The Best of Gene Wolfe

No doubt I looked blank.

“It’s a remote Pacific island chain.” She cleared her throat and seemed to have swallowed a bone. “It’s not going to be like Africa, Bad. You’ll be on your own out there.”

Me: “I thought you were going to fire me.”

P.D.: “No, no! We wouldn’t do that.”

“Permanent sick leave.”

“No, no, no! But, Bad.” She leaned across her desk and for a minute I was afraid she was going to squeeze my hand. “This will be rough. I’m not going to try to fool you.”

Ha!

Cut to the chase. This is nothing. This is a bungalow with rotten boards in the floors that has been here since before the British pulled out, a mile from the village and less than half that from the beach, close enough that the Pacific smell is in all the rooms. The people are fat and happy, and my guess is not more than half are dumb. (Try and match that around Chicago.) Once or twice a year one gets yaws or some such, and Rev. Robbins gives him arsenic. Which cures it. Pooey!

There are fish in the ocean, plenty of them. Wild fruit in the jungle, and they know which you can eat. They plant yams and breadfruit, and if they need money or just want something, they dive for pearls and trade them when Jack’s boat comes. Or do a big holiday boat trip to Kololahi.

There are coconuts too, which I forgot. They know how to open them. Or perhaps I am just not strong enough yet. (I look in the mirror, and ugh.) I used to weigh two hundred pounds.

“You skinny,” the king says. “Ha, ha, ha!” He is really a good guy, I think. He has a primitive sense of humor, but there are worse things. He can take a jungle chopper (we said upanga, but they say heletay) and open a coconut like a pack of gum. I have coconuts and a heletay, but I might as well try to open them with a spoon.

 1

Feb. Nothing to report except a couple of wonderful swims. I did not swim at all for the first couple of weeks. There are sharks. I know they are really out there because I have seen them once or twice. According to what I was told, there are saltwater crocs too, up to fourteen feet long. I have never seen any of those and am skeptical, although I know they have them in Queensland. Every so often you hear about somebody who was killed by a shark, but that does not stop the people from swimming all the time, and I do not see why it should stop me. Good luck so far.

 2

Feb. Saturday. I was supposed to write about the dwarf I saw on the beach that time, but I never got the nerve. Sometimes I used to see things in the hospital. Afraid it may be coming back. I decided to take a walk on the beach. All right, did I get sunstroke?

Phooey.

He was just a little man, shorter even than Mary’s father. He was too small for any adult in the village. He was certainly not a child, and was too pale to have been one of the islanders at all.

He cannot have been here long; he was whiter than I am.

Rev. Robbins will know—ask tomorrow.

 3

Feb. Hot and getting hotter. Jan. is the hottest month here, according to Rob Robbins. Well, I got here the first week in Jan. and it has never been this hot.

Got up early while it was still cool. Went down the beach to the village. (Stopped to have a look at the rocks where the dwarf disappeared.) Waited around for the service to begin but could not talk to Rob; he was rehearsing the choir—“Nearer, My God, to Thee.”

Half the village came, and the service went on for almost two hours. When it was over I was able to get Rob alone. I said if he would drive us into Kololahi I would buy our Sunday dinner. (He has a Jeep.) He was nice, but no—too far and the bad roads. I told him I had personal troubles I wanted his advice on, and he said, “Why don’t we go to your place, Baden, and have a talk? I’d invite you for lemonade, but they’d be after me every minute.”

So we walked back. It was hotter than hell, and this time I tried not to look. I got cold Cokes out of my rusty little fridge, and we sat on the porch (Rob calls it the veranda) and fanned ourselves. He knew I felt bad about not being able to do anything for these people, and urged patience. My chance would come.

I said, “I’ve given up on that, Reverend.”

(That was when he told me to call him Rob. His first name is Mervyn.) “Never give up, Baden. Never.” He looked so serious I almost laughed.

“All right, I’ll keep my eyes open, and maybe someday the Agency will send me someplace where I’m needed.”

“Back to Uganda?”

I explained that the A.O.A.A. almost never sends anyone to the same area twice. “That wasn’t really what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s my personal life. Well, really two things, but that’s one of them. I’d like to get back together with my ex-wife. You’re going to advise me to forget it, because I’m here and she’s in Chicago, but I can send e-mail, and I’d like to put the bitterness behind us.”

“Were there children? Sorry, Baden. I didn’t intend it to hurt.”

I explained how Mary had wanted them and I had not, and he gave me some advice. I have not e-mailed yet, but I will tonight after I write it out here.

“You’re afraid that you were hallucinating. Did you feel feverish?” He got out his thermometer and took my temperature, which was nearly normal. “Let’s look at it logically, Baden. This island is a hundred miles long and about thirty miles at the widest point. There are eight villages I know of. The population of Kololahi is over twelve hundred.”

I said I understood all that.