JEWEL
OF THE
MOON
OTHER BOOKS BY
WILLIAM KOTZWINKLE
Elephant Bangs Train
Hermes 3000
Nightbook
The Fan Man
Swimmer in the Secret Sea
Dr. Rat
Fata Morgana
Herr Nightingale and the Satin Woman
Jack in the Box
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Christmas at Fontaine’s
Great World Circus
Queen of Swords
Seduction in Berlin
E.T. The Book of the Green Planet
JEWEL
OF THE
MOON
Short Stories by
William Kotzwinkle
G. P. Putnam’s Sons New York
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
Copyright © 1985 by William Kotzwinkle
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,
may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Published simultaneously in Canada by
General Publishing Co. Limited, Toronto
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kotzwinkle, William.
Jewel of the moon.
I. Title.
PS3561.085J4 1985 813’.54 85-19254
ISBN 0-399-13113-2
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Contents
The Day Stokowski Saved the World
The Curio Shop
Jewel of the Moon
Postcard Found in a Trunk
Sun, Moon, and Storm
Tell Her You Love Her with a Ring from DAVE’S HOUSE OF DIAMONDS
Disturbance Reported on a Pipeline
Mr. Jones’s Convention
Fading Tattoo
Victory at North Antor
A Man Who Knew His Birds
Letter to a Swan
Star Cruisers, Welcome
That Winter When Prince Borisov Was Everybody’s Favorite
Fana
The Day Stokowski Saved the World
The One-man Band of 14th Street had no legs. Where his knees should have been were two leather pads, which allowed him to go forward on his stumps, in short slow steps. Around his neck was hung a small bass drum, which he beat with a stick held in his right hand. In his left hand was a gourd full of seeds, which he shook in rhythm with the incessant beat of his drum.
To the top of the drum was fastened a cymbal, played through a system of levers attached to his left stump, so that as he walked the cymbal halves parted automatically, and came together again with a constant clanging. As he walked and played, he sang the words of a never-changing song:
Long way ‘cross town
His black face was wreathed in smiles as he moved through the crowd of shoppers. His closeness to the pavement gave him the appearance of great stability, like a weighted plastic clown which always bounces back standing, no matter how hard it is struck. He never paused a step, except at stoplights, and his music swelled stronger in those pauses:
Bump! Clang! Shika-shika
Long way ‘cross town
Bump! Clang! Shika-shika
Uptown, on a similar musical pilgrimage to nowhere, was another black man, with the same amputation and vocation. His stumps were fitted inside an orange crate which was mounted on planks supported by roller skate wheels. A toy trumpet was fastened to the top of the orange crate, close to his lips. With his right hand he played a toy piano set inside the crate between his stumps. His left hand struck a toy drum attached to the side of the crate. He pushed himself along, or let himself be pushed, an American flag waving from the front of his low-slung vehicle.
He rode all morning, as far downtown as fortune carried him, a drifter in the tide of Broadway, singing his own incessant song:
Columbus the Jim of the Ocean
Two boys from Hell’s Kitchen who were hanging around Times Square decided to take him on tour. They pushed him along, far downtown, past 42nd Street, and on down through the 30’s, the 20’s, through Chelsea into the teens.
Through the stinking heat of the summer day, above the roar of traffic, a shopper on the corner of 14th Street and 7th Avenue could hear strange and diverse melodies approaching:
Bump! Clang! Shika-shika
Long way ‘cross town
Shika-shika
Fraaaaak! Plinka-plinka
Columbus the Jim of the Ocean
Plinka-plinka, fraaaaaack!
Down 7th Avenue came the Orange-crate Man, shaking his head and singing, striking his toy piano, blowing his toy trumpet. Across 7th Avenue came the One-man Band of 14th Street, stumping along, walloping his drum. Suddenly their eyes met. Simultaneously, their music ceased. Despite the roar of buses, trucks, and taxis, a strange silence seemed to pervade the intersection. The One-man Band dropped his drumstick to his side, his smile gone and, with it, the wild, almost insane confidence one always saw in his eyes as he crossed town, marching on his stumps.
The Orange-crate Man leaned forward, peering across the street. His face too had lost its powerful grin, by which he was known up and down Broadway, and the Hell’s Kitchen boys seemed caught up in his sudden shock, for they stood unmoving, like figures frozen in a dream.
The shoppers, the drivers, moved along, following the changing color of the traffic lights, but the two amputees did not move. Each was staring at a mirror image of himself—a foreshortened black man hung with toy instruments. A moment ago they were the life and joy of 7th Avenue and 14th Street, musical giants, their song the perfect expression of great and tenacious hearts— now they were stumpy beggars, afraid to make a sound, embarrassed and ashamed.
The light changed and changed again. The legless statues did not move. Their drumming song was forgotten, that drum and song which had come to them somewhere in the past, to lead them out of the stagnating gloom of an amputee ward, or from a stifling Manhattan room, into the streets, clanging with music, flag waving, reborn!
Now they floundered. A woman shopper stopped and asked the One-man Band if he was alright. The little fellow did not look at her. Across the street the Hell’s Kitchen boys asked the Orange-crate Man where he wanted to go, but he did not answer. The awful moment of amputation had come again, like a shark out of the sea. The full and terrible reality of their loss was on them, as sometimes we remember lost loved ones, with a sorrow that continues to overwhelm if it is looked at a moment too long. Now they looked, now they saw clearly; now, as once before, when their legs had been seized in the jaws of a wretched destiny and the pain was too great to bear, they fled into numbing isolation.
Riding the crosstown bus at that hour was a mentally retarded delivery man, short, ill-proportioned, wearing directly on the center of his head a hat two sizes too small. Through his idiot’s eyes, which gazed at the world with constant surprise as if it were a place forever strange, he recognized his stop—7th Avenue and 14th Street.
He rose up and went to the door. As the bus stopped he descended, to his own music. He was a whistler, but not the ordinary absent-minded street whistler. His whistling was a thinly conscious thread, an incomplete scale whistled over and over like the song of the brain-fever bird of the jungles, and it was all that kept him from plunging over the edge of the world into incomprehensible night.
His lips were huge, blown out and swollen from his constant pursing of them, and he struck the sidewalk, whistling, directly in the midst of the deep silence of the black amputees. He looked around, still whistling his intense symphony. Familiar with the
music of the abyss, he saw clearly as Stokowski that the inner tempo of existence was threatened, for two of the musicians had forgotten the score, and to forget the score was to lose all to chaos. Entering 7th Avenue, directly between the two singers, he raised his hand as if to stop traffic, and signaled the downbeat with unmistakable authority.
Their music leapt out of them, shot out of their being, exactly in time, perfectly together, blended with the idiot-whistler’s tune:
Bump! Fraaaak! Tweeet
Long way Columbus
Clang! Shika-plinka Tweet Tweet
Cross Jim of the Ocean town Tweet
The idiot delivery man moved on with his package. The Hell’s Kitchen kids turned their maestro around, pushing him back uptown toward 42nd Street. The One-man Band of 14th Street moved on, smiling westward toward the sea.
The Curio Shop
“Now here, sir, is a lovely and might I say traditional example . . .” The Seller pointed a ringer at the decorative sphere, set against a deep velvet cloth.
The Collector leaned on the edge of the counter and studied the bauble. Its workmanship might be good but it was hard to tell, owing to large sooty stains on its surface and, beneath that, what appeared to be rust, or some fatal corrosion which had permanently marred the interior.
“I’ll let you have it cheap,” said the Seller, spying the critical look of the Collector. Business wasn’t good; the shop was seldom visited anymore.
“Is it—” The Collector touched at it with his monocle, studying the piece more closely. “—still enchanted?”
“The occasional wail, sir. You know the phenomenon, I’m sure.”
“The true spirit, or merely an echo?”
The Seller sighed. He couldn’t misrepresent the piece. He’d like to, naturally. He needed the sale. But he couldn’t afford to offend a good customer. “It no longer contains a true spirit, sir, I regret to say.”
The Collector nodded, turning the bauble slightly with the edge of his monocle.
“But—” continued the Seller, a trifle urgently, “—the echo is authentic, sir.”
“I’m sure,” said the Collector, with a sideways glance, his eyes showing only a momentary flicker of contempt.
“Well, sir,” said the Seller, defending himself against the glance, “there are clever copies in existence. The ordinary collector can be deceived. Not that you, sir—” He hastened to correct himself. “—are an ordinary collector.”
“Happy that you think so.” The Collector twisted the ball in his hands, examining the portions of the surface not corrupted by time and bad handling. It was shameful the way certain pieces deteriorated. But the work was authentic, he didn’t need the Seller to tell him that. You could see the little original touches all over the object, though they were badly encrusted. Unfortunately you couldn’t clean the damn things, no matter how you worked at them; once the corrosion began it couldn’t be reversed. He wondered sometimes why he bothered with them at all. But then, it was always amusing when company came and one had a new piece to show. He could have it put in a gold mount; that’d show it off to better advantage. Or hang it from a chain in his study, where the lighting was usually muted and the defects of the sphere wouldn’t show too badly.
“Let me . . . please, sir . . .” The Seller pulled out a cloth from his pocket, attempted to shine the tiny patch of transparency on the ball. But as the cloth touched it, the wailing came forth, long, low, and chilling; echo or not, it went right through the Seller’s soul.
“The echo is fresh,” said the Collector, smiling for the first time. “The spirit must have departed only recently.”
“So I’m told, sir.” The Seller resumed his bit of dusting on the surface, more confident now, for he’d seen the smile and knew he had a sale. “That’s precisely what the Caravan Master said when I bought it from him, sir—the spirit has but recently departed.”
The Collector squinted through his glass, savoring the moment, knowing the piece must be his, for the wail was strong; he could listen to it at his leisure, and learn the story of the bauble, who had made it and when. All that would still be in the echo. Pity the true spirit had fled— that would have been a find!
“Well, I suppose I’ll have to have this,” he said. “My wife will hate it, of course.”
“Because of the wailing, sir?”
“Puts her off. Gives her the creeps.”
“I must admit—” The Seller continued his dusting. “—it gives me the creeps, too.”
“You don’t know how to listen,” said the Collector. “You must get past the superficial sound, and hear the traces of its inner voice.”
“You have the knack for it, sir, that’s clear.” The Seller masked his disdain behind a cheerful smile. He’d be glad to have the cursed thing out of the shop, and be done with its bloody wailing.
“Much to be learned, much,” said the Collector, aware that he was revealing too great an excitement, and knowing he’d suffer in the bargain, but he didn’t care at this point. The wailing had thrilled him. These little ornaments were filled with surprises, always, even when they were as old as this one, and all that remained of their past glory was a fading echo.
“Microbes,” he said, inspecting the ball with his glass again. “They say that’s what causes the deterioration.”
“I’ve heard the same, sir. Tiny organisms that feed upon the workings.”
“Once,” said the Collector, holding the ball up to the light, “it was brand-new. Can we ever conceive of the beauty it must have contained? How splendid its workmanship? Eh?”
“If you’ll examine that bit of transparency, sir—”
“My good man,” said the Collector, ignoring the Seller’s suggestion, “if the spirit that once inhabited this ball were still in it, it could tell us more than just who made it and when—” He paused, his eyes shining with the intoxication of the connoisseur. “—it would engage us in deep discussion, would whisper to us of the wondrous workings of its mechanisms, give us the secret of its maker, would grant us, in short, the favor of its enchanting company, but—” He placed the ball back on its dark velvet cloth. “—this is a lifeless trinket now.”
The Seller concealed a sneer behind his polishing cloth. These collectors were such pompous old bores; listening to their twaddle made him sick. “You saw my sale sign, sir. Fifty percent off all items in the shop.”
“Yes,” said the Collector, disappointed at his failure to kindle true appreciation in the Seller. But what did these merchants know of subtlety? And in any case, once he was home, and visitors came, then he could expand fully, then he’d have his fun, in the comfort of his armchair in the study, with the fire crackling and the bauble suspended on a suitable chain, in the shadows by the window, perhaps. “All right, how much do you want for it?”
“As you can see, sir, through this bit of transparency, the center is filled with jewels—”
“But surely that’s not unusual—”
“The fakes, sir, are glass-filled—”
* * *
The Collector adjusted his top hat, turned up the collar on his cape. The bauble was in his pocket, and a thin smile played upon his lips. He’d driven a hard and cunning bargain.
The Seller graciously held the door, sly satisfaction in his eyes. He’d gotten twice what the trinket was worth. These foreign collectors often think they know it all.
“Do you remember, perchance,” asked the Collector, drawing the bauble from his pocket as he stepped into the bright street, “what the Caravan Master called this thing when he sold it to you?”
“A peculiar name, sir,” replied the Seller. “He called it Earth.”
“Earth. I see. Very well then, my good man, I shall undoubtedly visit you again.”
“My pleasure, sir, always.”
The Seller closed his door, and watched through the window as the Collector walked on down the glittering milky boulevard.
Jewel of the Moon
She and Mother watc
hed through the curtains as the handsome stranger and Father discussed her marriage. The stranger offered money, which Father said was too little. Then they smoked and Father grew poetic, calling her Jewel of the Moon, and she was afraid the bargaining would never finish. She desperately hoped it would, for the stranger was fine-looking and the frog-faced rug-seller of the village was also seeking her hand. Take me away, whispered her heart, and perhaps the stranger felt its delicate beat, for he suddenly doubled his offer of gold and Father agreed.
On the day of their marriage a celebration was held in the village. The drums spoke their hollow song, she danced, the sun was bright. Then as afternoon grew late, he took her away, onto the country road, toward his own village.
Confused, frightened, delighted, mad with anxiety, a virgin, she did not know what to say to him, though her thighs spoke silken words through her gown as she walked along the dirt road, aflame.
The setting sun cast her husband’s face in deep red. His eyes burned through her and she too grew red, her stomach flip-flopping, young and silly, but her breasts were moving sweetly as she walked, her hips were full and swayed and how pretty were her bare painted toes. Her ears dangled with earrings and through their jingling she heard the sound of a distant flute.
“That is the musician of my village, welcoming you,” said her husband.
She fell into sadness. To strange music, into a strange town, with childhood gone, Jewel of the Moon is letting herself be led. But circling, dancing in the air, the song enticed her, set her dreaming. Soon she would let her black hair down.
Ahead she saw the trees and rooftops of his village, and doubt ruined her again. Afraid to look at him now, she pulled her veil over her head, to hide, to die. How cruel of Father to abandon her, to trade Jewel of the Moon for two bags of gold to this stranger.
“Here we are,” he said, turning onto a narrow dirt path.