The Best of Gene Wolfe

“The charity place—they said she could stay there. She couldn’t stay in the house because all the rooms are full of men.”

Maria was saying, “So when she was all done, she went looking for him, only she couldn’t find him and she never did.”

“She’s sick?”

“She’s knocked up, Johnny, that’s all. Don’t worry about her. She’s got some guy in there with her.”

Mark asked, “Do you know about the Baby Jesus, Uncle Zozz?”

Zozz groped for words.

“Johnny, my son—”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Your friend—Do they have the faith here, Johnny?”

Apropos of nothing Teresa said, “They’re Jews, next door.”

Zozz told Mark, “You see, the Baby Jesus has never come to my world.”

Maria said, “And so she goes all over every place looking for him with her presents and she leaves some with every kid she finds, but she says it’s not because she thinks they might be him like some people think but just a substitute. She can’t never die. She has to do it forever, doesn’t she, Grandma?”

The bent old woman said, “Not forever, dearest. Only until tomorrow night.”

AFTERWORD

This story is based on playful theological speculation. If Jesus came into the world to save it, what about other worlds? Wouldn’t he have to come into those worlds too, if he wanted to save them? (I am misinterpreting world here in order to get a story.) Fine, and if the Savior is to be descended from King David . . .

It’s the sort of thing proposed in religion classes to get the students thinking. I’ve included it here, knowing that it will offend some people, for the same reason, and because I like it a lot. Besides, the legend of La Befana is quite real and ought to be better known.

FORLESEN

 W

hen Emanuel Forlesen awoke, his wife was already up preparing breakfast. Forlesen remembered nothing, knew nothing but his name, for an instant did not remember his wife, or that she was his wife, or that she was a human being, or what human beings were supposed to look like.

At the time he woke he knew only his own name; the rest came later and is therefore suspect, colored by rationalization and the expectations of the woman herself and the other people. He moaned, and his wife said, “Oh, you’re awake. Better read the orientation.”

He said, “What orientation?”

“You don’t remember where you work, do you? Or what you’re supposed to do.”

He said, “I don’t remember a damn thing.”

“Well, read the orientation.”

He pushed aside the gingham spread and got out of bed, looking at himself, noticing first the oddly deformed hands at the ends of his legs, then remembering the name for them: shoes. He was naked, and his wife turned her back to him politely while she prepared food. “Where the hell am I?” he asked.

“In our house.” She gave him the address. “In our bedroom.”

“We cook in the bedroom?”

“We sure do,” his wife said. “There isn’t any kitchen. There’s a parlor, the children’s bedroom, this room, and a bath. I’ve got an electric fry pan, a tabletop electric oven, and a coffeepot here; we’ll be all right.”

The confidence in her voice heartened him. He said, “I suppose this used to be a one-bedroom house and we made the kitchen into a place for the kids.”

“Maybe it’s an old house and they made the kitchen into the bathroom when they got inside plumbing.”

He was dressing himself, having seen that she wore clothing, and that there was clothing too large for her piled on a chair near the bed. He said, “Don’t you know?”

“It wasn’t in the orientation.”

At first he did not understand what she had said. He repeated, “Don’t you know?”

“I told you, it wasn’t in there. There’s just a diagram of the house, and there’s this room, the children’s room, the parlor, and the bath. It said that door there”—she gestured with the spatula—“was the bath, and that’s right, because I went in there to get the water for the coffee. I stay here and look after things and you go out and work; that’s what it said. There was some stuff about what you do, but I skipped that and read about what I do.”

“You didn’t know anything when you woke up either,” he said.

“Just my name.”

“What’s your name?”

“Edna Forlesen. I’m your wife—that’s what it said.”

He walked around the small table on which she had arranged the cooking appliances, wanting to look at her. “You’re sort of pretty,” he said.

“You are sort of handsome,” his wife said. “Anyway, you look tough and strong.” This made him walk over to the mirror on the dresser and try to look at himself. He did not know what he looked like, but the man in the mirror was not he. The image was older, fatter, meaner, more cunning, and stupider than he knew himself to be, and he