Beyond the golden stair Read online

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  About BEYOND THE

  GOLDEN STAIR, and Hannes Bok:

  THE GATE OF KHOIRE

  At Christmas, 1969 we published a beautiful fantasy novel by Hannes Bok called The Sorcerers Ship. The only previous appearance of this novel had been in the December 1942 issue of the late, lamented fantasy magazine Unknoum; it had thus been imavailable anywhere for twenty-seven years. In my introduction to that book, I mentioned how very few novels Hannes Bok had written.

  In particular, I mentioned a novel called The Blue Flamingo. If I may be permitted to quote myself; my exact words were: ''One more novel was published in his lifetime— The Blue Flamingo in Startling Stories for January, 1948. While Flamingo is a vivid and stim-ning imaginary-world fantasy, it exists only in brutally cut form. The original manuscript was over 70,000 words, but the printed version is about 35,000: the editor must have hacked and butchered the novel down to publishable length, throwing out at least half of Hannes' story.. .^

  In the same introduction, I remarked that a couple of his unpublished novels were rumored to exist in manuscript, that we were currently himting them down, and hoped to locate them for future pubhcation.

  Before our edition of The Sorcerers Ship appeared in the bookstores, however, and as soon as it was announced as forthcoming, I got a phone call from a literary agent here in New York named Sidney Porcelain. The world of professional fantasy and science fiction is small enough so that most of the authors, editors, and agents in the field know each other; thus Sidney Porcelain was no stranger to me—in fact we had been friends for several years. What Sidney had to tell me only goes to prove one of my favorite dicta —that you can't keep a good book down.

  In brief, it seems that a short time before Hannes Bok died—^he died in his West 109th Street studio-cum-apartment on April 11, 1964—^he had gone to Sidney with a couple of manuscripts which he wanted an agent to handle for him. (I don't beUeve Hannes had an agent back in the 1940's, when he made his few story sales to the pulp magazines; at least, not a story agent, although he at one time had an agent to handle his paintings and illustrations.)

  Among the manuscripts Hannes deUvered into Sidney Porcelain's hands was the original, uncut version of The Blue Flamingo] Yes, all 75,000 words of it. The Porcelain Agency had hung on to it all that time, for before he could begin himting for a book publisher for the novel, Sidney heard of Hannes' death, and, not knowing who was his legal heir, nor whom the executor might be, could not risk selling the book when he had no idea who should get the royalties. Now, of course, thanks to the efforts of Emil Petaja and other devoted admirers of Hannes Bok, The Bokanalia Foundation benefits.

  I must admit I was quite thrilled when I got my hands on the manuscript. Here was a *lost" book found and safe—I had naturally presumed it was lost

  forever. To this day, I don t really know whether this was the original version as Hannes first wrote it, and which Startling Stories then cut down, or a more complete version which Hannes wrote after the short version appeared in the magazine. But it doesn't really matter, for the important thing is that a fine novel has been rescued from limbo.

  Hannes Bok was really a painter, not a novelist, and he writes with the eye of an artist. This novel (which, incidentally, we have retitled—^his title for it was The Impossible Flamingo, which makes it sound more like a Thome Smith comedy than a poignant and gorgeous adventure laid in a world beyond our imiverse) is filled with a painter s touches, exquisite passages of description, visual imagery, rich colors and tones.

  As a writer, he learned much from A. Merritt, his lifelong idol. If Sir Henry Rider Haggard founded the *lost race" novel vrfth famous romances like She and King Solomon's Mines, it was A. Merritt who raised the tradition to its highest level of imaginative art with such glorious stories as Dwellers in the Mirage and The Moon Pool Hannes adored Merritt, knew his widow quite well, and posthumously collaborated with the great "Lord of Fantasy'' by completiQg two novels, The Fox Woman and The Black Wheel, which were left unfinished when A. Merritt died in 1943. In completing these two novels, Hannes made a very conscious effort to recapture the distinctive Merrittesque prose-style, and I think this carried over into his own novels. If anything, Beyond The Golden Stair is more Merrittesque than The Sorcere/s Ship.

  If this soimds as though I am suggesting that Hannes Bok was any the less writer because he learned from and was influenced by Merritt, such is not at all the case.

  In a certain sense, all writers can be divided into two groups. The first group you might call *TTie Great Originals/' people who write something very different from anything that has come before, either in terms of plot, character, form or storytelling style. The second group is made up of those writers who carry on the traditions founded by the Originals, and make their own contribution by extending the ''schools of fiction** the Originals established. For example, writers like August Derleth and Robert Bloch, who have carried on the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft; or people like John Jakes and L. Sprague de Camp and myself, who have carried on the Conanesque "sword and sorcery* school of adventure fantasy from the point at which Robert E. Howard left it when he died; or Michael Resnick and Maurice B. Gardner and Michael Moorcock (writing as "Edward P. Bradbury"), who have followed the trail blazed by that mightiest of aU storytellers, the immortal Edgar Rice Burroughs.

  To be a "follower' instead of a "founder" does not, in itself, mean you are any the less writer. If Hannes Bok derived basically from A. Merritt, he brought to fiction his own painter's sense of form and color, and used these in a manner impossible for Merritt. And, anyway, where would Merritt himself have been without the example of H. Rider Haggard to learn from?

  Hannes Bok was bom in Minnesota on July 2, 1914, and he died in New York City of a heart attack at the age of fifty. He spent his early years in Seattle and Los Angeles, where he met an enthusiastic young fan named Ray Bradbiuy. Hannes did some covers for Bradbury's fanzine, an amateur effort called Futuria Fantasia. The young boy conceived a violent fascination for Bok's artistic talents, so much so that when

  Bradbury made the long trek from California to Manhattan to attend the First World Science Fiction Convention in July 1939, he carried along a batch of Bok paintings and drawings to show to magazine editors.

  Famsworth Wright, greatest of all the editors of that long-lived and enormously important fiction magazine, Weird Tales, caught fire from the youthful enthusiasm of this California fan, and wanted Bok to illustrate for his magazine. Bok moved to New York the very next year and his work began appearing not only in Weird Tales and in Unknown somewhat later; but, in time his black-and-white illustrations and cover paintings came to adorn most of the fantasy pulp magazines of the decade as well. He became one of the most popular of all the artists illustrating for the fantasy pulps of this period, rivaling the success of Virgil Finlay and J. Allen St. John.

  As a painter, Bok idolized the great Maxfield Par-rish, one of the most popular general illustrators of the time, with whom he corresponded and visited, and from whom he learned much. To imderstand Bok you must realize that he was, in the very highest sense, an "enthusiast.'' He tended to fall violently in love with someone's work, to the point of idolatry. (I tend in this direction myself, hence I can understand his intense enthusiasms, although I do not share all of them.) In music, he was enormously fond of the composers of flamboyant movie scores—Max Steiner and Miklos Rozsa. He liked Russian music and opera, ballet and fairy tales; he was vastly interested in mysticism. Oriental mythologies, Tibetan lore, occultism, and astrology—which began as a hobby with him and ended as almost a privat
e religion.

  In person, at least in his middle forties when I knew him, he was plump, good-humored, with tum-

  bled gray hair and mischievous twinkling eyes. His studio apartment on West 109th Street was like Al-ladin's Cave, filled with floor-to-ceihng paintings, stacks of books and records in orange crates, ringing with music from The Thief of Bagdad, She, and King Kong perpetually playing on the tape recorder. From an eyrie near the ceiling, bald and bearded like Fu Manchu, a plaster bust of the Russian mystic and painter, Nicholas Roerich, stared down at the dazzled visitor from eyes set with mirrored balls. Strands of tiny Japanese Christmas tree lights twinkled around the doorway like goblin lanterns.

  Puffing away on endless Chesterfields, shoving cups of fragrant black coffee in front of you, Hannes would hold the stage with a one-man monologue that could last all night, talking about reading Danny Kaye's horoscope, or giving tea leaf readings in a tea room, or a new book on Babylon's archeology he was reading. Behind you, on waUs covered with gorgeous paintings, papier-mach^ masks would stare down somberly—for another of Bok's enthusiasms was the great W. T. Benda, master mask-maker of the 1920's.

  Bok was boyish, bubbling over with a sense of lively fun and dehghtful humor, a fountain of anecdotes and endless stories. He was really rather shy with people, especially with new people, but once you were in the inner circle, you were in for life. At the time I knew him, in the six or seven years before he died, the friends he talked about most were fans like Frank Dietz, Art CastilKo, and Marty Jukowsky; old-time writer friends like Bradbury and Emil Petaja; and the young painter. Jack Gaughan, then at the beginning of a fine career.

  Hannes never made much money. For long periods, he barely managed to subsist, hving for months at a

  time on coffee (any kind of wine or liquor made him violently ill), cornflakes, and coleslaw. He was totally lacking in business sense and allowed himself to be gypped out of all kinds of money. But he refused to compromise with the world at large. He hved in a world he had made for himself—^he drew and painted the kind of pictures he most wanted to create, whether or not the world was willing to buy them—and in his way, in a very genuine way, he was perhaps the most completely happy man I have ever known.

  Now that he is dead, some of his friends are attempting to keep aHve the most important part of Hannes Bok—^his work. One of his oldest and dearest friends, the science-fantasy writer Emil Petaja, has organized The BokanaKa Foundation to publish port-foKos of his drawings and paintings. Emil has also compiled a biographical memoir of Hannes Bok imder the title of Flights of Angels. The pictures in the Bokanalia portfolios that I have seen have been superbly reproduced, in some cases from the original artworks, in many cases from the original plates. After you have sampled Hannes Bok the vmter through this book and its predecessor. The Sorcere/s Ship, if you would like to explore the world of Hannes Bok the artist, you may inquire about these foUos by writing to Bokanalia, Box #14126, San Francisco, California 94114. You will find it a very beautiful world, well worthy of exploring.

  We are still searching for other ^ost'' novels by Hannes Bok which are rumored to exist But here, at least, is one good book rescued from the shadows . . .

  —Lin Carter Consulting Editor: The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series Hollis, Long Island, New York

  Chapter One

  Escape with Me!

  What was the dream?

  He wasn't quite sure himself. It had been clear as fact in his childhood, but as he had grown out of adolescence he'd pretty much managed to eradicate it with "scientific'' rationalizations. Now there wasn't much left of it, but nevertheless this residue still kept intruding when he least expected it—a flicker and flash of familiar faces he'd never seen before.

  First there was this girl. Once he seemed to have known her name. Now she was only the blurred ghost of great beauty, reaching in despair to him from across an impossibly impassable gulf—^it seemed not only of vast distance but of time itself. Her hair was fluttering golden flame, and the long sleeves of her antique-cut white dress swirled around her like billowing smoke. Now and again he thought he could hear her calling, but coiddn't distinguish the words, and it had to be only a dream because he could actually see her voice —^it flew from her lips in gusts of flame.

  Then at times beside her John Hibbert glimpsed a white-haired, wise-eyed old fellow wearing a dull-hued robe whose folds fell with the stiff severity of the flutings on an ancient colunm. If his face were a httle less kindly, he might be the image of Father Time or

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  frost-visaged Fate. Hibbert wasn't sure any longer whether he was beckoning or making a gestinre of repulsion.

  And then there was that squat white shape which had never been sufficiently sharp-limned in the first place to be labeled. A clownish midget bundled up in white fur? A grotesque half-himian animal? Hibbert couldn't be sure, but whatever it was, he liked it— even had the impulse to want to hug it—and therefore it must be a dim recollection of some beloved stuffed toy from his childhood.

  To be haunted by these three beings at inopportune times may not seem so very dreadful, and mostly it wasn't—except that because of the dream image of the girl, Hibbert had never managed to fall in love. He hadn't recognized her in any of the girls he'd gone with, and somehow it was imperative that he should Yet he kept denying the dream—or attempting to explain it away by whatever means he could find. And the reason was simple. The background for the figures he saw was full of dread.

  There was seething shadow, blacker than blackness had any right to be. It throbbed like an evil black heart, and somehow the pulsations were like drumbeats thumping out a message. Dreadful transforma-Hon . . . watting for you . . . but we call U justice!

  And at this very moment, here was that danmed dream againl But this time he didn't thrust it away. He seized upon it clinically. Maybe, he thought, it*s the symbol of what's happened to me.

  He'd always been a bookish Idd—the dream might have been responsible, for he'd turned to books in search of an explanation for it when his guardians— his parents had died young—had laughed away any questions concerning it. As the saying goes, he'd al-

  ways been old for his years, and at the same time ridiculously naive. When he got out of the Veterans' Hospital, lame from a service woimd, he'd gone to work as cashier in an agency begun by his ex-servicemen buddies. He'd been with them through a Httle thick and a lot of thin, so why should he have had any doubts about them? He hadn't—and they'd slipped a fast one over on him. They'd tricked him into signing blank checks to clinch an important last-minute business deal—and now here he was in a cramped gray cranny of a Florida jail, waiting to be transferred to the state penitentiary.

  He thought: The girl symbolizes the way I felt about life. The stern old man was the way I thought that life should be lived. The black shadow behind them was a warning of what to expect, disgrace and defeat. And the clown? Who else but myself, a fooll

  He didn't get the chance to ask. So where do we go from here? because a sudden movement by his cellmate Frank Scarlatti quickly dissipated the dream.

  Scarlatti had started to pace the cell again. If six months earlier Hibbert had been told that Scarlatti had existed, he'd have laughed. 'Tou're kiddingl People may look like that, but they don't act like that, and they don't talk like thatl Maybe thirty or forty years ago, yes—^but not todayl"

  Well, here was Scarlatti very much in the present. But then, if Hibbert had been told six months earlier that John Hibbert soon would be sharing Scarlatti's cell, he wouldn't have believed that either.

  Frank Scarlatti was a swarthy giant built along the lines of a bear, and he prowled nervously, bearlike, from comer to comer, thinking aloud: ''J^st let that damn guard get too close to these bars, that's all, so I can wrap my mitts aroimd his neckl I'll kiU him, I

  Willi'* He made hooks of his heavy and hairy paws. "Nobody's keeping me cooped up in here, by GodI Not if I can help it!"

  Like so many massive, b
ull-throated men, he had the high, clear voice of a child. To compensate, he struck his chest with a dnunlike thud.

  "I'm Frank Scarlatti, that's who I ami And the jail ain't built that can hold mel"

  His small and deep-set dark eyes flicked to Hibbert for approval. "Hey you, shrimpl" His thick fingers crushed Hibbert's shoidders. He shook Hibbert. **You're laughing at me with your mouth shutl"

  Hibbert didn't flinch. For one thing, he simply didn't care what happened now. For another, even if he could force himself to care, lashing back at the giant would be about as effective as trying to push over a pyramid.

  Scarlatti grunted and let Hibbert drop back. ''But you listen to me—I'm getting out of here. I got a pal —Burks—She'll spring me out of here, and maybe you too, if I feel like it."

  And that's what happened—and Hibbert had to revise his interpretation of the dream. Perhaps Scarlatti was the half-human animal, except that Hibbert had no wish to hug him. And the black shadow? Murderl

  Burks freed them when they were in a prison-van on their way from jail to State Prison. He rammed his own car into the van, and before the guards realized that the crash was no ordinary accident, he had hiu-led a makeshift gas-bomb among them. He had a second car hidden not far away—both stolen, of course. There was shooting and scurrying. Then the giant, Burks, and Hibbert were in the second car, rocketing away from the spot

  Scarlatti blurted his gratitude. Burks kept his eyes on the road and snapped, "Cut the histrionics. You know damn well if I didn't find you useful, I'd have let you roti" His gem-hard, gem-bright eyes took stock of Hibbert. "Who's the friend?"

  Hibbert spat: "I'm no friendl Maybe I wanted to break jail, but I didn't want to be accessory to mur-derl Stop this car and let me outl I'll go my way alonel"

  Scarlatti said amiably, "You just stay put.'' His heavy hand pinned Hibbert back. "You don't have enough brains to hide out by yourself. The bulls would nab you for sure. Like you said, you're an accessory, and they'd pin you for murder. And maybe I shot oflF my mouth too much, back there in chnk—and I'm taking no chance of you getting snatched and spilling whatever I could of said. Besides," and something like gloating crept into his tone, "I kind of get a charge out of you. Bigger guys than you have backed down to me, but you ain't never done it yet." He Ucked his lips. "No, not yetl"