The wind's twelve quarters - vol 2 Read Free Page B

it. In Zambia men
are rolling down hills inside barrels as training for space flight. Israel and
Egypt have defoliated each other's deserts. The Reader's
Digest has
bought a controlling interest in the United States of America/General Mills combine.
The population of the Earth is increasing by thirty billion every Thursday. Mrs
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis will marry Mao Tse-Tung on Saturday, in search of
security; and Russia has contaminated Mars with bread mold.'
    'Why
then,' said he, 'nothing has changed.'
    'Nothing
much,' said the one beside him. 'As Jean-Paul Sartre has said in his lovable
way, "Hell is other people."'
    'To
Hell with Jean-Paul Sartre. I want to know where I am.'
    'Well
then,' said the other, 'tell me who you are.'
    'I'm.'
    'Well?'
    'My
name is.'
    'What?'
    He
stood, his eyes filling with tears and his knees with palsy, and knew he did
not know his name. He was a blank, a cipher, an x. He had a body and all that,
but he had no who.
    They
stood at the edge of a forest, he and the other one. It was a recognizable
forest, though rather dingy in the leaf, and damaged at the fringes by
weedkiller. A fawn was walking away from them into the forest and as it went
its name fell away from it. Something looked back at them with mild eyes from
the darkness of the trees before it vanished. 'This is England!' cried blank,
grasping the floating straw, but the other said, 'England sank years ago.'
    'Sank?'
    'Yes.
Foundered. Nothing is left now but the topmost fourteen feet of Mt Snowdon,
known as the New Welsh Reef.'
    At
this blank also sank. He was crushed. 'Oh,' he cried on his knees, intending to
ask somebody's help, 'but he could not remember whose help it was one asked. It
began with a T, he was almost certain. He began to weep.
    The
other sat down on the grass beside him and presently put a hand on his
shoulder, saying, 'Come one now, don't take it so hard.'
    The
kindly voice gave blank some courage. He controlled himself, dried his face on
his sleeve, and looked at the other. It was like him, roughly. It was another.
However, it had no name either. What good was it?
    Shadow
came into the eyes as Earth went round on its axis. Shadow slipped eastward and
upward into the other's eyes.
    'I
think,' blank said carefully, 'that we should move out from the shadow of the,
this, here.' He gestured to the objects near them, large things, dark below and
multitudinously green above, the names of which he could no longer remember. He
wondered if each one had a name, or if they were all called by the same name.
What about himself and the other, did they share a name in common, or did each
have one of his own? 'I have a feeling I'll remember better farther away from
it, from them,' he said.
    'Certainly,'
said the other. 'But it won't make as much difference as it used to.'
    When
they came clear away from it into the sunlight, he at once remembered that it
was called a forest and that they were called trees. However, he could not
recall whether or not each tree had a name of its own. If they did, he did not
remember any of them. Perhaps he did not know these trees personally.
    'What
shall I do,' he said, 'what shall I do?'
    'Well,
look here, you can call yourself whatever you please, you know. Why not?'
    'But
I want to know my real name.'
    'That
isn't always easy. But meanwhile you could just take a label, as it were, for
ease of reference and conversational purposes. Pick a name, any name!' said the
other, and held out a blue box named disposable.
    'No,'
said Blank proudly, 'I'll choose my own.'
    'Right.
But don't you want a kleenex?'
    Blank
took a kleenex, blew his nose, and said, 'I shall call myself...' He halted in
terror.
    The
other watched him, mild-eyed.
    'How
can I say who I am when I can't say what I am?'
    'How
would you find out what you are?'
    'If
I had anything— If I did something—'
    'That
would make you be?'
    'Of
course it would.'
    'I
never thought of that. Well, then, it doesn't matter what name you're called
by;