The Best of Gene Wolfe

them.

They travel to Wuhan, Nanjing, and eventually Peking (Beijing). While working as scullions in the famous Sick Duck, they encounter a wily junk captain who promises to transport them to Golden-Mountain-Land in return for one of the daughters. (There is an amusing scene in which the three vie in bad cooking.) His choice falls on Pear Blossom, whom he sells to a brothel.

The remainder of the family takes ship at Tsingtao and crosses the Yellow Sea. They disembark at Inchon, believing the junk will anchor there for several days; it sails without them.

One of the remaining sisters, Cloud Fairy, is betrothed to Park Lee, a Korean. With the aid she persuades him to provide, the other Chins move on, vaguely eastward, to P’ohang and perhaps eventually to Japan. Cloud Fairy lives out the remainder of her life in the Land of Morning Calm but bequeaths to her descendants a yearning irresistible and indefectible.

Drawn by their inherited memories, they reach California but fail to identify it as Golden-Mountain-Land (if indeed it is). They continue eastward, hitching rides with disappointed Okies returning to the Dust Bowl. In New York (these are the episodes recently completed in Belgium) they are befriended by a Turk who tells them that the world is circular, being in fact the crater of a quiescent cosmic volcano, Mount Kaf, which surrounds it upon all sides. The slopes of the crater, says the Turk, are doubtless Golden-Mountain-Land, but to reach them it is necessary to walk straight through the world, whose roads have the trick of bending human steps. Frank Park nods and soon vanishes. This bald stating of its theme is perhaps the weakest element in Parkroads.

As already indicated, Parkroads has been released in six reels; they are so staged that it is by no means easy to determine the order in which they are to be shown. There is, of course, a conventional indication on the film cans for the guidance of the projectionist, but this is almost certainly incorrect. The incidents in Hunan now given in flashback may have well been intended, at least at one time, as the opening of the picture. The sequence in the public gardens of Ghent during which Doris is asked why she has embraced decadence and answers, “Directed by Henry Miller” (or perhaps Mueller), was surely intended as the last, or next to last. Publicity releases from 1939 assert that if all the reels are projected in the correct order, it will be apparent the Parks have discovered that the village in Hunan that was the original home of the Chins was in fact Golden- Mountain-Land; in short, that the paradise described in the letter was merely that of nostalgia. One hopes not.

If so, it is a problem readily amenable to mathematical treatment. Any of the six reels could be chosen as the first. Five then remain for the second, yielding thirty combinations. Four remain for the third—one hundred and twenty combinations. Three remain for the fourth, two for the fifth, and only one for the last—a total of seven hundred and twenty showings, surely not an impossible number.

However, there are references to a missing seventh reel. If such a reel exists, the number of showings is substantially increased (to five thousand and forty), and the reel must first be found. But it is probable that the veiled hints in the old press releases only mean that when the six reels are projected in the correct order someone will be inspired to produce a seventh, in which the Parks’ unwearied journeying returns them to the Far East.

In the brief space allowed me, I have been unable to comment on the performances of individual cast members, but it would be unjust to close without mentioning the late William Chang, who portrayed the captain of the junk. His scenes aboard seem initially grandiose. The vessel is too large, its mast impossibly tall, its rigging unnecessarily mysterious. Then we realize we are seeing it through the Chins’ eyes. The Chins themselves appear small, shabby, and awkward, Chang a demigod; eventually we realize we are seeing him and them through the junk’s eyes. Distributed by Unconscious Artists, Inc. Rated R. Two and a half stars.

AFTERWORD

This story first appeared in a university literary magazine. To the editor’s intense delight, he received plaintive requests for months afterward. People—and particularly people who taught courses having to do with film—wanted to know where they could get it.

So would I.

GAME IN THE POPE’S HEAD

A sergeant was sent to the Pope’s Head to investigate the case.

                                                                              —FROM THE LONDON TIMES’ COVERAGE OF

                                                                                            THE MURDER OF ANNIE CHAPMAN,

                                                                                                            SEPTEMBER 11, 1888

 B

ev got up to water her plant. Edgar said, “You’re overwatering that. Look how yellow, the leaves are.”

They were indeed. The plant had extended its long, limp limbs over the pictures and the sofa, and out through the broken window, but the weeping flukes of these astonishing terminations were sallow and jaundiced.

“It needs water.” Bev dumped her glass into the flowerpot, got a fresh drink, and sat down again. “My play?” She turned up a card. “The next card is ‘What motion picture used the greatest number of living actors, animal or human?’ ”

Edgar said, “I think I know. Gandhi. Half a million or so.”

“Wrong. Debbie?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

“Wrong. Randy?”

It was a moment before he realized that she meant him. So that was his name: Randy. Yes, of course. He said, “Animal or human?”

“Right.”

“Then it’s animals, because they don’t get paid.” He tried to think of animal movies, Bert Lahr terrified of Toto, Lassie Come Home. “The Birds?”

“Close. It was The Swarm, and there were twenty-two million actors.”

Edgar said, “Mostly bees.”

“I suppose.”

There was a bee, or perhaps a wasp, on the plant, nearly invisible against a yellow leaf. It did not appear to