Taltos (2 page)

Of course this company of his, this enterprise of his, as it was so often called by papers and magazines, was predicated on the development of an industrial and mechanical matrix which had existed now for only three hundred years. What if war were to destroy it? But dolls and toys gave him such sweet happiness that he imagined he would never hereafter be without them. Even if war reduced the world to rubble, he would make little figures of wood or clay and paint them himself.

Sometimes he saw himself this way, alone in the ruins. He saw New York as it might have appeared in a science-fiction movie, dead and silent and filled with overturned columns and broken pediments and shattered glass. He saw himself sitting on a broken stone stairway, making a doll from sticks and tying it together with bits of cloth which he took quietly and respectfully from a dead woman’s silk dress.

But who would have imagined that such things would have caught his fancy? That wandering a century ago through a wintry street in Paris, he would turn and gaze into a shop window, into the glass eyes of his Bru, and fall passionately in love?

Of course, his breed had always been known for its capacity to play, to cherish, to enjoy. Perhaps it was not at all surprising. Though studying a breed, when you were one of the only surviving specimens of it, was a tricky situation, especially for one who could not love medical philosophy or terminology, whose memory was good but far from preternatural, whose sense of the past was often deliberately relinquished to a “childlike” immersion in the present, and
a general fear of thinking in terms of millennia or eons or whatever people wanted to call the great spans of time which he himself had witnessed, lived through, struggled to endure, and finally cheerfully forgotten in this great enterprise suited to his few and special talents.

Nevertheless, he did study his own breed, making and recording meticulous notes on himself. And he was not good at predicting the future, or so he felt.

A low hum came to his ears. He knew it was the coils beneath the marble floor, gently heating the room around him. He fancied he could feel the heat, coming up through his shoes. It was never chilly or smotheringly hot in his tower. The coils took care of him. If only such comfort could belong to the entire world outside. If only all could know abundant food, warmth. His company sent millions in aid to those who lived in deserts and jungles across the seas, but he was never really sure who received what, who benefited.

In the first days of motion pictures, and later television, he had thought war would end. Hunger would end. People could not bear to see it on the screen before them. How foolish a thought. There seemed to be more war and more hunger now than ever. On every continent, tribe fought tribe. Millions starved. So much to be done. Why make such careful choices? Why not do everything?

The snow had begun again, with flakes so tiny he could barely see them. They appeared to melt when they hit the dark streets below. But those streets were some sixty floors down. He couldn’t be certain. Half-melted snow was piled in the gutters and on the nearby roofs. In a little while, things would be freshly white again, perhaps, and in this sealed and warm room, one could imagine the entire city dead and ruined, as if by pestilence which did not crumble buildings but killed the warm-blooded beings which lived within them, like termites in wooden walls.

The sky was black. That was the one thing he did not like about snow. You lost the sky when you had it. And he did so love the skies over New York City, the full panoramic skies which the people in the streets never really saw.

“Towers, build them towers,” he said. “Make a big museum
high up in the sky with terraces around it. Bring them up in glass elevators, heavenward to see …”

Towers for pleasure among all these towers that men had built for commerce and gain.

A thought took him suddenly, an old thought, really, that often came to him and prodded him to meditate and perhaps even to surmise. The first writings in all the world had been commercial lists of goods bought and sold. This was what was in the cuneiform tablets found at Jericho, inventories…. The same had been true at Mycenea.

No one had thought it important then to write down his or her ideas or thoughts. Buildings had been wholly different. The grandest were houses of worship—temples or great mud-brick ziggurats, faced in limestone, which men had climbed to sacrifice to the gods. The circle of sarsens on the Salisbury Plain.

Now, seven thousand years later, the greatest buildings were commercial buildings. They were inscribed with the names of banks or great corporations, or immense private companies such as his own. From his window he could see these names burning in bright, coarse block letters, through the snowy sky, through the dark that wasn’t really dark.

As for temples and places of worship, they were relics or almost nought. Somewhere down there he could pick out the steeples of St. Patrick’s if he tried. But it was a shrine now to the past more than a vibrant center of communal religious spirit, and it looked quaint, reaching to the skies amid the tall, indifferent glass buildings around it. It was majestic only from the streets.

The scribes of Jericho would have understood this shift, he thought. On the other hand, perhaps they would not. He barely understood it himself, yet the implications seemed mammoth and more wonderful than human beings knew. This commerce, this endless multiplicity of beautiful and useful things, could save the world, ultimately, if only … Planned obsolesence, mass destruction of last year’s goods, the rush to antiquate or render irrelevent others’ designs, it was the result of a tragic lack of vision. Only the most limited implications of the marketplace theory were to blame for it. The real revolution came not in the cycle of make
and destroy, but in a great inventive and endless expansion. Old dichotomies had to fall. In his darling Bru, and her factory-assembled parts, in the pocket calculators carried by millions on the streets, in the light beautiful stroke of rolling-ball pens, in five-dollar Bibles, and in toys, beautiful toys sold on drugstore shelves for pennies—there lay salvation.

It seemed he could get his mind around it, he could penetrate it, make tight, easily explainable theories, if only—

“Mr. Ash.” It was a soft voice that interrupted him. Nothing more was required. He’d trained them all. Don’t make a sound with the door. Speak quietly. I’ll hear you.

And this voice came from Remmick, who was gentle by nature, an Englishman (with a little Celtic blood, though Remmick didn’t know it), a manservant who had been indispensable in this last decade, though the time would soon come when, for security’s sake, Remmick must be sent away.

“Mr. Ash, the young woman’s here.”

“Thank you, Remmick,” he said in a voice that was even softer than that of his servant. In the dark window glass, if he let himself, he could see Remmick’s reflection—a comely man, with small, very brilliant blue eyes. They were too close together, these eyes. But the face was not unattractive, and it wore always a look of such quiet and nondramatic devotion that he had grown to love it, to love Remmick himself.

There were lots of dolls in the world with eyes too close together—in particular, the French dolls made years ago by Jumeau, and Schmitt and Sons, and Huret, and Petit and Demontier—with moon faces, and glittering glass eyes crowding their little porcelain noses, with mouths so tiny they seemed at first glance to be tiny buds, or bee stings. Everybody loved these dolls. The bee-sting queens.

When you loved dolls and studied them, you started to love all kinds of people too, because you saw the virtue in their expressions, how carefully they had been sculpted, the parts contrived to create the triumph of this or that remarkable face. Sometimes he walked through Manhattan, deliberately
seeing every face as made, no nose, no ear, no wrinkle accidental.

“She’s having some tea, sir. She was terribly cold when she arrived.”

“We didn’t send a car for her, Remmick?”

“Yes, sir, but she’s cold nevertheless. It’s very cold outside, sir.”

“But it’s warm in the museum, surely. You took her there, didn’t you?”

“Sir, she came up directly. She is so excited, you understand.”

He turned, throwing one bright gleam of a smile (or so he hoped it was) on Remmick and then waving him away with the smallest gesture that the man could see. He walked to the doors of the adjoining office, across the floor of Carrara marble, and looked beyond that room, to yet another, also paved, as were all his rooms, in shining marble, where the young woman sat alone at the desk. He could see her profile. He could see that she was anxious. He could see that she wanted the tea, but then she didn’t. She didn’t know what to do with her hands.

“Sir, your hair. Will you allow me?” Remmick touched his arm.

“Must we?”

“Yes, sir, we really ought to.” Remmick had his soft little brush out, the kind that men used because they could not be seen using the same kind of brush as women, and reaching up, Remmick brought it quickly and firmly through his hair, hair that ought to be trimmed and cut, Remmick had said, hair that fell sloppily and defiantly over his collar.

Remmick stood back, rocking on the balls of his feet.

“Now you look splendid, Mr. Ash,” he said with raised eyebrows. “Even if it is a bit long.”

He made a soft chuckle.

“You’re afraid I’ll frighten her, aren’t you?” he asked, teasingly, affectionately. “Surely you don’t really care what she thinks.”

“Sir, I care that you look your best always, for your own benefit.”

“Of course you do,” he said quietly. “I love you for it.”

He walked towards the young woman, and as he drew closer, he made a polite and decent amount of noise. Slowly she turned her head; she looked up; she saw him, and there came the inevitable shock.

He extended his arms as he approached.

She rose, beaming, and she clasped his hands. Warm, firm grip. She looked at his hands, at the fingers, and at the palms.

“I surprise you, Miss Paget?” he asked, offering her his most gracious smile. “My hair has been groomed for your approval. Do I look so very bad?”

“Mr. Ash, you look fabulous,” she said quickly. She had a crisp California-style voice. “I didn’t expect that … I didn’t expect that you would be so tall. Of course, everyone said you were….”

“And do I look like a kindly man, Miss Paget? They say this of me too.” He spoke slowly. Often Americans could not understand his “British accent.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Ash,” she said. “Very kindly. And your hair is so nice and long. I love your hair, Mr. Ash.”

This was really very gratifying, very amusing. He hoped that Remmick was listening. But wealth makes people withhold judgment on what you have done, it makes them search for the good in your choices, your style. It brings out not the obsequious but the more thoughtful side of humans. At least sometimes …

She was plainly telling the truth. Her eyes feasted on him and he loved it. He gave her hands a tender squeeze and then he let them go.

As he moved around the desk, she took her seat again, eyes still locked upon him. Her own face was narrow and deeply lined for one so young. Her eyes were bluish violet. She was beautiful in her own way—ashen-haired, disheveled yet graceful, in exquisitely crushed old clothes.

Yes, don’t throw them away, save them from the thrift-shop rack, reinvent them with nothing more than a few stitches and an iron; the destiny of manufactured things lies in durability and changing contexts, crushed silk beneath fluorescent light, elegant tatters with buttons of plastic in colors never achieved within geological strata, with stockings
of such strong nylon they could have been made into braided rope of incalculable strength if only people didn’t rip them off and toss them into wastebaskets. So many things to do, ways to see … If he had the contents of every wastebasket in Manhattan, he could make another billion just from what he would find there.

“I admire your work, Miss Paget,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.” He gestured to the top of the desk. It was littered with large color photographs of her dolls.

Was it possible she hadn’t noticed these? She seemed overcome with pleasure, her cheeks reddening. Perhaps she was even a little infatuated with his style and manner, he wasn’t sure. He did tend to infatuate people, sometimes without trying to do it.

“Mr. Ash,” she said. “This is one of the most important days of my life.” She said it as if trying to realize it, and then she became silently flustered, perhaps because she thought she had said too much in saying what really mattered.

He let his smile brighten, and dipped his head slightly, as he often did—a trait people remarked on—so that he appeared to be looking up at her for a moment, though he was much taller than she.

“I want your dolls, Miss Paget,” he said. “All of them. I’m very pleased with what you’ve done. You’ve worked so well in all the new materials. Your dolls aren’t like anyone else’s. That’s what I want.”

She was smiling in spite of herself. It was always a thrilling moment, this, for them and for him. He loved making her happy!

“Have my lawyers presented everything? Are you quite sure of the terms?”

“Yes, Mr. Ash. I understand everything. I accept your offer, completely. This is my dream.”

She said the last word with gentle emphasis. And this time she did not falter or blush.

“Miss Paget, you need someone to bargain for you!” he scolded. “But if I’ve ever cheated anyone, I don’t remember
it, and I would honestly like to be reminded so that I could correct what I’ve done.”

“I’m yours, Mr. Ash,” she said. Her eyes had brightened, but they were not filling with tears. “The terms are generous. The materials are dazzling. The methods …” She gave a little shake of her head. “Well, I don’t really understand the mass-production methods, but I know your dolls. I’ve been hanging around in the stores, just looking at everything marketed by Ashlar. I know this is simply going to be great.”

Like so many, she had made her dolls in her kitchen, then in a garage workroom, firing the clay in a kiln she could barely afford. She had haunted flea markets for her fabrics. She had taken her inspiration from figures in motion pictures and in novels. Her works had been “one of a kind” and “limited edition,” the sort of thing they liked in the exclusive doll shops and galleries. She had won awards, both large and small.