear to him as he looked around: there was no bed in it. There was a wine-red velvet boudoir chair, and a creaky wicker one with pillows tied on; there was a shabby rug, and an enormous wardrobe or something of glossy wood, with a bevelled looking-glass on its front and drawers with brass pulls at the bottom; this he couldn’t figure out how to open. But there was no bed. From a wooden apricot crate (Golden Dreams) he took wood and paper and made a fire with trembling fingers, contemplating a night on the chairs; for sure he wasn’t going to try threading his way back through Old Law Farm to complain.

  When the fire was hot he began to feel somewhat less sorry for himself; in fact as his clothes dried he felt almost an elation. Kind Mr. Petty of Petty, Smilodon & Ruth had been oddly evasive about the status of his inheritance, but they had willingly advanced him a sum against it. He had it in his pocket. He had come to the City and not died or been beaten; he had money, and the prospect of more; real life was beginning. The long, long ambiguity of Edgewood, the stifling sense of mysteries continually propounded, never solved, the endless waiting for purposes to be made clear and directions pointed out—all over. He had taken charge. A free agent, he would make a million, win love, and never go home at bedtime any more. He went to the tiny kitchen attached to the folding bedroom, where the dead stove and a lumpish refrigerator presumably also dead shared the floor with a tub and a sink; he dug up a white coffee mug all crazed, wiped the husk of a bug from it, and got out his bottle of Dona Mariposa rum.