Orbit 6 - [Anthology] Read online

  “Fortunately,” Miss Bushnan said, “I don’t feel that way. Hasn’t it occurred to you that this business of asking for our votes must be predicated on the idea that they’ll be favorable? It hasn’t been announced, has it?”

  The Pope nodded. “I see what you mean. If the decision had been made public they couldn’t change it; but as it is, if they don’t like what they hear from us—”

  “But they’ll have every news agency in the world there when the vote is actually taken.”

  “You are a clever girl.” The Pope shook his head. “It is a lesson to me to think of how very much I have underestimated you, sitting in the gallery there beside me all these days, and even this evening when I came here. But that is good; God wants me to learn humility, and He has chosen a child to teach it, as He so often does. I hope you understand that after the council I will be giving you all the support I can. I’ll publish an encyclical—”

  “If you feel you can’t lie to them,” Miss Bushnan interposed practically, “we’ll need some excuse for your being absent from the vote.”

  “I have one,” the Pope said. “I don’t”— he paused—”sup-pose you’ve heard of Mary Catherine Bryan?”

  “I don’t think so. Who is she?”

  “She is—or at least she was—a nun. She was the last nun, actually, for the past three years. Ever since Sister Carmela Rose died. I received a call this morning telling me Mary Catherine passed away last night, and her rites are to be this coming Tuesday. The government still lets us use St. Peter’s sometimes for that sort of thing.”

  “So you won’t be here.” Miss Bushnan smiled. “But a nun sounds so interesting. Tell me about her.”

  “There isn’t a great deal to tell. She was a woman of my mother’s generation, and for the last four years she lived in an apartment on the Via del Fori. Alone, after Sister Carmela Rose died. They never got along too well, actually, being from different orders, but Mary Catherine cried for weeks, I remember, after Sister Carmela Rose was gone.”

  “Did she wear those wonderful flowing robes you see in pictures?”

  “Oh, no,” the Pope said. “You see, nuns no longer have to—” he stopped in the middle of the sentence, and the animation left his face, making him at once a very old man. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, “I had forgotten. I should have said that for the last seventy years or so of their existence nuns no longer wore those things. They abandoned them, actually, just a few years before we priests dropped our Roman collars. You have to understand that from time to time I have tried to persuade someone to . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, the old phrase was ‘take the veil.’ It would have kept the tradition alive and would have been so nice for Mary Catherine and Sister Carmela Rose. I always told the girls all the things they wouldn’t have to give up, and they always said they’d think about it, but none of them ever came back.”

  “I’m sorry your friend is dead,” Miss Bushnan said simply. To her surprise she found she really was.

  “It’s the end of something that had lived almost as long as the Church itself—oh, I suppose it will be revived in fifty or a hundred years when the spirit of the world turns another corner, but a revival is never really the same thing. As though we tried to put the Kyrie back into the mass now.”

  Miss Bushnan, who did not know what he was talking about, said, “I suppose so, but—”

  “But what has it to do with the matter at hand? Not a great deal, I’m afraid. But while they are voting that is where I shall be. And afterward perhaps we can do something.” He stood up, adjusting his clothing, and from somewhere in the back of the apartment Sal came rolling out with his hat positioned on her writing shelf. It was red, Miss Bushnan noticed, but the feather in the band was black instead of green. As he put it on he said, “We started among slaves, more or less, you know. Practically all the early Christians who weren’t Jews were either slaves or freedmen. I’ll be going now to say the funeral mass of the last nun. Perhaps I’ll also live to administer the vows of the first.”

  Sal announced, “Saint Macrina, the sister of Saint Basil, founded the first formal order of nuns in three fifty-eight.” The Pope smiled and said, “Quite right, my dear,” and Miss Bushnan said vaguely, “I bought her the World’s Great Religions package about a year ago. I suppose that’s how she knew who you were.” She was thinking about Brad again, and if the Pope made any reply she failed to hear it. Brad a slave . . .

  Then the door shut and Sal muttered, “I just don’t trust that old man, he makes me feel creepy,” and Miss Bushnan knew he was gone.

  She told Sal, “He’s harmless, and anyway he’s going to Rome now,” and only then, with the tension draining away, did she feel how great it had been. “Harmless,” she said again. “Bring me another drink, please, Sal.”

  Tuesday would be the day. The whole world would be watching, and everyone at the conference would be in red and green, but she would wear something blue and stand out. Something blue and her pearls. In her mind Brad would somehow be waiting behind her, naked to the waist, with his wrists in bronze manacles. “I’ll have them made at Tiffany’s,” she said, speaking too softly for Sal, busy with the shaker in the kitchen, to hear. “Tiffany’s, but no gems or turquoise or that sort of junk.”

  Just the heavy, solid bronze with perhaps a touch here and there of silver. Sal would make him keep them polished.

  She could hear herself telling their friends, “Sal makes him keep them shined. I tell him if he doesn’t I’m going to send him back—just kidding, of course.”

  <>

  * * * *

  Goslin Day

  by Avram Davidson

  It was a goslin day, no doubt about it, of course it can happen that goslin things can occur, say, once a day for many days. But this day was a goslin day. From the hour when, properly speaking, the ass brays in his stall, but here instead the kat kvells on the rooftop—to the hour when the cock crows on his roost, but here instead the garbage-man bangs on his can—even that early, Faroly realized that it was going to be a goslin day (night? let be night:It was evening and [after that] it was morning: one day. Yes or no?). In the warbled agony of the shriekscream Faroly had recognized an element present which was more than the usual ketzelkat expression of its painpleasure syndrome. In the agglutinative obscenities which interrupted the bang-crashes of the yuckels emptying eggshells orangerinds coffeegrounds there was (this morning, different from all other mornings) something unlike their mere usual brute pleasure in waking the dead. Faroly sighed. His wife and child were still asleep. He saw the dimlight already creeping in, sat up, reached for the glass and saucer and poured water over his nails, began to whisper his preliminary prayers, already concentrating on his Intention in the nameUnity, but aware, aware, aware, the hotsticky feeling in the air, the swimmy looks in the dusty corners of windows, mirrors; something a tension, here a twitch and there a twitch. Notgood notgood.

  In short: a goslin day.

  Faroly decided to seek an expert opinion, went to Crown Heights to consult the kabbalist, Kaplánovics.

  Rabbaness Kaplánovics was at the stove, schauming off the soup with an enormous spoon, gestured with a free elbow toward an inner room. There sat the sage, the sharp one, the teacher of our teachers, on his head his beaver hat neatly brushed, on his feet and legs his boots brightly polished, in between his garments well and clean without a fleck or stain as befits a disciple of the wise. He and Faroly shook hands, greeted, blessed the Name. Kaplánovics pushed across several sheets of paper covered with an exquisitely neat calligraphy.

  “Already there,” the kabbalist said. “I have been through everything three times, twice. The NY Times, the Morgen Dzshornal, I. F. Stone, Dow-Jones, the Daph-Yomi, your name-Text, the weather report, Psalm of the Day. Everything is worked out, by numerology, analogy, gematria, noutricon, anagrams, allegory, procession and precession. So.

  “Of course today as any everyday we must await the coming o
f the Messiah: ‘await’—expect? today? not today. Today he wouldn’t come. Considerations for atmospheric changes, or changes for atmospheric considerations, not—bad. Not—bad. Someone gives you an offer for a good airconditioner, cheap, you could think about it. Read seven capitals of psalms between afternoon and evening prayers. One sequence is enough. The day is favorable for decisions on growth stocks, but avoid closed-end mutual funds. On the corner by the beygal store is an old woman with a pyshka, collecting dowries for orphan girls in Jerusalem: the money, she never sends, this is her sin, it’s no concern of yours: give her eighteen cents, a very auspicious number: merit, cheaply bought (she has sugar diabetes and the daughter last week gave birth to a weak-headed child by a schwartzer), what else?” They examined the columns of characters.

  “Ahah. Ohoh. If you get a chance to buy your house, don’t buy it, the Regime will condemn it for a freeway, where are they all going so fast?—every man who has two legs thinks he needs three automobiles—besides—where did I write it? oh yes. There. The neighborhood is going to change very soon and if you stay you will be killed in three years and two months, or three months and two years, depending on which system of gemátria is used in calculating. You have to warn your brother-in-law his sons should each commence bethinking a marriagematch. Otherwise they will be going to cinemas and watching televisions and putting arms around girls, won’t have the proper intentions for their nighttime prayers, won’t even read the protective psalms selected by the greatgrandson of the Baalshemtov: and with what results, my dear man? Nocturnal emissions and perhaps worse; is it for nothing that The Chapters of the Principles caution us, ‘At age eighteen to the marriage canopy and the performance of good deeds,’ hm?”

  Faroly cleared his throat. “Something else is on your mind,” said the kabbalist. “Speak. Speak.” Faroly confessed his concern about goslins. Kaplánovics exclaimed, struck the table. “Goslins! you wanted to talk about goslins? It’s already gone past the hour to say the Shema, and I certainly didn’t have in mind when I said it to commence constructing a kaméa—” He clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Am I omniscient?” he demanded. “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? Man walks in off the street, expects to find—”

  But it did not take long to soothe and smooth him—Who is strong? he who can control his own passion.

  And now to first things first, or, in this case, last things first, for it was the most recent manifestation of goslinness which Faroly wished to talk about. The kabbalist listened politely but did not seem in agreement with nor impressed by his guest’s recitation of the signs by which a goslin day might make, itself known. “ ‘Show simonim,’ “ he murmured, with a polite nod. “This one loses an object, that one finds it, let the claimant come and ‘show simonim,’ let him cite the signs by which his knowledge is demonstrated, and, hence, his ownership . . .” but this was mere polite fumfutting, and Faroly knew that the other knew that both knew it.

  * * * *

  On Lexington a blackavised goslin slipped out from a nexus of cracked mirrors reflecting dust at each other in a disused nightclub, snatched a purse from a young woman emerging from a ribs joint; in Bay Ridge another, palgpink and blond, snatched a purse from an old woman right in front of Suomi Evangelical Lutheran. Both goslins flickersnickered and were sharply gone. In Tottenville, a third one materialized in the bedroom of an honest young woman still half asleep in bed just a second before her husband came back from the nightshift in Elizabeth, New Jersey; uttered a goslin cry and jumped out the window holding his shirt. Naturally the husband never believed her—would you? Two more slipped in and out of a crucial street corner on the troubled bordermarches of Italian Harlem, pausing only just long enough to exchange exclamations of guineabastard!/goddamnigger! and goslin looks out of the corners of their goslin eyes. Goslin cabdrivers curseshouted at hotsticky pregnant women dumb enough to try and cross at pedestrian crossings. The foul air grew fouler, thicker, hotter, tenser, muggier, murkier: and the goslins, smelling it from afar, came leapsniffing through the vimveil to nimblesnitch, torment, buffet, burden, uglylook, poke, makestumble, maltreat, and quickshmiggy back again to gezzle guzzle goslinland.

  The kabbalist had grown warm in discussion, eagerly inscribed circles in the air with downhooked thumb apart from fist, “ ‘. . . they have the forms of men and also they have the lusts of men,’ “ he quoted.

  “You are telling me what every schoolchild knows,” protested Faroly. “But from which of the other three of the four worlds of Emanation, Creation, Formation, and Effectation—fromwhich do they come? And why more often, and more and more often, and more and more and more often, and—”

  Face wrinkled to emphasize the gesture of waving these words away, Kaplánovics said, “If Yesod goes, how can Hod remain? if there is no Malchuth, how can there be Quether? Thus one throws away with the hand the entire configuration of Adam Qadmon, the Tree of Life, the Ancient of Days. Men tamper with the very vessels themselves, as if they don’t know what happened with the Bursting of the Vessels before, as though the Husks, the Shards, even a single shattered Cortex, doesn’t still plague and vex and afflict us to this day. They look down into the Abyss, and they say, ‘This is high,’ and they look up to an Eminence and they say, ‘This is low.’ . . . And not thus alone! And not thus alone! Not just with complex deenim, as, for example, those concerning the fluxes of women—no! no! but the simplest of the simple of the Six Hundred and Thirteen Commandments: to place a parapet around a roof to keep someone from falling off and be killed. What can be simpler? What can be more obvious? What can be easier?

  “—but do they do it? What, was it only three weeks ago, or four? a Puertorican boy didn’t fall off the roof of an apartment house near here? Dead, perished. Go talk to the wall. Men don’t want to know. Talk to them Ethics, talk to them Brotherhood, talk to them Ecumenical Dialogue, talk to them any kind of nonsenseness: they’ll listen. But talk to them, It’s written, textually, in the Torah, to build a parapet around your rooftop to prevent blood being shed—no: to this they won’t listen. They would neither hear nor understand. They don’t know Torah, don’t know Text, don’t know parapet, roof— this they never heard of either—”

  He paused. “Come tomorrow and I’ll have prepared for you a kamea against goslins.” He seemed suddenly weary.

  Faroly got up. Sighed. “And tomorrow will you also have prepared a kamea against goslins for everyone else?”

  Kaplánovics didn’t raise his eyes. “Don’t blame the rat,” he said. “Blame the rat-hole.”

  * * * *

  Downstairs Faroly noticed a boy in a green and white skullcap, knotted crispadin coming up from inside under his shirt to dangle over his pants. “Let me try a sortilegy,” he thought to himself. “Perhaps it will give me some remez, or hint . . .” Aloud, he asked, “Youngling, tell me, what text did you learn today in school?”

  The boy stopped twisting one of his stroobley earlocks, and turned up his phlegm-green eyes. “ ‘Three things take a man out of this world,’ “ he yawned. “ ‘Drinking in the morning, napping in the noon, and putting a girl on a wine-barrel to find out if she’s a virgin.’ “

  Faroly clicked his tongue, fumbled for a handkerchief to wipe his heatprickled face. “You are mixing up the texts,” he said.

  The boy raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, stuck out his lower jaw. “Oh indeed. You ask me a question, then you give me an answer. How do you know I’m mixing up the texts? Maybe I cited a text which you never heard before. What are you, the Vilna Gaon?”

  “Brazen face—look, look, how you’ve gotten your crispadin all snarled,” Faroly said, slightly amused, fingering the cinctures passed through one belt-loop—then, feeling his own horrified amazement and, somehow, knowing. . . knowing ... as one knows the refrigerator is going to stop humming one half second before it does stop, yet—”What is this? What is this? The cords of your crispadin are tied in pairs?”

  The filthgreen eyes slid to their corners, still hol
ding Faroly’s. “Hear, O Israel,” chanted the child; “the Lord our God, the Lord is Two.”

  The man’s voice came out agonyshrill. “Dualist. Heresiarch. Sectary. Ah. Ah ah ah—goslin!”

  “Take ya hands outa my pants!” shrieked the pseudo-child, and, with a cry of almost totally authentic fear, fled. Faroly, seeing people stop, faces changing, flung up his arms and ran for his life. The goslin-child, wailing and slobbering, trampled up steps into an empty hallway where the prismatic edge of a broken windowpane caught the sunlight and winkyflashed rainbow changes. The goslin stretched thin as a shadow and vanished into the bright edge of the shard.

  * * * *

  Exhausted, all but prostrated by the heat, overcome with humiliation, shame, tormented with fear and confusion, Faroly stumbled through the door of his home. His wife stood there, looking at him. He held to the doorpost, too weary even to raise his hand to kiss the mazuzah, waiting for her to exclaim at his appearance. But she said nothing. He opened his mouth, heard his voice click in his throat. “Solomon,” his wife said. He moved slowly into the room. “Solomon,” she said.