Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (21 page)

When microorganisms die, they make oil; when huge timbers fall, they make coal. But everything here was pure, unadulterated rubbish that didn't make anything. Where does a busted videodeck get you?

I went back to the kitchen to try to salvage a few more sips of whiskey, but the proverbial last drop was not to be found. Gone down the drain, to the world of the INKlings.

As I rummaged through the sink, I cut a finger on a sliver of glass. I studied my finger as the blood fell drop by drop onto a whiskey label. After a real wound, what's a little cut?

Nobody ever died from a cut on his finger.

I let the blood run and drip. The bleeding showed no sign of stopping, so I finally staunched it with kleenex.

Several empty beer cans were lying around like shell casings after a mortar barrage. I stooped to pick one up; the metal was warm. Better warm drops of beer than none, I thought. So I ferried the empties back to bed and continued reading
The Red and the
Black
while extracting the last few milliliters out of each can. I needed something to release the tensions and let me rest. Was that too much to ask? I wanted to nod out for as long as it took the earth to spin one Michael Jackson turnaround.

Sleep came over me in my wasteland of a home a little before nine o'clock. I tossed
The
Red and the Black
to the floor, switched off the light, and curled up to sleep. Embryonic amid devastation.

But only for a couple of hours. At eleven, the chubby girl in her pink suit was shaking me by the shoulders.

"Wake up, please. Please!" she cried. "This is no time to be sleeping!" She pounded on me with her fists. "Please. If you don't get up, the world is going to end!"

The Coming of Winter

I WAKE amidst reassuringly familiar smells. I am in my bed, my room. But the impression of everything is slightly altered. The scene seems recreated from memory.

The stains on the ceiling, the marks on the plaster walls, small details.

It is raining outside. I hear it, ice cold, striking the roof, pouring into the ground. The sounds could be coming from my bedside, or from a mile away.

I see the Colonel sitting at the window, back as straight as ever, unmoving as he gazes out at the rain. What can there be to watch so intently in the rain?

I try to raise my hand, but my arm refuses to move. I try to speak but no voice will issue; I cannot force the air out of my lungs. My body is unbearably heavy, drained. It is all I can do to direct my eyes to the old officer by the window.

What has happened to me? When I try to remember, my head throbs with pain.

"Winter," says the Colonel, tapping his finger on the windowpane. "Winter is upon us. Now you understand why winter inspires such fear."

I nod vaguely.

Yes, it was winter that hurt me. I was running, from the Woods, toward the Library.

"The Librarian brought you here. With the help of the Gatekeeper. You were groaning with a high fever, sweating profusely. The day before yesterday."

"The day before yesterday… ?"

"Yes, you have slept two full days," says the old officer. "We worried you would never awaken. Did I not warn you about going into the Woods?"

"Forgive me."

The Colonel ladles a bowl of soup from a pot simmering on the stove. Then he props me up in bed and wedges a backrest in place. The backrest is stiff and creaks under my weight.

"First you eat," he says. "Apologize later if you must. Do you have an appetite?"

"No," I say. It is difficult even trying to inhale.

"Just this, then. You must eat this. Three mouthfuls and no more. Please."

The herbal stew is horribly bitter, but I manage to swallow the three mouthfuls. I can feel the strain melt from my body.

"Much better," says the Colonel, returning the spoon to the bowl. "It is not pleasant to taste, but the soup will force the poisons from your body. Go back to sleep. When you awaken, you will feel much better."

When I reawaken, it is already dark outside. A strong wind is pelting rain against the windowpanes. The old officer sits at my bedside.

"How do you feel? Some better?"

"Much better than before, yes," I say. "What time is it?"

"Eight in the evening."

I move to get out of bed, but am still dizzy.

"Where are you going?" asks the Colonel.

"To the Library. I have dreamreading to do."

"Just try walking that body of yours five yards, young fool!" he scolds.

"But I must work."

The Colonel shakes his head. "Old dreams can wait. The Librarian knows you must rest. The Library will not be open."

The old officer goes to the stove, pours himself a cup of tea, and returns to my bedside.

The wind rattles the window.

"From what I can see, you seem to have taken a fancy to the Librarian," volunteers the Colonel. "I do not mean to pry, but you called out to her in your fever dream. It is nothing to be ashamed of. All young people fall in love." I neither affirm nor deny.

"She is very worried about you," he says, sipping his tea. "I must tell you, however, that such love may not be prudent. I would rather not have to say this, but it is my duty."

"Why would it not be prudent?"

"Because she cannot requite your feelings. This is no fault of anyone. Not yours, not hers. It is nothing you can change, any more than you can turn back the River." I rub my cheeks with both hands. "Is it the mind you are speaking of?" The old officer nods.

"I have a mind and she does not. Love her as I might, the vessel will remain empty. Is that right?"

"That is correct," says the Colonel. "Your mind may no longer be what it once was, but she has nothing of the sort. Nor do I. Nor does anyone here."

"But are you not being extremely kind to me? Seeing to my needs, attending my sickbed without sleep? Are these not signs of a caring mind?"

"No. Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant."

I close my eyes and try to collect my scattered thoughts.

"From what I gather," I begin, "the mind is lost when the shadow dies. Is that not true?"

"It is."

"If her shadow is dead, as she tells me, does this mean that she can never regain her mind?"

The Colonel nods. "I have seen her records in the Town Hall. There has been no mistake.

Her shadow died when she was seventeen. It was buried in the Apple Grove, as dictated.

She may remember. Nonetheless, the girl was stripped of her shadow before she attained an awareness of the world, so she does not know what it is to have a mind. This is different from someone like me, who lost his shadow late in life. That is why I can account for the movements of your mind, while she cannot."

"But she remembers her mother. And her mother had a mind. Does that have no significance?"

He stirs the tea in his cup, then slowly drinks. "No," says the Colonel. "The Wall leaves nothing to chance. The Wall has its way with all who possess a mind, absorbing them or driving them out. That seems to have been the fate of her mother." "Is love then a thing of mind?"

"I do not want to see you disappointed. The Town is powerful and you are weak. This much you should have learned by now."

The old officer stares into his empty cup. "In time your mind will not matter. It will go, and with it goes all sense of loss, all sorrow. Nor will love matter. Only liv-ing will remain. Undisturbed, peaceful living. You are fond of the girl and I believe she is fond of you. Expect no more." "It is so strange," I say. "I still have a mind, but there are times I lose sight of it. Or no, the times I lose sight of it are few. Yet I have confidence that it will return, and that conviction sustains me."

The sun does not show its face for a long time thereafter.

When the fever subsides, I get out of bed and open the window to breathe the outside air.

I can rise to my feet, but my strength eludes me for two days more. I cannot even turn the doorknob. Each evening the Colonel brings more of the bitter herbal soup, along with a gruel. And he tells me stories, memories of old wars. He does not mention the girl or the Wall again, nor do I dare to ask.

On the third day, I borrow the Colonel's walking stick and take a long constitutional about the Official Residences. As I walk, my body feels light and unmanageable. Perhaps the fever has burnt off, but that cannot be all. Winter has given everything around me a mysterious weight; I alone seem an outsider to that ponderous world.

From the slope of the Hill where stand the Official Residences, one looks out over the western half of the Town: the River, the Clocktower, the Wall, and far in the distance, the Gate in the west. My weak eyes behind black glasses cannot distinguish greater detail, although I have the impression that the winter air must give the Town a clarity.

I remember the map I must deliver to my shadow. It is now finished, but being bedridden has caused me to miss our appointed day by nearly a week. My shadow is surely worrying about me. Or he may have abandoned hope for me entirely. The thought depresses me.

I beg a pair of work boots from the Colonel. "My shadow wears only thin summer shoes," I say. "He will need these as winter gets colder."

I remove the inner sole of one, conceal the map, and replace the sole. I approach the Colonel again. "The Gatekeeper is not someone I can trust. Will you see that my shadow receives these?"

"Certainly," he says.

Before evening, he returns, stating that he has handed the boots to my shadow personally.

"Your shadow expressed concern about you."

"How does he look?" I ask.

"The cold is beginning to diminish him. But he is in good spirits."

On the evening of the tenth day after my fever, I am able to descend to the base of the Western Hill and go to the Library.

As I push open the Library door, the air in the building hangs still and musty, more so than I recall. It is unlit and only my footfalls echo in the gloom. The fire in the stove is extinguished, the coffeepot cold. The ceiling is higher than it was. The counter lies under dust. She is not to be found. There is no human presence.

I sit on a wooden bench for lack of anything to do. I wait for her to come. If the door is unlocked, as it was, then she will. I keep my vigil, but there is no sign of her. All time outside the Library has ceased. I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing.

The room is heavy with winter, its every item nailed fast. My limbs lose their weight. My head expands and contracts of its own will.

I rise from the bench and turn on the light. Then I scoop coal from the bucket to fuel the stove, strike a match to it, and sit back down. Somehow the light makes the room even gloomier, the fire in the stove turns it cold.

Perhaps I plumb too deep. Or perhaps a lingering numbness in the core of my body has lured me into a brief sleep. When I look up again, she is standing before me. A yellow powder of light diffuses in a halo behind her, veiling her silhouette. She wears her blue coat, her hair gathered round inside her collar. The scent of the winter wind is on her.

"I thought you would not come," I say. "I have been waiting for you."

She rinses out the coffeepot and puts fresh water on to heat. Then she frees her hair from inside her collar and removes her coat.

"Did you not think I would come?" she asks. "I do not know," I say. "It was just a feeling." "I will come as long as you need me." Surely I do need her. Even as my sense of loss deepens each time we meet, I will need her.

"I want you to tell me about your shadow," I say. "I may have met her in my old world."

"Yes, that may be so. I remember the time you said we might have met before."

She sits in front of the stove and gazes into the fire. "I was four when my shadow was taken away and sent outside the Wall. She lived in the world beyond, and I lived here. I do not know who she was there, just as she lost touch of me. When I turned seventeen, my shadow returned to the Town to die. Shadows always return to die. The Gatekeeper buried her in the Apple Grove."

"That is when you became a citizen of the Town?" "Yes. The last of my mind was buried in the name of my shadow. You said that the mind is like the wind, but perhaps it is we who are like the wind. Knowing nothing, simply blowing through. Never aging, never dying." "Did you meet with your shadow before she died?" She shakes her head. "No, I did not see her. There was no reason for us to meet. She had become something apart from me."

The pot on the stove begins to murmur, sounding to my ears like the wind in the distance.

End of the World, Charlie Parker, Time Bomb

"PLEASE," cried the chubby girl. "If you don't get up, the world is going to end!" "Let it end," I said, groaning. The wound in my gut hurt too much for me to care.

"Why are you saying that? What's wrong? What's happened here?"

I grabbed a T-shirt and wiped the sweat off my face. "A couple of guys busted in and gave my stomach a six-centimeter gash," I spat out.

"With a knife?"

"Like a piggy bank."

"But why?"

"I've been trying to figure that one out myself," I said. "It occurred to me that the two guys with the knife might be friends of yours."

The chubby girl stared at me. "How could you think such a thing?" she cried.

"Oh, I don't know. I just wanted to blame somebody. Makes me feel better."

"But that doesn't solve anything."

"It doesn't solve anything," I seconded. "But so what. This had nothing to do with me. Your grandfather waved his hands, and suddenly I wind up in the middle of it."

Another boxcar of pain rolled in. I shut my mouth and waited at the crossing.

"Take today, for example. First, you call at who-knows-what hour of the morning. You tell me your grandfather's disappeared and you want me to help. I go to meet you; you don't show. I come back home to sleep; the Dynamic Duo busts into my apartment and knifes me in the gut. Next the guys from the System arrive and interrogate me. Now you're here. Seems like you all have things scheduled. Great little team you got." I took a breath. "All right, you're going to tell me everything you know about what's going on.'"