The Best of Gene Wolfe

“I want to look out of the other window.”

If the first window had been, as it appeared to be, at one side of the house, then the other should be at either the back or the front. He opened the curtains and saw a narrow, asthmatic brick courtyard. On the bricks stood three dead plants in terra-cotta jars; the opposite side of the court, no more than fifteen feet off, was the wall of another house. There were two widely spaced windows in this wall, each closed with curtains, and as he watched (though his face was only at the window for an instant) a man pushed aside the curtains at the nearer window and looked at him. Forlesen stepped back and said to Edna, “I saw a man; he looked afraid. A bald man with a wide, fat face, and a gold tooth in front, and a mole over one eyebrow.” He went to the mirror again and studied himself.

“You don’t look like that,” his wife said.

“No, I don’t—that’s what bothers me. That was the first thing I thought of—that it would be myself, perhaps the way I’m going to look when I’m older. I’ve lost a lot of my hair now and I could lose the rest of it; in fact, I suppose I will. And I could break a tooth in front and get a gold one—”

“Maybe it wasn’t really a mole,” Edna said. “It could have been just a spot of dirt or something.”

“It could have been.” He had seated himself again, and as he spoke he speared a bite of egg with his fork. “I suppose it’s even possible that I could grow a mole I don’t have now, and I could put on weight. But that wasn’t me; those weren’t my features, not at any age.”

“Well, why should it be you?”

“I just felt it should, somehow.”

“You’ve been reading that red book.” Edna’s voice was accusing.

“No, I haven’t even looked at it.” Curious, he pushed aside brown and purple pamphlets, fished the red book out of the pile, and looked at it. The cover was of leather and had been blind-tooled in a pattern of thin lines. Holding it at a slant to the light from the window, he decided he could discern, in the intricacies of the pattern, a group of men surrounding a winged being. “What is it?” he said.

“It’s supposed to tell you how to be good, and how to live—everything like that.”

He riffled the pages, and noted that the left side of the book—the back of each leaf—was printed in scarlet in a language he did not understand. The right side, printed in black, seemed by its arrangement on the page to be a translation.

Of the nature of Death and the Dead we may enumerate twelve kinds. First there are those who become new gods, for whom new universes are born. Second those who praise. Third those who fight as soldiers in the unending war with evil. Fourth those who amuse themselves among flowers and sweet streams with sports. Fifth those who dwell in gardens of bliss, or are tortured. Sixth those who continue as in life. Seventh those who turn the wheel of the Universe. Eighth those who find in their graves their mothers’ wombs and in one life circle forever. Ninth ghosts. Tenth those born again as men in their grandsons’ time. Eleventh those who return as beasts or trees. And last those who sleep.

“Look at this,” he said. “This can’t be right.”

“I wish you’d hurry. You’re going to be late.”

He looked at the watch she had given him. It read 060.26.13, and he said, “I still have time. But look here—the black is supposed to say the same thing as the red, but look at how different they are: where it says: And last those who sleep, there’s a whole paragraph opposite it; and across from, Fourth those who amuse themselves . . . there are only two words.”

“You don’t want any more coffee, do you?”

He shook his head, laid down the red book, and picked up another; its title was Food Preparation in the Home. “That’s for me,” his wife said. “You wouldn’t be interested by that.”

Contents

Introduction—Three Meals a Day

Preparing Breakfast

Preparing Luncheon

Preparing Supper

Helpful Hints for Homemakers

He set the book down again, and as he did so its cheap plastic cover popped open to the last page. At the bottom of the “Helpful Hints for Homemakers,” he read: Remember that if he does not go, you and your children will starve. He closed it and put the sugar bowl on top of it.

“I wish you’d get going,” his wife said.

He stood up. “I was just leaving. How do I get out?”

She pointed to one of the doors, and said, “That’s the parlor. You go straight through that, and there’s another door that goes outside.”

“And the car,” Forlesen said, more than half to himself, “will be around there under the window.” He slipped the blue How to Drive booklet into one of his pockets.

The parlor was smaller than the bedroom, but because it held no furniture as large as the bed or the table it seemed nearly empty. There was an uncomfortable-looking, sofa against one wall, and two bowlegged chairs in corners; an umbrella stand and a dusty potted palm. The floor was covered by a dark, patterned rug and the walls by flowered paper. Four strides took him across the room; he opened another, larger and heavier door and stepped outside. A moment after he had closed the door he heard the bolt snick behind him; he tried to open it again, and found, as he had expected, that he was locked out.

The house in which he seemed to have been born stood on a narrow street paved with asphalt. Only a two-foot concrete walkway separated it from the curb; there was no porch, and the doorway was at the same level as the walk, which had been stenciled at intervals of six feet or so with the words GO TO YOUR RIGHT—NOT TO YOUR LEFT. They were positioned in such a way as to be upside down to a person who had gone to the left. Forlesen went around the corner of his house instead and got into the yellow car—the instrument panel differed in several details from the one in the blue book. For a moment he considered rolling down the right window of the car to rap on the house window, but he felt sure that Edna would not come. He threw the reversing switch instead, wondering if he should not do something to bring the car to life first. It began to roll slowly backward at once; he guided it with