Wolfe, Gene - Seven American nights

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SEVEN AMERICAN NIGHTS*

Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe is a solid and substantial Midwesterner who Is easy to like as a person, and Impossible

to fault as a writer. He has one flaw He doesn't write enough. Particularly, he doesn't write

enough novellas-a form which, some would hold, Is the Ideal length for a science-fiction story,

and which few persons have performed in more successfully than Gene Wolfe. His "the Fifth Head of

Cerberus" proved that a few years ago, and the statement Is reconfirmed with the present example,

"Seven American Nights."

Esteemed and Learned Madame:

As I last wrote you, it appears to me likely that your son Nadan (may Allah preserve him!) has

left the old capital and traveled-of his own will or another's-north into the region about the Bay

of Delaware. My conjecture is now confirmed by the discovery in those regions of the notebook I

enclose. It is not of American manufacture, as you see; and though it holds only the records of a

single week, several suggestive items therein provide us new reason to hope.

I have photocopied the contents to guide me in my investigations: but I am alert to the

probability that you, madame, with your superior knowledge of the young man we seek, may discover

implications I have overlooked. Should that be the case, I urge you to write me at once.

Though I hesitate to mention it in connection with so encouraging a finding, your most

recently due remission has not yet arrived. I assume that this tardiness results from the

procrastination of the mails, which is here truly abominable. I must warn you, however,

*Runner-up for Nebula, for Best Novella of 1978.

that I shall be forced to discontinue the search unless funds sufficient for my expenses are

forthcoming before the advent of winter.

With inexpressible respect,

Hassan Kerbelai

Here I am at last! After twelve mortal days aboard the Princess Fatimah-twelve days of

cold and ennui-twelve days of bad food and throbbing engines-the joy of being on land again is

like the delight a condemned man must feel when a letter from the shah snatches him from beneath

the very blade of death. America! America! Dull days are no more! They say that everyone who comes

here either loves or hates you, America-by Allah I love you now!

Having begun this record at last, I find I do not know where to begin. I had been reading

travel diaries before I left home; and so when I saw you, O Book, lying so square and thick in

your stall in the bazaar-why should I not have adventures too, and write a book like Osman Aga's?

Few come to this sad country at the world's edge, after all, and most who do land farther up the

coast.

And that gives me the clue I was looking for-how to begin. America began for me as colored

water. When I went out on deck yesterday morning, the ocean had changed from green to yellow. I

had never heard of such a thing before, neither in my reading, nor in my talks with Uncle Mirza,

who was here thirty years ago. I am afraid I behaved like the greatest fool imaginable, running

about the ship babbling, and looking over the side every few minutes to make certain the rich

mustard color was still there and would not vanish the way things do in dreams when we try to

point them out to someone else. The steward told me he knew. Golam Gassem the grain merchant (whom

I had tried to avoid meeting for the entire trip until that moment) said, "Yes, yes," and turned

away in a fashion that showed he had been avoiding me too, and that it was going to take more of a

miracle than yellow water to change his feelings.

One of the few native Americans in first class came out just then: Mister-as the style is

here-Tallman, husband of the lovely Madam Tallman, who really deserves such a tall man as myself.

(Whether her husband chose that name in self-derision, or in the hope that it would erase others'

memory of his infirmity; or whether it was his father's; and is merely one of the countless

ironies of fate, I do not know.

There was something wrong with his back.) As if I had not made enough spectacle of myself already,

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I took this Mr. Tallman by the sleeve and told him to look over the side, ` explaining that the

sea had turned yellow. I am afraid Mr.. Tallman turned white himself instead, and turned something

else too-his back-looking as though he would have` struck me if he dared. It was comic enough, I

suppose-4heard some of the other passengers chuckling about it' afterward-but I don't believe I

have seen such hatred in a human face before. just then the captain came strolling up, and I-

considerably deflated but not-flattened yet, and thinking that he had not overheard Mr. Tallman

and me-mentioned for the final time that day that the water had turned yellow. "I know," the

captain said. "It's his country" (here he jerked his head in the direction of the pitiful Mr.

Tallman), "bleeding to death."

Here it is evening again, and I see that I stopped writing last night before I had so much

as described my first sight of ` the coast. Well, so be it. At home it is midnight, or nearly, and

the life of the cafds is at its height. How I wish that I were there now, with you, Yasmin, not

webbed among these red- and purple-clad strangers, who mob their own streets like an invading

army, and duck into their houses like rats into their holes. But you, Yasmin, or Mother, or

whoever: may read this, will want to know of my day-only you are sometimes to think of me as I am

now, bent over an old,: scarred table in a decayed room with two beds, listening to , the

hastening feet in the streets outside.

I slept late this morning; I suppose I was more tired from the voyage than I realized. By

the time I woke, the whole of ; the city was alive around me, with vendors crying fish and

fruits under my shuttered window, and the great wooden' wains the Americans call trucks rumbling

over the broken concrete on their wide iron wheels, bringing up goods from the ships in the

Potomac anchorage. One sees very odd teams here, Yasmin. When I went to get my breakfast (one.

must go outside to reach the lobby and dining room in these American hotels, which I would think

would be very inconvenient in bad weather) I saw one of these trucks with two oxen, a horse, and a

mule in the traces, which would have . made you laugh. The drivers crack their whips all the time.

The first impression one gets of America is that it is not as

poor as one has been told. It is only later that it becomes apparent how much has been handed down

from the previous century. The streets here are paved, but they are old and broken. There are

fine, though decayed, buildings everywhere (this hotel is one-the Inn of Holidays, it is called),

more modern in appearance than the ones we see at home, where for so long traditional architecture

was enforced by law. We are on Maine Street, and when I had finished my breakfast (it was very

good, and very cheap by our standards, though I am told it is impossible to get anything out of

season here) I asked the manager where I should go to see the sights of the city. He is a short

and phenomenally ugly man, something of a hunchback as so many of them are. "There are no tours,"

he said. "Not any more."

I -told him that I simply wanted to wander about by myself, and perhaps sketch a bit.

"You can do that. North for the buildings, south for the theater, west for the park. Do

you plan to go to the park, Mr. Jaffarzadeh?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"You should hire at least two securities if you go to the park-I can recommend an agency."

"I have my pistol."

"You'll need more than that, sir."

Naturally, I decided then and there that I would go to the park, and alone. But i have

determined not to spend this, the sole, small coin of adventure this land has provided me so far,

before I discover what else it may offer to enrich my existence.

Accordingly, I set off for the north when I left the hotel. I have not, thus far, seen

this city, or any American city, by night. What they might be like if these people thronged the

streets then, as we do, I cannot imagine. Even by clearest day, there is the impression of a

carnival, of some mad circus whose performance began a hundred or more years ago and has not ended

yet.

At first it seemed that only every fourth or fifth person suffered some trace of the

genetic damage that destroyed the old America, but as I grew more accustomed to the streets, and

thus less quick to dismiss as Americans and no more the unhappy old woman who wanted me to buy

flowers and the boy who dashed shrieking between the wheels of a truck, and began instead to look

at them as human beings-in other

words, just as I would look at some chance-met person on one of our own streets-I saw that there

was hardly a soul not marked in some way. These deformities, though they are individually hideous,

in combination with the bright, ragged clothing so common here, give the meanest assemblage the

character of a pageant. I sauntered along, hardly out of earshot of one group of street musicians

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before encountering another, and in a few strides passed a man so tall that he was taller seated

on a low step than I standing; a bearded dwarf with a withered arm; and a woman whose face had

been divided by some devil into halves, one large-eyed and idiotically despairing, the other

squinting and sneering.

There can be no question about it-Yasmin must not read this. I have been sitting here for

an hour at least, staring at the flame of the candle. Sitting and listening to something that from

time to time beats against the steel shutters that close the window of this room. The truth is

that I am paralyzed by a fear that entered me-I do not know from whence-yesterday, and has been

growing ever since.

Everyone knows that these Americans were once the most skilled creators of consciousness-

altering substances the world has ever seen. The same knowledge that permitted them to forge the

chemicals that destroyed them (so that they might have bread that never staled, innumerable

poisons for vermin, and a host of unnatural materials for every purpose) also contrived synthetic

alkaloids that produced endless feverish imaginings.

Surely some, at least, of these skills remain. Or if they do not,, then some of the

substances themselves, preserved for eighty or a hundred years in hidden cabinets, and no doubt

growing more dangerous as the world forgets them. I think that someone on the ship may have

administered some such drug to me.

That is out at last! I felt so much better at having written

it-it took a great deal of effort that I took several turns

about this room. Now that I have written it down, I do not

believe it at all.

Still, last night I dreamed of that bread, of which I first read in the little schoolroom

of Uncle Mirza's country house. It was no complex, towering "literary" dream such as I have

sometimes had, and embroidered, and boasted of afterward

over coffee. Just the vision of a loaf of soft white bread lying on a plate in the center of a

small table: bread that retained the fragrance of the oven (surely one of the most delicious in

the world) though it was smeared with gray mold. Why would the Americans wish such a thing? Yet

all the historians agree that they did, just as they wished their own corpses to appear living

forever.

It is only this country, with its colorful, fetid streets, deformed people, and harsh,

alien language, that makes me feel as drugged and dreaming as I do. Praise Allah that I can speak

Farsi to you, O Book. Will you believe that I have taken out every article of clothing I have,

just to read the makers' labels? Will I believe it, for that matter, when I read this at home?

The public buildings to the north--once the great center, as I understand it, of political

activity-offer a severe contrast to the streets of the still-occupied areas. In the latter, the

old buildings are in the last stages of decay, or have been repaired by makeshift and

inappropriate means; but they seethe with the life of those who depend upon such commercial

activity as the port yet provides, and with those who depend on them, and so on. The monumental

buildings, because they were constructed of the most imperishable materials, appear almost whole,

though there are a few fallen columns and sagging porticos, and in several places small trees

(mostly the sad carpinus caroliniana, I believe) have rooted in the crevices of walls. Still, if

it is true, as has been written, that Time's beard is gray not with the passage of years but with

the dust of ruined cities, it is here that he trails it. These imposing shells are no more than

that. They were built, it would seem, to be cooled and ventilated by machinery. Many are

windowless, their -interiors now no more than sunless caves, reeking of decay; into these I did

not venture. Others had had fixed windows that once were mere walls of glass; and a few of these

remained, so that I was able to sketch their construction. Most, however, are destroyed. Time's

beard has swept away their very shards.

Though these old buildings (with one or two exceptions) are deserted, I encountered

several beggars. They seemed to be Americans whose deformities preclude their doing useful work,

and one cannot help but feel sorry for them, though their appearance is often as distasteful as

their im-

portunities. They offered to show me the former residence of their Padshah, and as an excuse to

give them a few coins I accompanied them, making them first pledge to leave me when I had seen it.

The structure they pointed out to me was situated at the end of a long avenue lined with

impressive buildings; so I suppose they must have been correct in thinking it once important.

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Wolfe, Gene - Seven American nights

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