Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel

by Hortense Calisher

  Or rather, in my haste to meet them, I overstepped, not having properly learned how to bring my movements down to your scale.

  It might be thought that creatures like us, able to transport ourselves at a rate that appears to you instantaneous, and across distances which to you are scarcely short of infinity, must be moving about all the time. Think again—and it will be obvious to you that the reverse side of our instantaneity is of course—a monumental stillness. That’s real balance and real personality as we see it, a personal whatness, not nearly as dependent as you on a personal where. Contrarily, You, still exploring the minutiae of distance, still road-building on both ground and air, are naturally obsessed with movement, from posture changes on up. I understand that the youth of Yours, in the days before they dreamed of motorbikes—and got them—used once to dream of seven-league boots. As a self-propelling creature, I in effect had these, and on Here you’re welcome to them; a circumference of twenty-eight thousand miles is simply not enough. It scares me even now to consider where I might have ended up, had I been without the preliminary training of the weeks in the glass house—possibly off the place altogether, and in some reach to whose beings even Outline is unknown. As it was, think as small as I tried to, in order to squeeze myself down to those miles which for me were as much the final particle as molecules were once those of your matter—!—they showed me a map later, where I landed.

  Later, it was at first thought I had landed at Durham, but when I described the perch on which I had found myself, the consensus was, “Oh no, not that Romanesque!” Forms of buildings, and indeed many other inanimates, are intensively classified here, whereas even the muddical sciences make only the most simplistic classifications of people—not yet having decided, except in the most primitive ways, which is subordinate to which. And if things go as I hope for me here, that will be my lifework, to compile such a dictionary of people forms and natures as would be possible only for a one who remembers his One-ness. But that’s by the way. Let us return to my boots.

  There exists, they told me, somewhere less to the north of my starting point than Durham, a cathedral town which, they added parenthetically, has one of the loveliest of medieval streets, most homogeneously preserved. (One learns to expect these stoppages of what they presume to call historical detail in the sublimest conversation.) Be that as it may, they have a town in which there is a cathedral called Ely, on the main tower of which there is a kind of heavenly veranda-porch, ledge or abutment, on which climbers may exit, to stand amid, above, below and on the stonework. From my description of the latter, this is where I found myself standing—whisko-flash—from Bucks. The street below, its roof peaks all very harmonious, appeared to be preserved in the way they later said, and the people too for all I know; I saw none of them, since it was raining. Water in a liquid form they had indeed. I had already seen their sea, of course, but had never in my life felt that luminous shiver-shine-spat on my integument. We are not that intimate with the elements. At first it was divine—under those tiny punctures, never had my skin felt so personally mine. But with the new ever comes the newer here. Though we do not have bodily temperature up to yours, I could swear that, hard by the tower there, while the gray winds swatted me to pinker, I had my first sensation of it. Meanwhile I poised there, not knowing either what to do next or how to assure my return to Bucks, having no idea of its direction, or as yet of any, on your scale. Surely they would be out signaling for me shortly, but the roving communications system we shared must be far too grandiose to pick up such a little mark as now was I. The clouds were higher above me than I was used to; as for the ozone, its extravagant blue had altogether disappeared. I even had a moment’s nostalgia, now that I had friends here, for that cloud-strewn evening when I had first landed, beaming in on a steady chatter of signals, bang on Bucks. Above all, I wished myself dry again, and no matter what reprimands might be my lot, in front of that pair whom five minutes past I had left at the pergola.

  That pair, that forever ill-assorted pair! In that brief, snapped-off glimpse, what I aspired to be was nevertheless brought home to me. It is one circumstance to aspire to difference in general—a kind of yammer and snuffle to be something other than what one so boringly is. Miles across the ravine from this is that other circumstance, when one comprehends, in those layers of oneself beyond where the words are made, the truth of a difference which no effort of sight, touch or sound may ever bring more than tokenly nearer. Imagine one of your young, at that gorgeous second when, as still little more than a voice and a weaving of limbs, there is knitted into its flesh forever a sense of the difference between mere object-mass—and You.

  From then on, I understood the nature of two-ness, at least where I, or a One like me, was one of the pair. I had only to recall that picture, imprinted in me as if all of me were total lens: one of Us, however poor a specimen, standing next to: however bundled, half seen and possibly unaverage also—one of You. From then on, I better than understood how a One and a one make Two; I began to take for granted that things were so and had always been; I began even to find it harder and harder to conceive that things had ever been otherwise … elsewhere. Along with every transition made, I have had to fight to remember it. For my greedy prayer, never told truly until this moment—neither sphere-to-sphere, nor to Mentor, nor to the lovely personage of the second dialogue—my greediest prayer is not to change wholly from a One to a one, but to stand somewhere on the Gibraltar of between. To stand in the suffer-tickle of all the various, and yet remember the Calm of the Oval, if not feel it.

  Would that not be an altogether new race of sports? Don’t answer. Hear me out.

  I stood there on my ledge, pretty much between of things as it was, and considered what to do next, meanwhile accustoming myself to the aches of surface intimacy. Remember that until very recently I had lived as a creature of suspension, vibrationally inclined toward this or that surface or person but formally never touching any. By the very nature of Our being, we are thus exempted from having to know where we are; there’s no need for it. On Here, the surface-intimacy ache performs a very necessary frictional function, as can be seen by watching any a one of you fidget. It keeps people in a constant state of conclusion.

  In other words, the ledge was hard, the air buffety, and the rain which minutes before had been like silver sunshine to my outline—was now rain. Also there was my temperature, now much exhilarated, and even, it seemed to me, ready—for what actions I hadn’t the slightest. The multiple sensation of all this is best described for you as a sneeze with no place to go; in fact I recall worrying whether there mightn’t be future danger of developing rather enormous feelings too far in advance of the body mechanisms necessary to vent them. A constant trouble of adult intelligences getting themselves born again—or however you want to term it—is that so many of their early fears are later authenticated. But back to my ledge.

  Below, the air, though clearing, was also darkening; it must have been what is here called both closing time and opening time, and all along the street there were black rounds bobbing by in singles and pairs, and sometimes spatterdash or all of a muggle, like the raindrops themselves. It was positively fascinating to watch, and for me of course, uncannily Outside-ish, which is the way with Us when for whatever reason—and indeed there are not many—a One gets out of rhythm with his groove and is put to One side until he recovers it. Because of this—and included in it a positive sadness for the older sadness—I didn’t watch for too long. My impatience to get back to Bucks was now uneasily confused with my impatience to get down—down there, to where the people were. Apropos of this (and of the cheaply eternal jokes on the errors of identity likely to be made at first crack by visitors from elsewhere), I was never under any misapprehension that umbrellas were people. There’s no denying that, on the staircase of matter-to-energy transmutation, your metamorphic stage is rather low. But certainly no a One in his right Opinion would ever confuse you with any of your artifacts. I rather think you must have
no idea of just how strange you are.

  Just then, my character gave a modest instance of itself, reminding me that I should never find out the amount of my weightfulness here until I practiced it. No sooner said than done. My temperament, evidently a strong one, made little distinction between the practical and the unavoidable. I decided to jump-fall. Rather fearfully, I let myself go, softly concentrating on no other destination beyond “I-down.” I found that I could slide gently down the span of that thought, approximately in whichever direction I pointed it. Tentative as I was, the process took quite a while, during which I had time to reflect. Since I still felt no sense of direction in the smaller sense—that is, Yours—it was possible that maps and compass points of the sort I had seen in the photostat animal books were a universal need here, for the convenient portage of which you yourselves, vide those books also, no doubt would have long since developed pouches in your persons. It struck me that I might already have done so myself.

  I immediately attempted an all-over inspection of my outline, but found myself in an odd difficulty; since the last time I had done this, my vision, with woeful inefficiency, seemed to have reconcentrated itself in my upper end. There was no longer any use in trying to see myself whole, but by a number of anglings which may have looked rather flirtatious from below, I managed to check, finding, so far, no violations. But just before I came to rest—about two feet above the pavement, against the rosy panes of a sweetshop—a question, a monster question which to date had never unfolded itself during the entire course of my adventure, now did so. You on Here may be better able to meet this particular question since, no matter what you think of Yourselves, you have had to get used to alternatives in every direction. But fancy a world which believes itself unexcelled except by those beings beyond the Beyond who may have achieved total circularity—in which case it won’t matter. Fancy a world of creatures so at One in every pore and constituent that the very word “stranger” is expressed as “another a One like me, only grayer.” Fancy, in other words, a world of creatures who swarm like bees toward their own beauty. For these, even to frame such a question was an impertinence. But, nevertheless, what were You going to think—of Me?

  It was now fairly dark, just before the lamps were lit, and nobody was passing. I hugged the pane, against whose rosiness, effected by glassine paper lining, I had perhaps even been attracted, as butterflies are to their own blend. Butterflies were diurnal; where did they go of an evening? Where does a truant One go when it has run away from its glass house? Yes, deny it as I would, I could see there were potholes in the firmest character. For I wanted to hide.

  I found that facing my vision inward toward the window was a help; since I couldn’t see them, perhaps they wouldn’t see me. Perhaps this was even the rule here. I concentrated on the window and its contents. At this time, as you will recall, I could already read your finer print, and in addition to the instant way in which We could already compute languages generally, for Here-purposes I had been teacher-grounded in two of your principal ones. When I say “compute” you must take this literally. This is another great divergence between Ours and Yours which no doubt is already clear to you. Consider. Among creatures already so used to appendages as You, the development of pseudo ones, or machines, was predictable. But where any talent or performance of value is attainable, We would never think of letting out to an appendage what with a little more fiddling could be embodied directly in Ourselves. And so we have done. Learn how to fly a hoodinkus—and perhaps to fall with it? Run a byjiggerby—and perhaps have to run after it? Master the controls of a thingamagooly, and one day find ourselves—? What shortsightedness! We do all these things in our Own.

  And as I gazed hunchily into that window, I saw to my delight that the piles of stuff there were dotted with little lettered flags. At the same moment, Candy ticked up in me, in response to the substance I saw there, then, “Revise: American for: Revise: Sweets.” Any comprattler can do this. And it was going to be more than useful fun to be able to tick “Umbrella” when confronted with one, though this is as far as it goes. Spell and parse we can, and poet too. Sometimes, since we are beings, we have been known to produce responses we haven’t even been set for. But we know better than to confuse words with meanings; consider your pronouns. But, as real communication, all written language is dead for us, to those of our vibrational Order a mere playing of harpsichords. But some of us still took pride in the performance of the obsolete, which is what so often happens to anything turned over to the machine.

  “S-sreets!” I murmured to myself dutifully. Spoken language we of course hadn’t had in the memory of any a One. The voiced labials, though troublesome to produce from within, can be practiced very successfully. Diphthongs pose no problem, if long enough to bend. My real difficulty is a slight but constant curvature of the vowels.

  Meanwhile, I hadn’t an idea what the stuff in the window was for—that sort of thing is a concept. (And that’s computation for you.) But the signs, in all their pretty, pointed Gothic, and each attached to a heap of counters of a unique cabalistic design, enchanted me. I am one of those antiquated a Ones who cannot pass up anything in print. I read them out, voicing very slowly, but I thought correctly: FIZZER FRUIT: NUTTIE CRISP: TREACLE TOFFEE: SHERBET BON-BON: RASPBERRY FUZZLE.

  Directional signals? Then why these paper twists of color, whorls of ribanded red and white, alongside? Gaming counters were a possibility; as Ones of a total economy, we ourselves were pushingly fond of a small risk. I studied a jolly neat little pile of beige and brown strips combined with near-circle bits inside which ever smaller concentrics narrowed to nucleoles of white—meanwhile pleased to find that my enthusiasm kept me at a convenient levitation of some fourteen inches from the ground, and that, with slackened winds, my pink was fading, making me less visible than before. Plumb center of the window, the largest placard said in plain Roman: LICORICE. Quote on the tick, there came without warning, “Lickerish: lecherous. Ex.: Lickerish bait, fit to ensnare a brute.”

  “Silence!” I said to it. “Who asked you!” But the monkey had already quoted, as a matter of fact from a part of that dear book of yours, my first one here. Milton: John. I stared, unbelieving. The signs, admittedly incomprehensible, then were street lingo, or perhaps even those scabrous rhymed ditties sometimes fancied by our postcard types. From far down the street, there were now sounds coming on toward me, but these scarcely registered, for I had caught sight of a mound at the back in which the pieces were darkish mauve and heart-shaped—and then it was plain. Some in other piles were greenly luminous, yet others brownishly studded, and it was these exotics which had put me off, but here and there, as with the heart-shapes, I recognized shameful old dream inhabitants I knew. What a hiding spot I had chosen! In the public street, these replicas. Good God then, this was pornography.

  Shortly, of course, I came to my sin-senses; it was a miracle that I hadn’t confused worlds before. The licorice was actually of help, its short-long strips so suggestive of what transcribed-sonic looks like on tape. From then it was but a jump to my own earliest communication lessons here, and then to the real if rather more boring significance of that bow window, those chromatic little models, so kindergarten neat, those strict little pedagogue flags. Of course, of course. It was a demonstration-translation—perhaps even arranged in Our honor—and very nicely done too. Gradually, my violent all-over flush of complexion, worse even than the winds had brought, subsided. What polyphonies of transfused meanings were possible here!—though I fancied I caught some miscalculations of interval. But once one had the clue, the whole business fell into line. It was merely some bit of theory, qualitatively illustrated, as they could do so well here. It was a symbol-signal lesson. Of course. Color-count-read.

  Again, what politesse, perhaps to the foreigner, perhaps only to the primitives on its own streets of Here—but all it did was make me feel homesick in a curiously compound way. Homesickness is of course to feel both Here and There and to feel bad about it,
and since I was truant from both it is no wonder that mine was of a certain complexity. As is my wont, I tried to find a compound word for it. I was alone on a dark street, in a dark town, on a dark world—compared to mine. I was lone-billions away, and touchless. Voices coming nearer failed to disturb my grim reverie. I was Out of touch and To blame. That’s where I was, and I had the name for my feeling. I was suffering from uniquity, which means to be alone and bad. The best cure for it is a bit of friendly conversation.

  Round the corner came a flying wedge of it.

  Remember that I was from a world without corners. To this day, I remember the exhilaration of it, my first brush, in a flare of voices and steaming mackintoshes, with a company of Youse. To shouts of “B’lloon!” I was pushed one way; with answering cries of “Blimp!” and “Where’s its ruddy gondola?” I was pushed another. I saw nothing; because of some ancient danger response I hadn’t known to be in me, all my pores had set closed. I gave myself up to the rocking motion with which I was being passed about, in what seemed to me a roughly circular path and an envelope of smell, as I was sent from spice-grubby being to being, and all this was not unpleasant—perhaps the tossing thrill that cat gives mouse is reciprocal. And though I knew deep within me that I ought to be up and away, each touch added to my weightfulness—is this the trap here? And my pores remained closed. I remember it all, that blind game of battledore and touch-me which showed me the weakness of sleep dreams as against waking ones. To evoke it all I have only to whisper the talisman: “Round the corner You came.”

  Suddenly there came a noise from the shop, and a lighter voice, one of them emerging. “Boys, boys! Stop that; you’ll break Mrs. Porter’s window.” It was a voice nothing like my mentor’s, who had as oval a voice as ever turned space into music, but it was certainly somewhere in the same category. “I’ve ’alf a mind,” it said. It was as if a voice like Hers had been left out in the rain a bit. And alongside it, a smaller voice said, “Oo mums, whatever is it! Oo mums, is it an advert?”