Little Doors (2 page)

The Last Innocents: Children’s Fantastic Literature in America and Britain during the First Decade of the Twentieth Century.

The projected text that Crawleigh had in mind—the Platonic ideal that always outshone the reality—was going to concentrate on two authors of genius.

For the sake of glorious symmetry, one of the geniuses would be British and female, the other male and American.

The envelopes, please.

Edith Nesbit.

Lyman Frank Baum.

Through the carapace of Crawleigh’s cynicism and jadedness, these names still sent a thrill along his nerves. Simply to hear or read them was to be propelled back in time to his youth, when, as a solitary sort of kid, he had hid on many a summer day in the fantasies of these two, who—he knew even then, as a ten-year-old surrounded by the insanity of a world orgasming in its second great war of the century—had been special voices from an era far, far away and utterly unreachable.

What was it about the first decade of this mad, bad century that made it so luminous and special in Crawleigh’s mind? He was not fool enough to imagine that life then had been Edenic, nor human nature other than its frequently rancid self. No, he knew the litany of facts as well as any other educated person. Child labor, endemic diseases running rampant, bigotry, hunger, outhouses, colonialism, jingoism, the Armenian genocide, illiteracy, poverty, fires that would decimate wooden cities, and of course, lurking just around the corner, The War to End All Wars.… Taken all in all, not an objectively pleasant time to live.

But if one tried to understand the era in the only way one could ever apprehend the past—through its art and artifacts—then one was forced to conclude that the decade had been possessed of a certain uninhibited innocence that had vanished forever from the globe.

The Wizard of Oz. The Five Children and It. Queen Zixi of Ix. The Story of the Amulet. The Magical Monarch of Mo.
Gone, all gone, that unselfconsciously delightful writing. Current fantasy was produced mainly for adults, and the little bit Crawleigh had sampled was a botched, stereotyped, unmagical mess. And what of juvenile literature today? Full of drugs and pregnancies, child abuse and death. Jesus, you could practically see each author panting to be hailed as the next Balzac of the training-bra set.

His book would illuminate this whole fallen condition, and the glory whence it had descended. The outline had him starting back with the Victorians for a running jump. Thackeray, Lang, Stockton, MacDonald, certainly Carroll. Then land in the era of his main concern, and spend the largest portion of the book there. Perhaps with a digression on fantasy in early comics: Herriman’s
Krazy Kat
and McCay’s
Little Nemo
.

Yes, a fine ambition this book, and certain to be widely appreciated. The culmination of a life of reading.

If only he could just finish these last few texts.

Crawleigh had gotten through the book that had stumped him the other day. A minor work, but useful as one more citation. Now he was ready to read one last critical work that had just reached him.

The book was by a colleague of Crawleigh’s whom he had often met at numerous literary conferences. Judd Mitchell. When he and Mitchell last talked, the other man had let slip a bit of his newest thesis, and Crawleigh had grown nervous, since it touched peripherally on Crawleigh’s own. But now Mitchell’s book was in hand, and a quick riffle through it had shown Crawleigh that it certainly didn’t poach on his territory to any great extent.

Feeling quite relieved and even generous toward Mitchell for hewing to what was expected of him, Crawleigh settled back in his office chair to study the book at greater length.

A couple of hours passed. Crawleigh stopped only to light a stenchy pipe and discharge clouds of smoke. He found himself enjoying the book. Mitchell had a certain facileness with facts. Nothing like Crawleigh’s own witty yet deep style, of course. Too bad about the man’s personal life. Crawleigh had recently heard rumors that Mitchell had lit out for parts unknown, abandoning wife and family. Something about accumulated gambling debts coming to light.

Midway through the book, Crawleigh came upon a passage that affected him like a pitchfork to the rear.

Perhaps one of the most curious books for children that has ever been written is the neglected
Little Doors
, by Alfred Bigelow Strayhorn. Published by the once-prestigious but now defunct firm of Drinkwater & Sons, in 1903, the story concerns the Alicelike adventures of a girl named Judy, who encounters a surprisingly mercenary cast of characters, including a Shylockian shark and a racehorse who escapes the glue factory by gaining wings. Judy’s encounter with Professor Mouse, who explains the theory of little doors, is particularly well-done. But the cumulative effect of the narrative is vastly more unsettling than the sum of its parts.… Of course, it is most fruitful to read the book as a sustained attack on capitalism and its wastage of human souls …

Crawleigh abandoned Mitchell’s book and puffed contemplatively on his pipe. Once one discounted Mitchell’s inane socialism, the man seemed to have stumbled upon an undeniably exciting find. In Crawleigh’s own extensive searches of the literature, he had never encountered the book cited by Mitchell. (And why did that queer title strike him so deeply?) Now he knew he had to track it down, though. If he failed to incorporate it into his study, everyone would soon be making unflattering comparisons between his book and Mitchell’s, in terms of completeness.

To the library, then! Descend like the Visigoths on Rome! Pillage the stacks, burn the card catalog, smash the terminals, rape the librarians.…

One shouldn’t start thinking in such violent sexual imagery on a hot April afternoon, of course, unless one was quite prepared to act on it, Crawleigh reminded himself.

So up he got and went to seek Audrey’s awesomely attractive and appreciated little arse.

* * *

Which now reared under the sweaty sheets like two little melons.

It was Audrey’s lunch hour. Crawleigh had cajoled her to come with him back to her apartment, which was not far from the Street.

Audrey lived in a single room with a kitchen alcove and bath and one window. The shade there was pulled down now, an ebony oblong framed by hot white light on top and two sides. The room was plunged into that peculiar deracinating artificial darkness that could only be found when you shut out the sun in the middle of a bright day and retreated inside from the busy world with its bustling billions. Crawleigh felt simultaneously ancient and infantile. He was sated, yet not bored with life. On the other hand, he felt no immediate impulse to get up and get busy. Simply to lie here beside Audrey was his sole ambition for the moment.

Crawleigh rested on his back; Audrey on her belly. Turning his gaze on his little nymph, Crawleigh saw that Audrey’s arms formed a cage around her head, while her face was buried in the sheets.

This was most unlike Audrey. Usually after sex she was quite talkative, regaling him with really amazingly funny anecdotes about her daily travails and accomplishments. It was astounding how much drama she could extract from such trivial situations, and Crawleigh always listened with gleeful indulgence.

Something must be wrong now. Crawleigh experienced a mortal shiver as he considered the possibility that perhaps his performance had been below par.

Crawleigh laid a hand on her sheet-covered rump and squeezed with what he hoped was proper affection.

“Was it all right today, dear? I really enjoyed it.”

Audrey’s mattress-muffled voice drifted up. “Yeah. I came.”

Crawleigh grew slightly miffed at her easy vulgarity. Such talk was fine during the act itself, but afterward things should be, well, more romantic. Connie, for all her other faults, was never so coarse.

“For heaven’s sake, then, why the sulking? You’d think I just tortured you.”

Audrey whirled around and pushed up, coming to rest on her haunches, looking down on naked Crawleigh with the twisted sheet pooling around her thin waist. In the half-light, her little pink-tipped breasts reminded Crawleigh of apples. Her face was really angry.

“It
is
torture!” she cried. “Mental torture. I really like you, Jerry, but I can only see you whenever you have a lousy minute to spare. And when we’re together, we never leave this stinking room. There’s more to life than sex, you know. When are we gonna go someplace exciting, do something different? I gotta come back to this room every day after work as it is, without spending lunchtime here too!”

Crawleigh was unprepared for the vehemence of this outburst. He had had no sense of mistreating Audrey, and he was taken aback by her accusations.

All he could think to say was, “You must have had an awful day at work to get so upset, dear.”

“So what if I did?” Audrey shot back. “I always have an awful day at that place. You know what it’s like—people shouting and insulting you, standing over those hot stinking machines for eight hours, making twenty-five cents over minimum wage — I hate it! I really hate it! Do you think that’s what I wanna do with the rest of my life?”

Crawleigh had never given the matter any thought at all, so he was quite unprepared to answer. Trying to divert the argument back to safer ground, Crawleigh said, “Well, perhaps I have been neglecting to give you the proper, ah, stimulation. But you must realize, dear, that it is not easy for us to be together. You know how small this town is. Everyone knows everyone else. If we were to go places together, my wife would soon learn. And then where would we be?”

“Why don’t you ditch that old cow?” Audrey demanded.

Crawleigh smiled as the mental image of Connie as a cow in a dress was conjured up. “It’s not so easy as all that, Audrey. You’re an adult. Surely you know how such things work. We must give it time. Listen, I have an idea. The very next out-of-state conference I have to go to, you’ll come along.”

For a moment Audrey seemed mollified. But then, without warning, she threw herself down on Crawleigh and began to weep. Crawleigh wrapped his arms around her shaking body. Her skin felt like a handful of rose petals.

“Oh, I’m so ordinary,” Audrey wailed. “I’m so plain and ordinary that no one could love me.”

Patting her, Crawleigh said, “That’s not true. You’re my princess. My princess.”

Audrey seemed not to hear.

* * *

O, frabjous day, they’d found the book!

Crawleigh stood in the English Department offices. He had just opened the little door on his mailbox and withdrawn a slip that reported on his request for the volume mentioned by Mitchell. After failing to locate it in any of the university’s collections, he had initiated the search of associated facilities. And wouldn’t you know it, his fabulous luck was holding. It was available right here in sleepy old College Town, at a private library Crawleigh had often passed but never visited. It would be delivered by a campus courier later that day.

Crawleigh could barely contain his excitement when he returned to his office. Why, he even felt charitable toward Connie, who that morning had unexpectedly gone to the trouble of rousing herself from bed before eleven and sharing breakfast with him.

To pass the time until the courier arrived, Crawleigh idly picked up one of his favorite novels not written by The Illustrious Pair.
Look Homeward, Angel
, set in the period Crawleigh worshipped, had always struck him as somehow akin to fantasy, concerned as it was with the mysteries of Time and Space.

Crawleigh flipped open the book to the famous preface.

… a stone, a leaf, an unfound door … the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth … the lost lane-end into heaven …

The words filled him as always with profound melancholy, and he became so lost in the book that hours passed. When a knock sounded at the office door, he emerged reluctantly from the text.

The courier demanded a signature for his package, and Crawleigh complied. Taking the plainly wrapped parcel with trembling hands, Crawleigh shut the door on the messenger and the world.

Peeling off the old-fashioned brown paper and twine, Crawleigh settled down to look at this obscure book, whose title had so profoundly affected him.

The book was a hardcover, about ten by twelve inches, and fairly thin. Its cover was the kind simply not made any more: the burgundy cloth framed an inset colored plate. The plate depicted a curious scene.

Stretching away to a horizon line was an arid, stony plain. Standing in the foreground of the picture was a door and its frame, unattached to any building. Its knob was gold, its hinges black, and it was open. Within this door was an identical one, but smaller. Within the second, a third, within the third, a fourth, within the fourth …

Crawleigh couldn’t count the painted doors past twenty. There was a small pinprick of green in the very center of the stacked doors, as if the very last portal, however far away and miniscule, opened onto another, more verdant world.

The title was not given on the cover.

Intrigued, Crawleigh opened the book. Inside, beneath the copyright information, was the colophon of the publishers, Drinkwater & Sons: an eccentric house with gables, turrets, chimneys and at least a dozen doors in it on all levels.