Gene Wolfe - Pandora by Holly Hollander

Is this a historical novel?, you ask. Nope. This is just one that took a real long time to sell. (Except in France, so vive la France! It almost makes me wish Id taken French instead of Latin.)

Its also the only book of mine to sell, so far. I started writing it the day after I moved in with Blue, but it took over a year to get it finished and it hung around various publishers offices for about as long as it wouldve taken me to get through college, assuming Id gone to college.

Then Ms. Sudden down at the BPL introduced me to this real writer who knows Joe Hensley and everything. We got to talking, and it turned out that Id had three or four classes with his daughter. So he wrote it all over again putting in a lot more commas, and they say theyre going to run his name on the title page with mine. Only Hartwell wanted more about Larry Lief, so now weve put that in, too.

Altogether its been one hell of a time, but Barton hasnt changed a lot. (Here Im awfully tempted to tell you all about how I met Abbie Hoffman, and the first time I smoked dope, and the last time, and bunches of other stuff. But thats all after the end, so why should you care?) The Ben Franklin Stores been squeezed out by more boutiques. Some new people own the Magic Key now, and they dont call it that. The worst thing by a long shot is that Uncle De Witte Sinclairs dead. I could tell you quite a bit about that; but you wouldnt want to read it. And to tell you the truth, I wouldnt want to write it. So long, Uncle Dee. Kisses.

The German 88 mm. gun was undoubtedly the most famous artillery piece of World War II. It fired a 22 lb. shell and could pick off a tank a mile away. The Germans called it the Gun Flak; it weighed 5.5 tons, it had an extreme range of nine miles, and it killed thousands of Russian, British, and American soldiers.

I got all that out of a book.

A shell from a German 88 almost killed my father, twice. I didnt get that from the bookhe told me about the first time.

My father is George Henry Hollander. In his company, which is Hollander Safe & Lock, they call him G. H. Hollander. Anyhow I guess they do, because he took me down to their headquarters one timethey rent four floors of this big building in the Loopand that was what it said on his door: G. H. Hollander, Chief Operating Officer. Only his business cards say: G. H. Harry Hollander. I used to have one of those cards around here, but I guess I lost it.

Anyway, he lied about how old he was and joined thearmy in 1943, when he was seventeen. He said he figured he never would get drafted, because his father was Herbert Hollander and had so much money, and he was going to this private school in the east, and he hated it. So one night he hitchhiked into New York, and spent the rest of the night walking around and sitting in bars and what he calls onearm joints. And the next day he told them he was eighteen and hadnt registered for the draft, but now he wanted to enlist. He trained in America for a couple of months, I guess, and then they sent him overseas, and he was in one of the waves that landed at Anzio. I forget which wave, but not the first. Anyway, he was a supply clerk in an infantry company, and later on he was the supply sergeant. The day that he landed, this 88 shell smacked into the sand right at his feet. He said he heard it coming, only he hadnt learned to flop down without thinking, the way he did later. If it had gone off, it wouldve killed him for sure, and I wouldnt be here writing this.

The second time is kind of funny, because he wasnt even there. But before I tell you about it, I think I ought to tell you a little about me and my father and mother and Barton, and Barton Hills, which is where we were all living then.

My names Holly H. Hollander. The H is for Henrietta, so you can see why I dont use it. My motherher names Elaine Calvat (thats pronounced Kal-VAH)wanted a cute name, and I was born on Christmas Eve. My father wanted me named for him, because it must have been awfully obvious even back then that there werent going to be any more kids. Im older now than my father was when he joined the army, which really wipes me out.

If youve been adding and subtracting, you will have seen that my father was pretty well up there already when I was born, but my mother was only about twenty-three. She used to be his secretary, and shes quite a bit younger than he is.

Maybe you want to know what we look like. Youve seen guys like my father around quite a bit, I guess, if youre thekind of person who serves on boards of directors. Hes big. He has short gray hair and one of those old noble-Roman faces. He used to be on the stout side, if you know what I mean, but since all this happened hes lost some weight and looks a little younger. I remember one time a couple of years ago when he had a bunch of men like him out to the house. I always shake hands with guys, because I can tell they like it, and afterward I went over and felt my fathers hands because the ones I had been shaking felt so yucky. His were the only ones that werent soft. He used to say that if things had been different he wouldve made somebody a good mechanic, and I think he was right. He had a shop in our basement with a lot of tools, and at night sometimes he worked on some of the stuff the company made, and lots of other things.

My mothers a natural blonde, with that straight hair that looks like its been ironed. Us Hollanders are supposed to be Dutch if you go back far enough, and the Calvats are supposed to be French; but Elaines the one with the blond hair and the kind of skin you think you can see through. Only Ive always thought of Dutch girls as having these round, apple cheeks, and Elaines certainly arent like that. She has this perfect almost heart-shaped little face you see sometimes on sexy girls in the comic stripsthe kind that goes just super with a hat about the size of a cold-cream jar that cost five hundred dollars. To tell the truth, my mother never used to look like my mother; she looked like she was about thirty, which would make her my big sister, and quite a few times she asked me to pretend she was my aunt. Sometimes I used to think I was adopted. Nobody would ever say it was true, and I know that lots of kids think thathalf of my friends at Barton High didbut for me it wasnt as crazy as it sounds.

Im kind of tall, but not real tall. My hairs brown, like my fathers was before it turned gray. Its curly, and I let it grow long enough to hang a good way down my back. Itan and Im usually pretty brown, and I have strong arms; all thats because I really love tennis and horsesespecially horses. We used to have a little stable, and I had an Arabian gelding called Sidi ben Sahid. We had a tennis court, too. Sidis gone now, but I still hitch up to North Park two or three times a week to play on the courts there. Theres room for a horse here, and someday Im going to buy Sidi back, or anyway buy another horse, maybe a jumper.

Lets see, what else?

I swim quite a bit when its warmer. I used to blast cans off the fence with my .22, and now Im pretty good at squirrels. My eyes are brown, my face is squarer than Elaines, with high cheekbones, and my nose turns up in a way that I guess makes me look snotty sometimes. Im not very big up top, but the shapes good. I have this little waist that I can nearly get my hands around (which is something nobody seems to care about any more, although from Jane Austen and like that it seems to me it used to be terribly important), and good hips and legs. Kris, a guy I used to go with, said I had the greatest ankles in the world. Since Ive already mentioned Jane Austen, maybe I ought to come right out and admit that I read quite a bit, even though thats a crime or something now, and you wouldnt think it to look at me. I wear contacts for reading, and for tennis and squirrel hunting, and sometimes for other stuff.