Otherwise (61 page)

There were other things, too, to occupy the nights. The other would argue that it only made me want her more, and I would concede that; anyway, my reconstructions of our pale twilight dreams were feeble, we had marked too few. Sometimes I would lie with my skirts up working furiously with the useless thing and find myself at the same time shedding cold tears just as useless.

You really shouldn’t laugh.

THIRD FACET

T
here came a day when I understood winter was forever; though there would be days when it didn’t freeze and days when the sun shone, they would always be followed by cold and rain again.

That day had begun fair, but afternoon dragged the clouds back over and they began again their ceaseless weeping. Toward evening the drizzle subsided to a sniffle, but the clouds hung low and baggy with further business to do. I sat smoking, letting pile up on the inside of the concave eyeball a little pile of rose-colored ash which the wet wind played with. No, no spring this year; the wood was slimy with despair and chilled to the marrow. Not quite dead, not frozen; there had been little snow all winter. But hopeless.

Be thankful, he told me, that she wasn’t there to go back to. She knew you wouldn’t come back from Boots being as she was, only a poor cripple, not the one and not the other; not yourself whom she first loved, yet nothing other either.

I don’t understand, I told him. I have understood nothing, and now I have nothing left. I overthrew my deepest wisdom for her sake, made myself a clear pool for her reflection. And now there’s only empty sky.

Well, don’t you see? he said. You tried to become transparent, and all the while she was working to be opaque.

Like way-wall, I said.

She must become opaque: you must become transparent. There’s no force on earth left stronger than love, but…

Opaque, I said. Yes.

Transparent, he said.

Never a moment when I revealed to her I had seen something in her but she changed it at that moment to hide further from me.

She wanted not to know it herself, he said. There’s no blame in that.

It was as though I went after her into a cave, marking my way with a long string; and just when I came to the end of the string, and so couldn’t follow any further, Dr. Boots snatched the string from my hand.

It was only one way, anyway, he said. So there’s no way out.

We agree, he said, on that.

Well then, I said, I think it’s time to lighten that load.

I went to the pack that held everything I had and took from it the case that held the Four Pots. I took it back to the window, unsealed it and opened it. The first pot was blue and contained stuff colored orange—the two colors of the house called Twenty-eight Flavors; it was medicine’s daughters for every sickness. The second pot was black and contained the rose-colored stuff that had dreamed me out of a knot with Seven Hands. The third was silver, and contained the black granules that lighten a load. The fourth was bone-white, and contained the white angel’s choice I had seen Speak a Word refuse (no, she said, not this year). I picked up the cigar I had left burning on the edge of the window; I held it deep within two fingers, closing my eyes against the rising smoke, and thought about them. I thought of Houd standing before that mirror which showed a tall-hatted man giving giant pots to a boy. “It confuses the dark and light,” he’d said, “and for a while you think only about the confusion, and not about everything.”

“Everything?” I asked.

“That’s Relativity,” he said.

Well, Relativity, then, whatever that is; we’ll try a confusion. I opened the silver and the black pots; from the one I took a granule of black, like a cinder, and swallowed it. I wet my thumb and pressed it across the rose surface of the other, and then wiped the thumb inside my lip. And then went on smoking, building a pile of ash in the window, which the wind, grown harder, blew off into the wet.

There was just enough room inside my head for the game, though people standing in back to watch filled up the window-eyes and made it dark. The players sat cheek to cheek in a circle with knees drawn up. They played with only one ball, and though there was a lot of chatter, there was no argument about how to begin: the ball began on my mother’s knee.

“Whose knee?” they said, and the gossip Laugh Aloud moved the ball to Mbaba’s knee. “As for the silver ball and glove,” Mbaba said, “they’re gone; but for the rest, see here”: and she opened her mouth to show a perfect set of teeth, as green as grass.

“Whose knee?” they said, and the ball moved to Painted Red’s knee, and from hers to Seven Hands’s, who said, “One day, big man, one day,” and back to Painted Red, who was saying, “A knot in the cord—that makes me laugh.” The ball in her long, sure tweezers paused in air. “Whose knee?” they said, and the ball went to Once a Day’s knee. She raised her impossible blue eyes and said, “Ever after.”

“Ask women,” said Seven Hands, and moved the ball to In a Corner, who said, smoking softly, “Lighter than air, lighter than air.”

“An old joke of Roy’s,” said Once a Day, and moved me to Painted Red. “Many lives,” she said, “many lives in the moment between birth and dying.”

“This is spring,” said Once a Day, and with an unsure hand she moved tweezers toward the ball on Painted Red’s knee. Zhinsinura shook her head slowly as the tweezers came close.

“How many lives does a cat have?” she asked.

“Nine,” said Painted Red.

“Miss,” said Houd, who wore a bracelet of blue stones; and with his yellow-nailed hand he put the dropped ball on his own knee.

“Whose knee?” they all said, and tweezers came for the ball. “Great Knot and First Trap make Little Trap, Little Trap and the Expedition make Little Second Gate, or Great Trap Unlocked in Leaf cord,” said Painted Red, and the ball began to fly again from knee to knee.

“The fly sees out all around,” said Budding, and moved me to Blooming’s knee.

“And sees nothing that holds him back,” said Budding; “and still he can’t move.”

“And let that be a lesson,” said Blooming, and moved me to Blink’s knee. “We’re all legless men,” Blink said, yawning. “It doesn’t get better, a lost leg, like a cold.”

“Are you a saint yet?” said Budding, and Blooming moved me back to Once a Day’s, sharp knee, and Blink said, “Bits and pieces,” and moved me to the knee of another girl, a girl in a starred black robe with a great cat beside her, watching. “How can you think about me,” she said, “when I’m not there?”

“Miss! Two misses,” said the cat. The ball was retrieved and went to Zher’s knee. Once a Day said softly: “Beautiful.”

“After all,” said Painted Red as they paused, “It’s only a game.”

“Whose knee?”

The ball started fast around. “The object,” said Houd, “is to never discover you’re playing it.”

“To someday,” said Painted Red, “become transparent; and in transparent life to be free from death.”

“To learn to live with it,” said Blink. “We learn to live with it; we try. We have our systems and our wisdom…”

“How is truthful speaking done?” asked Zhinsinura. “Let’s both tell a secret.”

“I don’t remember riddles,” said Once a Day.

“The Salutation, the Body, and the Complimentary Close. You can find a path through that.”

“A path,” said Painted Red.

“Is only a name,” said Zhinsinura.

“Is drawn on your feet,” said Mbaba.

“For the place where you are,” said Zhinsinura.

“When-we-wandered,” said Mbaba.

“Where you’ve been on it,” said Zhinsinura, “is only a story.”

“And then, and then, and then,” said Blink.

“Some of the stories are pleasant ones…”

“That’s Relativity,” said Houd.

“… and some are not. That’s dark and light.”

“He was dark,” said Stick, and picked up the ball with tweezers of wet black wood. The ball slipped and bobbled within the twiggy tweezers. He could get no grip. And they had been doing so well.

“How many lives does a cat have?” asked Puff. “Quick.”

“Many lives,” said Painted Red, “many lives in the moment between birth and dying.” Stick just managed to wiggle the ball to her knee, and everyone said
aaaah.

“Whose knee?” they all said. “Dr. Boots’s knee,” said Once a Day softly; “this is spring.”

“And truthful speaking is…”

“Transparent,” said Painted Red.

“And dark and light is…”

“Opaque,” said Zhinsinura.

The ball they played with was a hazelnut. Zhinsinura’s tweezers that reached for it were like a nutcracker. “Opaque, transparent,” said the ball. “Like way-wall.”

“Miss,” said Once a Day, a little sadly, but as though she’d expected it.

Zhinsinura, smiling, picked up the ball in her fingers. “Way-wall?” she said. “There’s no such thing.” She inserted the nut in her cracker.

“Three misses,” Teeplee said. “Game’s over.” Zhinsinura calmly cracked the nut.

I looked up at that sound. Above me, a thin crack ran the width of the skull, making fingers.

The cigar in my hand had gone out. Brom lay asleep, but not in the bed where he usually lay. Through the door in the floor I could see the fire burning low and shadowy. Outside the sound of the evening was heavy, and I realized what it was—rain. The crack in the skull widened with a little noise, and I jumped up with a cry, which woke the doctor but not Brom.

What
doctor?

“That’s not right, though,” I said. “It wasn’t really three misses.”

“Yes,” the doctor said. She wasn’t old, though her hair was white and the hands which held my black and silver cloth around her were lined. She moved, and the bed crackled beneath her. She looked at me with wide still eyes.

“Because,” I said, “I
do
know how truthful speaking’s done.”

“Yes,” the doctor said.

“It’s done the same as dark and light.”

“Yes,” the doctor said.

“Yes,” I said, “because when you speak truthfully, what you’re doing is telling whoever can hear you about the dark and light, just then. The better you tell an old story, the more you are talking about right now.”

“Yes,” the doctor said.

’So I have always been dark and light. I never had to learn it, because I didn’t know it.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And never stopped saying what I really meant or really meaning what I said, because how could I do otherwise?”

“Yes.”

“Then there’s no difference. They’re the same.”

“Yes.”

“And is that what it means, then, that there’s no such thing as way-wall?”

“Yes.”

“So. All right. Two misses, then.”

“Yes.”

“The game goes on.”

“Yes.”

“So. All right. But,” I said, sitting down, “if they’re the same, then what’s the difference?”

“Yes,” the doctor said.

A loud crack overhead made me duck. I looked up. The split in my head was widening horribly. Rain seeped in, staining the white gray. Brom looked upward, and then at me. I went to my pack, tossed in the Four Pots, and found my specs. I put them on. “I think,” I said, “that it’s time to be going.”

The doctor watched me as I came close to where she lay in the bed. “This will cover us, it’s big enough,” I said, and drew off the black and silver which covered her.

In the gloom I thought there was a cat with her in the bed; but of course she was the cat. She turned herself with careful grace and went on fours out of the bed and across the floor. Her tabby legs and thighs were like those of Fa’afa of the List; her hands helped her across the floor to look out the window. There she sat with knees up and her hands on the window ledge. Her tail swept around to cover her clawed feet. Above us the skull crunched and split; a fine white powder fell.

“Anyway,” I said, my voice catching, “we have to go.”

She looked from me to the rain, and then to the door in the floor. Soundlessly she padded to it and disappeared through it. Brom followed her. I shouldered my pack, and gathered up the black and silver, put on my hat. I glanced up: the skull was crazed.

They were waiting at the outside door, with the thoughtful reluctance of cats before rain. Brom would have to decide for himself; I moved hesitantly to the doctor and knelt before her. The wet wind from the door made her shiver, but when she saw I wore the silver glove—I don’t know how I came to have it on—she grew calm and raised her arms slowly to slip them around my neck. With a soft cry that I don’t remember, was it Yes or No, I put one arm beneath her and lifted her to carry. And we stepped out into the night and the rain.

The leaves oozed under my feet as I stumbled down the incline away from the head. Gusts of rainy wind blew across the way, and I nearly stumbled with my burden. Behind me, I thought I heard the head I had abandoned crumble to pieces; I tried to look back, but it was all darkness and woods, and the doctor’s hands held me. I could feel her breath on me, gentle and warm, as though she were asleep and though my grip on her tightened at every stumble and lurch, she was easy; she even seemed to nestle against me under the robe which covered us.

When I came to broad naked Road I stopped. I looked both ways, but it was all wind and rain and stone and dim black-boned trees. “I think,” I said, already panting, “I think I know a place where we might go.”

“Yes,” the doctor said, muffled by the black. She sighed; I sighed; and we started north:

That was a long walk. It had taken after all, some months to come this far south from home: the walk to Blink’s woods, and south to Service City, and a summer after that, always going south; and this burden was heavy. “And what with the rain,” I sobbed, my lungs aching, “what with spring not coming…” When at last drizzly dawn came, and I stood on a bare hill pied with snow and looked down into the wide valley of That River from whose hidden length white steam rose like winter breath, my arms and hands had been locked so long that I knew the hardest part would be letting go.