Stephen King – The Dark Tower

sense serves us as a time machine, it’s that of smell.

Then, like the bitter call of the alkali, it was gone.

The room was unfurnished, but a single item lay on the floor. He advanced to it and picked

it up. It was a small cedar clip, its bow wrapped in a bit of blue silk ribbon. He had seen

such things long ago, in Gilead; must once have worn one himself. When the sawbones cut

a newly arrived baby’s umbilical cord, separating mother from child, such a clip was put on

above the baby’s navel, where it would stay until the remainder of the cord fell off, and the clip with it. (The navel itself was called tet-ka can Gan.) The bit of silk on this one told that it had belonged to a boy. A girl’s clip would have been wrapped with pink ribbon.

’Twas my own,he thought. He regarded it a moment longer, fascinated, then put it

carefully back where it had been. Where it belonged. When he stood up again, he saw a

baby’s face

(Can this be my darling bah-bo? If you say so, let it be so!)

among the multitude of others. It was contorted, as if its first breath of air outside the

womb had not been to its liking, already fouled with death. Soon it would pronounce

judgment on its new situation with a squall that would echo throughout the apartments of

Steven and Gabrielle, causing those friends and servants who heard it to smile with relief.

(Only Marten Broadcloak would scowl.) The birthing was done, and it had been a livebirth,

tell Gan and all the gods thankya. There was an heir to the Line of Eld, and thus there was

still the barest outside chance that the world’s rueful shuffle toward ruin might be reversed.

Roland left that room, his sense ofdéjà vu stronger than ever. So was the sense that he had

entered the body of Gan himself.

He turned to the stairs and once more began to climb.

Four

Another nineteen steps took him to the second landing and the second room. Here bits of

cloth were scattered across the circular floor. Roland had no question that they had once

been an infant’s clout, torn to shreds by a certain petulant interloper, who had then gone out onto the balcony for a look back at the field of roses and found himself betaken. He was a

creature of monumental slyness, full of evil wisdom…but in the end he had slipped, and

now he would pay forever and ever.

If it was only a look he wanted, why did he bring his ammunition with him when he

stepped out?

Because it was his only gunna, and slung over his back,whispered one of the faces carved

into the curve of the wall. This was the face of Mordred. Roland saw no hatefulness there

now but only the lonely sadness of an abandoned child. That face was as lonesome as a

train-whistle on a moonless night. There had been no clip for Mordred’s navel when he

came into the world, only the mother he had taken for his first meal. No clip, never in life, for Mordred had never been part of Gan’s tet. No, not he.

My Red Father would never go unarmed,whispered the stone boy.Not once he was away

from his castle. He was mad, but never thatmad .

In this room was the smell of talc put on by his mother while he lay naked on a towel, fresh

from his bath and playing with his newly discovered toes. She had soothed his skin with it,

singing as she caressed him:Baby-bunting, baby dear, baby bring your basket here!

This smell too was gone as quickly as it had come.

Roland crossed to the little window, walking among the shredded bits of diaper, and

looked out. The disembodied eyes sensed him and rolled over giddily to regard him. That

gaze was poisonous with fury and loss.

Come out, Roland! Come out and face me one to one! Man to man! An eye for an eye, may

it do ya!

“I think not,” Roland said, “for I have more work to do. A little more, even yet.”

It was his last word to the Crimson King. Although the lunatic screamed thoughts after

him, he screamed in vain, for Roland never looked back. He had more stairs to climb and

more rooms to investigate on his way to the top.

Five

On the third landing he looked through the door and saw a corduroy dress that had no

doubt been his when he’d been only a year old. Among the faces on this wall he saw that of

his father, but as a much younger man. Later on that face had become cruel—events and responsibilities had turned it so. But not here. Here, Steven Deschain’s eyes were those of a man looking on something that pleases him more than anything else ever has, or ever could.

Here Roland smelled a sweet and husky aroma he knew for the scent of his father’s shaving

soap. A phantom voice whispered,Look, Gabby, look you! He’s smiling! Smiling at me!

And he’s got a new tooth!

On the floor of the fourth room was the collar of his first dog, Ring-A-Levio. Ringo, for

short. He’d died when Roland was three, which was something of a gift. A boy of three was

still allowed to weep for a lost pet, even a boy with the blood of Eld in his veins. Here the gunslinger that was smelled an odor that was wonderful but had no name, and knew it for

the smell of the Full Earth sun in Ringo’s fur.

Perhaps two dozen floors above Ringo’s Room was a scattering of breadcrumbs and a

limp bundle of feathers that had once belonged to a hawk named David—no pet he, but

certainly a friend. The first of Roland’s many sacrifices to the Dark Tower. On one section

of the wall Roland saw David carved in flight, his stubby wings spread above all the

gathered court of Gilead (Marten the Enchanter not least among them). And to the left of

the door leading onto the balcony, David was carved again. Here his wings were folded as

he fell upon Cort like a blind bullet, heedless of Cort’s upraised stick.

Old times.

Old times and old crimes.

Not far from Cort was the laughing face of the whore with whom the boy had sported that

night. The smell in David’s Room was her perfume, cheap and sweet. As the gunslinger

drew it in, he remembered touching the whore’s pubic curls and was shocked to remember

now what he had remembered then, as his fingers slid toward her slicky-sweet cleft: being

fresh out of his baby’s bath, with his mother’s hands upon him.

He began to grow hard, and Roland fled that room in fear.

Six

There was no more red to light his way now, only the eldritch blue glow of the

windows—glass eyes that were alive, glass eyes that looked upon the gunless intruder.

Outside the Dark Tower, the roses of Can’-Ka No Rey had closed for another day. Part of

his mind marveled that he should be here at all; that he had one by one surmounted the

obstacles placed in his path, as dreadfully single-minded as ever.I’m like one of the old

people’s robots, he thought.One that will either accomplish the task for which it has been

made or beat itself to death trying .

Another part of him was not surprised at all, however. This was the part that dreamed as

the Beams themselves must, and this darker self thought again of the horn that had fallen

from Cuthbert’s fingers—Cuthbert, who had gone to his death laughing. The horn that

might to this very day lie where it had fallen on the rocky slope of Jericho Hill.

And of course I’ve seen these rooms before! They’re telling my life, after all.

Indeed they were. Floor by floor and tale by tale (not to mention death by death), the rising rooms of the Dark Tower recounted Roland Deschain’s life and quest. Each held its

memento; each its signature aroma. Many times there was more than a single floor devoted

to a single year, but there was always at least one. And after the thirty-eighth room (which

is nineteen doubled, do ya not see it), he wished to look no more. This one contained the

charred stake to which Susan Delgado had been bound. He did not enter, but looked at the

face upon the wall. That much he owed her.Roland, I love thee! Susan Delgado had

screamed, and he knew it was the truth, for it was only her love that rendered her

recognizable. And, love or no love, in the end she had still burned.

This is a place of death,he thought,and not just here .All these rooms. Every floor.

Yes, gunslinger,whispered the Voice of the Tower.But only because your life has made it