Introductory remarks for an excerpt from the novella The Death of Rob’s Aunt Morgan, by Eugene Garber

Rob’s aunt Morgan lies dying but cannot die in peace because she is haunted by certain enigmatic words. As in many old familiar stories Rob, the hero, must go into the underworld and bring back a boon, a healing balm, and administer it so that his aunt can die in peace. The excerpt here narrates his visit to the underworld. The concluding sections of the novella narrate his attempts to understand the boon that he has been given and use it to heal his aunt’s wound.

* * *

Rob opened the door of the hotel entrance and entered the foyer—the same disarray of objects, floral and furniture. He went straight down the hall to the entry of the cellar on his right. There at last he felt the kind of apprehension that he thought he might have experienced from the very beginning of his journey. He took his flashlight out of his pocket, switched it on and shined it down the broad ramp-like way that led into the darkness. He did not hear the splashing of water that he had heard on his previous visit. He did not hear anything from below. He did not see any image or presence move across the beam of his light. “Hello, is anybody there?” Nothing, not even an echo of his call. How could what appeared to be a huge hollow fail to give back any sound? Rob wondered if he ought to fear the uncanny nature of the cavern more than some fearful presence.

“I’m coming down.” Nothing.

If Rob was worried about his footing he did not need to be. The floor of the incline felt gritty under foot, as if ancient concrete had given up its solidity and traded it for an equal if not superior footing. As the darkness enveloped him he reached in his pocket, pulled out his flashlight and turned it on. Moving the beam across what turned out to be a far wall, he saw vaguely something that looked like a huge bird.

“Licht aus! Turn that off!” The voice was not cavernous, it was crisp.

Rob turned his flashlight off, but the cellar was not completely dark. An odd kind of gray shimmering light rose up from the bottom of the cellar. Remembering the doorman’s account of the alleged man in the hold who sometimes waded in the water, Rob thought of the possibility of reflective water below him, but there was no sound, only shadowy light. He looked up from the floor and found sitting next to the far wall a curious figure. A man held across his lap a huge book. He began slowly to turn the pages. The pages were not made of paper but of some metallic material thicker than foil. As the man turned the pages, the odor of iron came to Rob borne on discrete puffs of air, page by page.

Rob waited for the man to say something more but he did not.

“What does the book say?” asked Rob. He was standing motionless at about the middle of the incline. The pull of gravity made him uncomfortable. He tilted back a little.

“Das Buch ist entsternt.”

“Ensternt?”

“Destarred.”

“The book had many stars?”

“All books begin with many stars, and then they are slowly destarred.”

“Why is that?” The effect on Rob of the extreme peculiarities of the situation and of this exchange in particular was the involuntary suspension of any judgment about where exactly he was or what basically was going on. Thus he was curiously without fear, without apprehension.

“What do you want?”

“I need to know the meaning of certain words or at least of certain sounds that are meant to be words.”

“I would prefer to give you some water after your long journey through the labyrinths of this infamous street. Come down and dip your hands and your face.”

“Then would you consider helping me with the mysterious words?”

“I would consider it in any case, but I think you would be refreshed by a quick lavation.”

Rob made his way downward, small step by small step until he arrived at a pebbled embankment presumably intended to warn the unwary walker that danger was near. At this point it was clear to Rob that he had before him not a rill but a small river, perhaps a very deep one.

“Go ahead, dip your hands in, lave your face, cool your wrists.”

Rob hesitated.

“If your mind is full of images of mythical rivers that cleanse, or  convey heroes to assignations with fathers, or introduce a familiar boatman who whistles softly while lovers moan under a rustling canopy, cleanse your mind of these cliches and simply wash yourself as millions of people have done in the past.”

Rob gingerly dipped a hand into the water at his feet. The water was cold but without acidic or numbing effect. With his hands he made the motion of washing in the river. He touched a little of the water to his forehead.

“It would be better if you took your shirt off and laved water onto your upper body.”

“Why would that be better?”

“Du stinkst.”

“I am not afraid.”

“That is a good thing to say because fear stinks.”

Rob could think of nothing to say to that. His mind turned. “You said you would help me with the words that are troubling my aunt.”

“You said nothing about your aunt and you have not told me what the words are.”

“My aunt is dying but she cannot die in peace because of these words.”

“This sounds like some ancient curse.”

“I don’t think my aunt is cursed. The words simply were left to her by a friend who liked to quote poetry to her.” Rob touched the water with a finger and made a cooling ring around his neck. He was aware that he had descended into an exchange that was more than strange. “I thought that I might find that friend here.”

“You haven’t told me what the words are.”

Rob felt a definite reluctance to yield the requested information.

 Nevertheless, he responded. “Here is what we think they might be. 'Was dürfen die Sterne'.”

The man with the book responded quickly. “We?”

“A Navy chaplain and I.” Prescott, Morgan’s current companion, passed across Rob’s mind but it did not seem necessary to mention him.

“The words are not religious, at least in the ordinary sense. Of course the idea that we have obligations to the stars and that the stars have obligations to us might be seen as having a religious connotation.”

Rob nodded. “That’s something like what the chaplain thought the words might be.”

“He is German?”

“No but he had to learn some German in reading theology.”

“Ha ha,” said the man with the book. It was not actually a laugh. It was only the conventional sound that signifies the possibility of mirth. “Is he terrified by the silence of the stars?”

“No, he says that he definitely is not.”

“Are you?”

“No, some of my best friends are stars.” After he had said this Rob began to test it for tone. Was it intriguing or merely smart-alecky?” He decided to offer a straightforward comment on his own statement. “In the Navy my primary responsibility was celestial navigation.”

“Ah then, you will want to know other residual appearances stars make in this book.”

“I want to know whatever will relieve my aunt of the burden of the words.”

“I understand. You understand that there can never be relief from the burden of words, not for us humans. The poet who wrote this book thought that he might escape words by disfiguring them.”

“Did he escape?”

“No, and when he saw that he could not get free of words he drowned himself in the river.”

“Then did he get free of words?”

“No, of course not. The words followed him out to sea and beyond, but his self-inundation may possibly extricate your dying aunt from the particular coil of words that she seems to be trapped in.”

Rob was very much relieved that the conversation was now focused on relief for Morgan.

“Please tell me how to do that.”

“I can’t tell you exactly how to do it, but I can help you understand the words your aunt is repeating because they are not alone but are clotted with other stars in the book.”

“What other stars?”

“Listen. My star learns how to sag and reach the truth. . . A blind man’s hand is starhard from word-wandering . . . Does that help?”

Rob turned the strange words over in his mind. “Am I the blind man?”

“Yes, you have come here as a star wanderer and as a word wanderer. You have to take something back, something healing, a rare balm, a distillation of stars and words. But you are hampered because you are unclean. That is why I invited you to lave yourself in the waters of the river over as much of your body as you can bear.”

“How am I unclean?”

“I do not mean as all human beings are unclean. I mean something particular of course. It is not something I can put in words, but it is something you will understand and will know if you go now and stand by your aunt’s bed and look at her anew.” The man closed the book. As the pages fell upon one another in thin sheafs the mild metallic wind came to Rob again.

“Is that all?”

The man with the book began to recede into a kind of gray statuary.

Rob did not want him to go away. He wanted to ask him to clarify but in his heart he knew that even if the man with the book came back he would not be able to say anything more. Rob wondered if he should take his shirt off now and lave his torso with the waters of the river. But the man with the book did not say it was necessary, and so Rob rolled down his sleeves and found his coat on the safe side of the berm of pebbles and put it on.

Rob understood that things were not complete. Should he have crossed the river, wading as deep as required? The man with the book had advised against it. Now he must go back with the boon that he had been given, even if he did not understand it.