




                         The Marrying Monster

                            By CLAUS STAMM

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Fantastic Universe March 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Goro put down his tools and relaxed into a pile of wood shavings, his
back against a half-finished bathtub. To enjoy the evening cool, he
told himself, wiping his face with a blue and white rag. Actually,
he wanted to postpone the evening meal. Either the rice would be
overcooked to a sticky goo or he would be picking hard, underdone
kernels out of his teeth all night. And bean soup, when he made it,
always had things swimming in it that had no business there. A night insect went _weep-weep-weep_. The sound, the night
falling, and the thought of his own cooking made him think of his dead
wife. "She was a good cook, poor thing," he thought out loud. "My, my--how I
miss her." He gave a deep sigh. Oh, to have a wife again--a jolly, round wife and
a good cook. Just like the old one with perhaps the small exception
that she would not eat a man out of house and home and herself into
the grave in the bargain. Had he said that aloud? Bad sign, when a man
talks to the night insects--better to go into the house, better to eat
rice and bean soup. He shuddered. He began to get up and paused halfway, one hand against the wood of the
tub, the other shielding his eyes. He peered into the forest that came
almost to the work yard. Someone was coming through there, he heard it. He sat down again. Fireflies flitted among the trees. What if it were
his wife's spirit--would it be a chubby ghost? It should be. A woman walked out of the forest. She was tall, he noticed, watching her thread her way among finished
and unfinished buckets and tubs, tall and slender--almost gaunt. She
had her sleeves tied back out of the way with a white _tasuki_
cord, as though ready for hard work, and her bare arms were wiry and
capable looking. She bowed. Goro scrambled to his feet, catching a splinter or two in his shoulder
on the way up. He bowed. "Good evening," said the woman. "Is this the house of Goro, the cooper
who wants a wife that does not eat too much and is a good cook?" Goro's eyes crossed and his mouth fell open. His fingers scrabbled. "You _do_ look unwell ... like a starved goldfish," said the
woman, "--I don't mean to seem rude." "I haven't had dinner ..." said Goro, for want of anything brilliant to
say. He felt wondrously helpless; things like this did not usually come
up in the tub-making business. "Naturally, poor thing. I'm sure you can't cook well, either," said
the woman and Goro marvelled how ever she had guessed it. "Well, I can
cook. I can do the work of three women. Into the house with you now,
before you catch cold. Shoo!" She drove him ahead of her into the house. "I would say I'm quite charming," she said, closing the door behind
them, "when one gets used to me. As for my name, why, 'wife', I think,
will do nicely." And sometime in the next few days still with the feeling that he was
being left out of things, Goro found himself married. The new wife was an excellent cook and indeed did the work of three
ordinary women. Dinner was never late, and the house was generally
spotless. She spoke neither too much nor too little. On evenings when
Goro came home discouraged, she always had some good remark ready
about the tub-making business--how much artistry and labor went into
a good bucket, how unreasonably little money went to the hard-working
artist--cheering things, flattering things. Goro gained weight and was
not unhappy. At mealtimes his wife ate a little more than a bird but
not quite so much as a large cat. The food bills went up and up. Goro gradually discovered that with the little eating going on, he was
using up food at a rate to feed six or seven coopers together with a
few aunts and uncles. "Curious ...," he muttered, "... very," and determined to investigate. One morning he made a great fuss about getting measuring equipment
together. He told his wife that he was going to a village half a day's
walk away, to take measurements for the village head-man's new tub. Then he went a short distance into the forest and waited behind a tree. When he saw his wife go to a nearby meadow to gather mushrooms, he
flitted around to the back of the house. Hiding his tools behind
the rear door, he crept inside. He shinnied up the center pole and
flattened out against one of the big ceiling beams. And waited. His wife came back and put on the fire the largest pot in the house. From the storage bins she took about five pounds of rice and fell to
washing it. She ladled out enough bean paste to nearly fill another big
pot, and made bean soup. "Who," wondered Goro on his beam, "is she expecting, and how many of
them?" He blinked, blinked again--his eyes rather rolled up. She had slid the kitchen door out of its frame and was using it for
a dumpling factory, lining the dumplings up--lines and lines of rice
dumplings like fat well-paid soldiers. Then she stretched and peered about as if to make sure she had not
forgotten something. Satisfied that she had not, she parted her hair
and exposed the mouth in the center of her head. Goro made a circle of his thumbs and forefingers, trying to calculate
the size of the thing and nearly fell off his perch. It was fairly
large. Into this crater, his wife pushed dumplings by ones and twos and they
disappeared. To make certain, she washed them down with all the bean
soup, ladles of bean soup. When she had disposed of everything she waited a moment, expectantly. A
cheery, satisfied rumble came from the top of her head. "Burps, too," thought Goro. "A regular volcano. Wonder if there'll be
smoke." He was too interested to be frightened. But nothing further happened. She bound her hair back neatly, smiled,
and left the house on some errand like any good, wifely wife. Goro slipped down and out of the house, picking up his tools on the
way. He went back into the forest, found a comfortable tree and sat
down against its trunk to smoke his tiny pipe and think. "I must have married one of the monsters the priests and old men talk
about, a yamam'ba. A 'mountain-mother'. Hmm," he nodded, bit his lip,
and squinted his eyes. "Now why do you suppose they call them that?" he asked a squirrel that
sat upright near his left foot, like an attentive, furry little doctor. "They come from the mountains--fine. But what's motherly about them, I
do not understand. "Squeerp!" said the squirrel, and ran halfway up the tree. From there
it peered down and examined Goro's head. He tilted his head back so that the squirrel could get a better look
and told it that, at any rate, this was no kind of wife for a good man. Then he stood up and began to walk home, looking down at the ground,
kicking thoughtfully at fallen leaves and occasionally scratching his
head.