Barking at Shadows

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Identity and Uncertainty
in Gene Wolfe's
FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS

Thirty years ago, after just beginning to distinguish himself as a chronicler of short and intermediate-length stories, a part-time science fiction author living in Barrington, Illinois, had his second novel published. No flimsy sophomore follow-up this; in fact, it so outreached the writer's tyro attempt that it seemed of another order completely, to say nothing of how radically different it was from the genre's entire previous corpus. Over the next three decades the enigmatically-titled book (one of the author's trademarks as we were beginning to find out) would garner much acclaim, if no little confusion, being about as daunting and challenging a read as the author would ever create, and this in a long career filled with daunting and challenging works. In many respects a prototypical book, filled with the tricks and tropes the writer would use over and over again, in others it is completely different, and unique among the author's sterling works. Called by many a "fixup" novel, with a tripartite structure of novellas, it has so many refractive and reflective threads woven among its collective whole that one could no more isolate a single filament than one could an image in a labyrinth of mirrors. The name of this masterwork, of course, is THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, and its author is Gene Wolfe, and in honor of its three decade long position on my shelf as favorite novel, I would now like to sing an ample portion of its praises.

But first, in order to establish a few yardposts for what follows, some kickoff quotes. John Clute, in his entry on Gene Wolfe ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION, describes FIFTH HEAD as a book which "combines aliens, anthropology, clones and other elements in a richly imaginative exploration of the nature of identity and individuality." Clute also does an excellent job of elucidating one of the novel's major (and to some obscure) plot points--that the anthropologist John Marsch who comes visiting Number Five and his relatives in the first novella is actually the half-abo boy, Victor Trenchard, who has killed John Marsch on the sister world of Sainte Anne and is now impersonating him--something we are privy to, as Clute duly notes, only after we have read the entire work and then have gone back to re-evaluate what we thought we initially knew. Uroboroan fiction, to be sure; and once again, what would soon prove to be part of Wolfe's signature bag of tricks. Add to the problematical difficulty of this--i.e., recognizing the shapechanging alien for who he is--the clandestine origin of Number Five, who is a clone manipulated by his "father" to repeat more than biological pathways, and we begin to see how dead-on Clute's summation of the novel is. Identity, individuality: relatively simple core concepts then, although complexly presented by Meister Wolfe. Only Ursula LeGuin needs be cited to invoke one final conceit. As she blurbs the work on the cover of the Ace paperback edition, FIFTH HEAD is "A subtle, ingenious, and poetic book: the uncertainty principle embodied in brilliant fiction." The key word in all this succinctness: uncertainty. But while I don't exactly believe the first Heisenbergian implication of this--that the novel's elusiveness intensifies the more we scrutinize it (and I'm far from sure that this is what LeGuin meant)--I do believe, to switch the focus slightly to Schroedinger, that there is a strategic half-dead, half-alive, feline quality to the work, making at least a portion of FIFTH HEAD quite unlike the typical encrypted lupine mystery, in that it's not only deliberately irresolvable, but justifiably so given the novel's scope and themes.

Now onward to the festschrift, one-noted as it may be.

The Infernal Family

In the aforementioned ENCYCLOPEDIA entry, John Clute describes the immediate relatives of NEW SUN's Severian as "a Holy family, lowly and anonymous, but ever present." Moreover, adding to the confusion, "GW refuses in the text to identify any of them." To a major extent, but substituting "infernal" for "holy"--the address where Number Five and his kin reside is 666 Saltimbanque, remember, and there's a wonderful Luciferian image at one point of Maitre wearing a red robe and black scarf--this is also the case in FIFTH HEAD, with mystery relatives aplenty. Not that the readily identified relatives are all that unmysterious; there's Maitre himself, the scientist-pimp of Cave Canem, hell-bent on determining why his family has yet to advance on a sociopolitical basis, as well as crippled Aunt Jeannine, a.k.a. Dr. Aubrey Veil, whose theory about the abos of Sainte Anne lays central to a understanding of the novel; and who could forget Mr. Million, the robot tutor and unbound simulation of the patrician founder of the clan, who's easily the warmest and most humane of all the book's characters? (In the entire novel, the word love is used only once, and it's in the context of Number Five's feelings for Mr. Million.) But in addition to these, and not excluding David, Number Five's half-brother, there are two more potential relatives whose identity must be coaxed from the text. The first of these is Number Five's sister--that lost female sibling so common in Wolfe's fiction--and the second an enigmatic woman known only as "the lady in pink."

That Number Five even has a sister is first broached by Aunt Jeannine, who asks her nephew in their initial encounter, "Have you a sister, Number Five?" This is followed by: "Your father had a sister--why shouldn't you?" Apart from the Dickensian echo here--Wolfe will shortly compare Jeannine to Aunt Betsey Trotwood of DAVID COPPERFIELD, and we recall Steerforth's similar-couched question to young DC, "You haven't got a sister, have you?"--it's important to note the other parallel of significance: Aunt Jeannine, the outcrossed (i.e., noncloned) sister of Maitre is asking Number Five (Maitre's temporally-displaced identical twin) if he also has a sister. Number Five, however, has no knowledge of a sister, only of brother David; but since repetition is so much a leit motif of FIFTH HEAD (if not the inherent risk of a clan engaged in reproducing itself clonally) it does not seem unreasonable to look for a putative sister in the text.

The prostitute-maid Nerissa seems one such possible candidate, if for no other reason than she's the only named female employee of the Maison du Chien; but given her physical qualities--she's long-faced and has shoulders broader than most men's (cf. Maitre, who's "hatchet-faced" and has "hunched, high shoulders)--she appears an unlikely sister. Equally unsuitable, at least at first glance, seems the young woman encountered in the park one day by David and Number Five. Named Phaedria, she is beautiful, and has "carmine lips and violet eyes, a round rather than an oval face, with a broad point of black hair dividing the forehead; archly delicate black eyebrows and long, curling lashes." Phaedria, David, and Number Five soon become fast friends, and both brothers are romantically attracted to her, while Phaedria divides her attention between the two, knowing full well that a liaison with either (since their family is held to be wealthy) would likely benefit her. But what we also know is that Maitre has a reputation as a child broker, and as he admits to John Marsch, he's produced at least fifty versions of his own cell line, most of which have been outsourced, prompting Mr. Million time and again to search the faces of the slaves on sale in the market, looking for lost relatives. So it's not unreasonable to assume that Maitre may have sold his own daughter, Phaedria, nor for Phaedria's family to realize their adopted daughter's true roots; if you purchased a child from someone running a house of prostitution, would you assume the child was one of the whoremaster's own or more likely the child of a prostitute whose birth control had failed? Remember also that the machinations of the Wolfe clan remain oblique often even to one another--Number Five, after all, does not even know he has an aunt until he meets her at the age of 12. We should therefore not be too surprised if he's ignorant of any hitherto-unmentioned sister.

In addition, there's a wealth of physical and echopraxic details that link Phaedria to the Cave Canem clan, and especially Tante Jeannine. When Phaedria's first encountered she's on crutches and has a broken ankle; Aunt Jeannine, as we have seen, has withered legs and must travel in a wheelchair, while David--another outcrossed clan-member--will suffer a stabbing wound to the leg. Such lameness, in fact, is a prominent motif in Wolfe's work, owing to the author's childhood encounter with polio (he also had a grandfather with a wooden leg), and is used to similarly link the members of Severian's bloodline. Too, both women are extremely avaricious. Jeannine, it's implied, has clashed with Maitre in the past about money issues and now no longer even speaks to him, and after Maitre dies she tears up the family manse looking for a supposed hoard; equally greedy Phaedria for her part suggests pickpocketing the attendees of a play she and her cohorts stage, and is instrumental in planning a botched warehouse caper. Also, like Jeannine, who functions as the whorehouse's madam, Phaedria comes to live with Number Five at the end of the titular novella, and will likely fulfill the same function.

But doesn't it seem likely either David or Number Five would notice some sort of physical resemblance to either one of them? After all, Jeannine, as we're told, resembles Maitre. Then again, Number Five, who has straight dark hair and brown eyes, sees only a little resemblance between himself and curly, blond-haired, blue-eyed David. What's more, Phaedria has had plastic surgery to enhance her looks and potential marketability, whether as slave or would-be wife. So all in all it might actually be unusual if there were still any shared physical characteristics.

But as for another important matchup, her violet eyes--well, first we need to digress a bit and discuss missing potential relative number two, the so-called lady in pink.

All three mentions of the lady in pink come relatively early in the text, within the first dozen pages of Number Five's narrative, and the lone encounter he has with her is dimly remembered. He begins by talking about his father's library, and tells of standing (despite being forbidden to go there) before its huge carved door at a very young age and seeing it swing back. Inside, he sees Maitre and his crippled monkey, along with rows and rows of books. And then crucially: "I do not remember what he said or whether it had been I or another who had knocked, but I do recall that after the door had closed, a woman in pink whom I thought very pretty stooped to bring her face to the level of my own and assured me that my father had written all the books I had just seen..."

Later, Number Five will describe her words as "whispered confidences."

The lone other mention of the mysterious unnamed woman comes at the visit to the city library, where Number Five will look for books written by his father, and where in a single paragraph he brings up not only the lady in pink, but also himself, David, Mr. Million and a spiraling walkway he denotes as a "helix." Interesting choice of words, and it may well be Wolfe's way of connoting a shared genetic heritage.

We are also later given to understand that the presence of any woman in Maitre's library is extremely unusual. As Number Five notes on re-encountering Dr. Marsch, who's been conducted to the library by one of the house prostitutes, "I was surprised to see him, and even more surprised to see one of the girls in my father's library." This almost certainly indicates the lady in pink is someone special, and given the way she lowers her face to Number Five, and that perhaps he's been specifically sent for to meet her, might she therefore be a paramour or girlfriend--possibly even half-brother David's mother? Because as Aunt Jeannine surmises to Number Five in regards to David's maternity, Maitre "must have used one of my girls." Interestingly, the name "David" also means "beloved" in Hebrew, implying perhaps he's the product of a loving relationship rather than clonal decoction. And then there's David's blue eyes. Because Maitre has brown eyes and the brown allele is dominant, this must mean that David's mother has at least one blue allele, while two would increase the probability of a blue-eyed child by an extra fifty percent. Phaedria, we also remember, has violet eyes--a darker shade of blue-- so her mother must be similarly endowed with at least one, if not two, recessive blues.

But given the lady in pink's rapid and seemingly total exit from the narrative (she's never mentioned again after page 15), doesn't this signify a genealogical dead end in terms of identifying her relationship within the Saltimbanque clan? Well, not if we heed Clute's earlier cited example, because like Victor Trenchard/Marsch, she may yet turn up any time in the novel's remaining two-thirds, if in alternate form. And indeed, I believe, she can be found in FIFTH HEAD's final novella, "V.R.T.", where she's the woman known as Celestine Etienne, a fellow boarder of Victor's at Madame Duclose's. For starters she's described in much the same terms as Maitre's demimondaines, being "exceedingly tall, her legs stiltlike in their elongation." Compare this with Number Five's description of the whores who come to see the play, with "their elongate shadows," or the prostitute he sees leaving the library, whose legs are "grotesquely long." We also have an image of vulgarity associated with her. Marsch/VRT, coming home late from an evening at the Maison du Chien, imagines her masturbating with a candle.

It's also later revealed by the junior officer assigned to decide Marsch-Trenchard's fate that Celestine is spying for the government and that Maitre himself is a "GSPB Class AA Correspondent Espion." Surely, it would not be unusual for a spymaster to recruit fellow spies from among the whores he employs (Dr. Crane in the LONG SUN books will do similarly), and maybe it is even a step up from simple prostitution, something he might have wanted to do for Celestine, especially if he had any affection, latent or otherwise, for her.

As for Celestine Etienne's eye color, it is neither blue nor violet, but "blue-purple." Not only is this consistent with her being the mother of David, but also the mother of Phaedria, whose eyes are violet. (Compare as well Phaedria's "archly delicate black eyebrows" with the black eyebrows of Celestine, which have "been plucked thin to form arches over the eyes.") Moreover, I believe it would be entirely consonant with the novel's themes for us to suppose that David and Phaedria may even have been twins. Lest one think this is an example of geminus-ex-machina, keep in mind that FIFTH HEAD is replete with twins/doubles, from fictional (Sandwalker/Eastwind) to clonal (Maitre/ #5) to virtual (Marsch/VRT) to nomenclatural (two Robert Culots) to planetary (Ste.Croix/Ste.Anne) to animal (two crippled monkeys). Perhaps having an outcrossed son to work with, Maitre was perfectly comfortable selling Phaedria, or feared she may become like the earlier outcrossed daughter, his "sister" Jeannine, with whom he does not get along.

But the final, if not conclusive, clue about Celestine's true identity comes when she visits Victor in prison, for she's dressed "as if to attend an evening mass on a summer evening--[wearing] a pink dress without sleeves, white gloves and a hat." (Italics mine.) Considering that she's the only other woman in FIFTH HEAD to be so attired, it seems very difficult not to see her as the mysterious lady in pink.

(We should also note the presence at this point of a similar lady in pink in SWANN's WAY, Vol.1 of IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME. Proust--whose influence on FIFTH HEAD is considerable; compare, for example, the opening sentence in each work--has the young Marcel meet an unidentified woman wearing a pink silk dress in his Uncle Adolphe's study. Hereafter referred to as "the lady in pink"--at least in the Moncrieff-Kilmartin translation--she's only later revealed to be Odette, a prostitute whose daughter will eventually marry Marcel's best friend, Robert Saint-Loup--neatly paralleling not only Number Five's meeting with Celestine in the library, but also his eventual taking up with Phaedria. [My thanks to Michael Andre-Driussi for bringing this to my attention.])

Unfortunately, there is one impediment to the maternity tangent. When Victor first describes Celestine Etienne, he estimates her age as "twenty-seven or -eight." Even allowing for the additional length of Sainte Croix's year--it's approximately 400 days long--and possibly longer diurnal period (John Marsch talks of the "too long days and stretched nights" of sister planet Sainte Anne), this seems a little young to be the mother of David and Phaedria, who, in the same time frame, are young adults.

Be that as it may, there is a solution to this conundrum, although it's an odd one, in that it both clarifies and obfuscates; then again, as we shall see, it's also this oxymoronic adroitness that so suits Wolfe's themes of identity, individuality, and uncertainty.

So at last we come to Veil's Hypothesis.

Unveiling Veil

Though we are unaware of it at the time, because it is unidentified as such, a corollary of Veil's Hypothesis is discussed early on by David and Number Five in their lessons with Mr. Million. However, it's only after Number Five has his first encounter with crippled Aunt Jeannine that the theory is actually brought up by name and defined; Jeannine, in seeking to ascertain how Number Five's education is proceeding, asks him, "What is Veil's Hypothesis?" (There may also be another reason why she brings it up here, which I'll discuss later). To which Number Five responds, "Veil's Hypothesis supposes the abos to have possessed the ability to mimic mankind perfectly. Veil thought that when the ships came from Earth the abos killed everyone and took their places and the ships, so they're not dead at all, we are."

This is put into further context by the wheelchair-bound woman, who personalizes it somewhat. "If Veil was correct, then you and I are abos from Sainte Anne, at least in origin." To which Number Five, in an attempt at being clever, rejoins, "I don't think it makes any difference. He said the imitation would have to be perfect, and if it is, they're the same as us, anyway."

One last bit of quotation, and then we can discuss the major implications of all this:

"I'm afraid you've been led astray by the word perfectly," Jeannine tells her nephew. "Dr. Veil, I'm certain, meant to use it loosely rather than as precisely as you seem to think. The imitation could hardly have been exact, since human beings don't possess that talent and to imitate them perfectly the abos would have to lose it."

Now what neither we nor Number Five know at this juncture is that Aunt Jeannine is Dr. Aubrey Veil, apparently forced to take on a pseudonym because of an academic/social prejudice against, if not all women, at least one whose night job is madam of a house of prostitution. There's also a fair amount of irony in Number Five's statement about how the abo's are not dead, we are, considering their address and the notion of hell as afterworld. But by far the most interesting and relevant implication of the discussion between aunt and nephew has to do with the ground rules that underwrite all hypotheses, in that other for them to be more than idle speculation, they must be testable on some level. Stated simply, if Veil's Hypothesis is correct (and certainly, if we are to credit Victor, Aunt Jeannine believes it is, despite her protestations to the contrary), there should be clues in the text that support Veil's claim that abos have killed the original human colonists and are now impersonating them generationally, perhaps even within the very confines of the 666 Saltimbanque clan itself. If untrue, likewise: we should somehow be able, citing chapter, argument or subtext, to disprove Veil and her crazy theory.

Perversely, of course--this is Wolfe, after all--an interesting case can be made for each.

How, then, to recognize an abo disguised, perfectly or imperfectly, as human? Well, Wolfe does provide several clues, scattered throughout all three novellas. In "The Fifth Head of Cerberus," it's David who first tells us the abos "didn't let their men father children until they had withstood enough fire to cripple them for life." This is expanded upon in the second novella, "'A Story,' by John V. Marsch" (actually a tale penned by Victor in prison), wherein once again we hear, "The people of the meadowmeres drove their young men from women until fire from the mountains proved their manhood and left their thighs and shoulders puckered with scars." Lastvoice, a shaman, is described as having had "the sides of his head...seared with brands kindled in the floods of the Mountains of Manhood," and when Eastwind, the main character of "A Story," is captured by the marsh abos, he uses the word scarred often in describing them. (Given that FIFTH HEAD may be read as a coming-of-age novel, it's probably not insignificant that Wolfe chose a rite of passage to help delineate the abos.) Then in "V.R.T.," as Victor, writing in his prison diary, describes the details of his arrest at Madame Duclose's, he imparts the following information about one of the men who has come to interrogate him: "Mme. Duclose's mirror was behind him, and I could see that his hair was cut short and that he had a scarred head, as though he had been tortured or had had an operation on his brain or had fought with someone armed with some tearing weapon." Left uncommented upon, however, is one further theory--that the scars are the result of firebrands inflicted during puberty, thus reflecting a possible abo origin. And lest the scarred man be seen as rara avis, he's described by Victor as being brother to the other two arresting officers, with "all three of a family."

Yet another clue may play off the abos' ability to shape-change. While it's argued by Veil that the abos may have so thoroughly displaced the Terran colonists that they've forgotten their own past, and thus have no memory of the ability, she also allows room for the notion that the displacement may be somewhat less than perfect. Might therefore any of FIFTH HEAD's cast of characters still have access--if minor, if atavistic--to shapeshifting? Though they claim to be not human, but either half or fully-Annese, Victor and his mother do appear to be able to affect small scale changes. Writes Victor from his prison cell: "When my father came stumbling home [Mother] would pretend to be asleep and make herself as unattractive as possible, something she could do without your noticing--even if you were watching her--with the muscles of her face. I have the same ability, though not to the extent that she did." Victor has also told John Marsch in the back of beyond, "I can look older than this if I want to, but I didn't want to change too much from when you first saw me..." Now granted both of these instances may be invalid if you accept the belief that Victor's mother is an abo, and that Victor is the byproduct of a miscegenic and interspecific union between her and human R. Trenchard, but what a simpler, more orderly, world it would be if we could attribute his birth to the veracity of Veil's Hypothesis (meaning both parents were abos) rather than what he and his father claim. But there's also at least one or two occasions where a probable non-abo has the ability to change her age. The first is Cassilla, the slave who acts as sexual thrall to the nameless junior lieutenant assessing Victor's case (another likely "lost" relative, I warrant, in that he's typically addressed as "Maitre," cavorts with prostitutes, is based in the capital city of Vienne, and seems knowledgeable about the law. Can you guess who he is?). Having already serviced a major, Cassilla tries to deter the advances of the junior officer, saying, "It's already very late, Maitre. [And] I must rise an hour before the soldier's reveille to help with breakfast." But "Maitre" will have none of this, and after ordering her to put out the lamp, enjoys her carnally. Only the next day does he note the following. "In the bright daylight he could see fine wrinkles near her eyes; the girl was aging. A pity." He then asks her how old she is and she replies, "Twenty-one." But are the wrinkles on this prematurely-aged camp toy genuine, or the result of minor shape-shifting? The same question can also be asked of Celestine Etienne's youthful appearance. Is it real or like the acting abilities of Victor's mother, who "could talk to a man, and he would believe her a girl, a virgin, barely out of school. But then if she did not like him, she would become an old woman--a matter of the voice, the muscles of the face, the way she walked and held her hands." Given how everything else matches up, especially with the eye color and the pink dress, and the fact that as a Mata Hari, femme fatale, type Celestine must needs make herself as attractive as possible, I'd have to say the latter, and therefore believe my theory about how she's the mother of both David and Phaedria to be still sound.

But now that we are waist deep into Veil's Hypothesis let us continue, since it is so crucial to any real understanding of FIFTH HEAD. Other things that make more sense if it is true include the dilapidated condition of the buildings on Sainte Croix, which to John Marsch (or rather his murderous imposter) seem older than a century and a half. The abos, you see--like the inhumi of Wolfe's SHORT SUN series--are unable to use tools because their hands don't work properly. From the testimony of Dr. Hagsmith: "No, not being really human, the abos can't handle any sort of tool. They can pick them up and carry them about, but they can't accomplish anything with them." Victor, in his cell, also asserts, "No one is more helpless with tools than I," and indeed, it is the change in John Marsch's journal from his handwriting to V.R.T.'s scrawl that clues us in to Marsch's murder (Victor, pretending to be Marsch, claims his hand has been badly bitten by a cat--hence the difference in legibility). So poorly constructed buildings seem part and parcel of such a heritage.

Then there's also the very strange incident where Number Five, hoping to murder his father, attempts to get rid of "John Marsch" by accusing the visiting anthropologist, not once, but three times, of being an abo. While there's some sense in "A Story" that the Shadow children may be telepathic due to the utilization of some botanical drug, most likely this seems that Wolfe is tweaking our readerly proboscises with what he already knows, but we have yet to find out (i.e., that John Marsch, allegedly of Earth, is actually Victor Trenchard of Sainte Anne).

But if there's anything that derails all of the above evidence for Veil's Hypothesis, it's in the ramifications of my penultimate point, the lack of manual dexterity by the abos. Because unlike Victor, who's managed to find an alternate way of holding a pen (he grips it between second and third fingers), it seems highly improbable that every man, woman and child on Sainte Anne and Sainte Croix has developed similar workarounds--especially those involved in manually-skilled professions, let alone, say, the local sexton who wishes to dig a simple hole with a shovel (this is the shibboleth employed by the French on Sainte Anne to determine abo from human). Also, if Veil's Hypothesis were true, everyone would have illegible handwriting, and Victor's chicken scratching would be the norm, not the exception.

And so the impasse: how then, with evidence both for and against Veil's Hypothesis, are we to resolve the paradox? Answer: we're not. Because, as you'll recall, this is a novel about identity. And while first and foremost, one is a member of a family, secondarily one is a member of a tribe. And if in Number Five's case he understands a great many of the determinants that constitute and reveal his own precarious roots--and oh, what a tangled genealogical skein it is when your great-grandfather's a robot, your grandfather has been killed by your father, you're the son of a clone who addresses you by number, not name, and you have not only a possible lost sister, but also multiple tuplet brothers who've been sold off as slaves--he, and perhaps more importantly we his readers, can never know whether he's the true bearer of human genes or like Victor Trenchard, a poseur, the descendent of too clever aliens who've shapeshifted themselves out of existence. This then is the genius of Wolfe in FIFTH HEAD--to make us privy to the same sense of uncertainty as his characters, with no way to resolve the question of who they are/were/will be.

Then again, despite the deliberate and intrinsic irresolubility of Veil's work, it's may not be so cast in stone that author Wolfe himself doesn't weigh in with an opinion. I believe he does, and that it plays to his trickster nature. Earlier, if you'll remember, I mentioned Aunt Jeannine's questioning of Number Five about her theory, but what's important to notice is the scene which precedes it. At this point in the novel Number Five, seeking to indulge his adolescent curiosity, has sneaked into the pleasure garden's atop 666 Saltimbanque during a fireworks display. Here he details the following:

"I remember one patron, a heavy, square-faced, stupid-looking man who seemed to be someone of importance, who was so eager to enjoy the company of his protege that, since he insisted on privacy, twenty or thirty bushes and small trees had to be rearranged on the parterre to make a little grove around them. I helped the waiters carry some of the smaller tubs and pots, and managed to duck into the structure as it was completed. Here I could still watch the exploding rockets and aerial bombs through the branches, and at the same time the patron and his nymphe du bois ..."

What I would now like to suggest to you is that this unidentified patron is actually the original John Marsch of Earth, come to pay his respects to Dr. Audrey Veil before he goes to Sainte Anne. Note again he's described as "someone of importance," heavy, and with a square face (as opposed to the planetary-wide, generic, "sharply pointed" face of the native Croix). Wolfe also uses, although in a different context, the same two adjectives "heavy" and "square" in later describing the visit of Marsch's impersonator, VRT. (Marsch-Trenchard wears a "heavy" coat and has "large, square teeth"). Also, it's not unlike Wolfe to introduce someone whose true relationship and identity are unknown to us at the time, but must be worked out (e.g., Phaedria, the lady in pink, Victor in Marschian guise, "Maitre," etc., etc.). Moreover, when Aunt Jeannine questions Number Five about his education shortly after she catches him in his voyeuristic enterprise (actually their first encounter), she asks him about Veil's Hypothesis, as if it's fresh on her mind.

Then there are the various clues in "V.R.T." The very first pages of John Marsch's diary have been cleanly excised, and perhaps relate to this hypothetical visit; Victor, perhaps unaware of the bureaucracy of interplanetary travel (despite his chameleonic successes he is in many respects still a naif), may think this will prevent the authorities on Sainte Croix from learning of his predecessor's earlier call. And while none of his inquisitors mention the visit, there is this rather enigmatic remark when Victor suggests his many prison writings could be photocopied should his case come up for review further down the line. Says the unknown interviewer, as if he knows Victor himself is a copy: "Ah, you'd like that, wouldn't you?"

And if this really has been John Marsch on a hitherto-undisclosed visit, what is likely to be the reaction of Aunt Jeannine when his impersonator comes calling later in the first novella's time-frame? Will she recognize Victor for what he is--an abo who, at least in part, validates her theory? Well, consider the following: in the very last extract from John Marsch's field journal (indeed, it's the final paragraph), Victor records having a dream, which may, as often happens in Wolfe's fiction, be prophetic. Writes V.R.T., "I dreamed that naked people were crowding all around me as I slept. Children, twisted Shadow children that are neither children nor men, and a tall girl with long, straight hair that hung almost in my face as she bent over me." Later--although it is an anachronic later since it takes place in the novel's first third--we learn of a visit to Maitre's library by Marsch-Trenchard and a nameless prostitute. The prostitute is described by Number Five as having "grotesquely long legs" and "with her hair piled and teased and threaded with ribbons and lights." She's seated next to "Marsch," but when Maitre signals for her to leave, she rises, kisses Dr. Marsch, and leaves the room. This might fulfill the second half of Victor's dream, as might perhaps their earlier sexual trysting, which is implied. But what about the "twisted Shadow children that are neither children nor men"? Once again we need to go back to Victor's writings, although this time it is an extract from his prison diary. Victor, in describing Tante Jeannine, notes how "she possessed real intelligence as well as a fascinating mind, and we had a number of long talks--often with one or more of her 'girls,' as she called them, for audience." But note the curious redundancy here, with quote marks around girls, followed by the completely superfluous "as she called them." Every other place in the novel, when the prostitutes of 666 Saltimbanque are mentioned (e.g., "I suppose he used one of my girls" and "I was surprised to see one of the girls in my father's library") it is without further attribution or qualification, because we know the term is a euphemism. There's also the slightly absurd notion of a bunch of hookers sitting around drinking tea and discussing Levi-Strauss. Might we therefore be suspicious of these "'girls,' as she called them," also noting that such a designation fulfills Victor's description of "children that are neither children nor men"? And is there still a further clue in at least one of the two words that precedes this last phrase?

Also keep in mind the pseudonym used by Aunt Jeannine. While "Veil" seems wisely chosen, given the ramifications of her theory, what are we to make of "Aubrey," which means "elf + ruler"? The only other ruler association we have with Jeannine is metaphoric, and comes to us courtesy of Number Five's description of his aunt as "a chess queen neither sinister nor beneficent, and Black only as distinguished from some White Queen I would never encounter."

But now let us also recall that the Shadow children are childlike in size (read elfin) and have swarthy skin. Recall as well that the Shadow children in Victor's little tale are telepathically able to generate ghostlike representations of themselves akin to the aquastors of NEW SUN (the Old Wise One is one such eidolon), and we also have mention by one of the marshmen that whenever you attack a group of Shadow children there always appear to be more of them than there actually are. Is it therefore possible that these "'girls,' as she called them," who are "children that are neither children or men," are eidola similar to those generated by the Shadow children? This, of course, would make Aunt Jeannine the proof of her very own Hypothesis, and thus validate her earlier remark to Number Five about how "If Veil was correct, then you and I are abos from Sainte Anne."

So apparently, Herr Schroedinger, the cat is more than half-alive

One last thought. All through this essay I've scrupulously avoided revealing what most readers have been able to deduce on their own--that Number Five's real name is Gene Wolfe. As it turns out, however, there may be yet another variant on the hidden lupine theme. Based on the size of their group, the Shadow children have certain names that are configuration-specific and used only within that particularly-numbered group; when there are three members present, for example, the names are always Foxfire, Swan and Whistler. But when there is only one Shadow child present, as we might well liken the case for Aubrey Veil (at least until Victor comes calling), the name, significantly, is Wolf. And far from being like the rest of her family, this particular Wolf/e has transcended the circumstances of her origin, to say nothing of crippling physical and gender restrictions; indeed, if there is a heroic figure to be found anywhere in this densely bleak novel, it's in the veiled anthropologist who's taken the serial displacement that surrounds her and transmuted it into theoretical gold. And while it's true she dies while Number Five is in detention camp, perhaps even as a victim of her own greed, at least up until then, when Aunt Jeannine ascends to the rooftop of 666 Saltimbanque and calls out to the sisterlight of Sainte Anne, it is not with frustration she howls--it is with triumph, singular, potent, and true.

[Portions of this essay previously appeared as "Queen of Shadows: Unveiling Aubrey Veil in Gene Wolfe's Fifth Head of Cerberus in The New York Review of Science Fiction, Number 168 (August 2002).]

Entrance Introduction Concordance Essays Appendices

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