The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One

by Aldiss, Brian

  Going to the wall, Ninian pressed a button. A bell twanged in the shop. Wrybaker excused himself politely and came into the rear room; he smiled questioningly at Ninian.

  ‘Oh, Wrybaker,’ Ninian said, twisting his hands in the white doth, ‘have you someone out there who wishes to see me?’

  Wrybaker understood. At such times, human beings can be amazingly quick in comprehending. Wrybaker was neither quick nor intelligent, but he could read the look on Ninian’s face. (I wondered, frustratedly, what that face must look like to eyes.)

  ‘She is a Miss Rowena Church,’ he said. ‘Shall I show her in here? Do you wish her to come in here?’

  ‘Yes, please. Do you think she’ll come, Wrybaker? I mean, is the place tidy? Tell her I won’t be a moment. Give me time to change. Don’t let her go away, will you? Does she like the models, really like them?’

  He was as nervous as a bird. Hardly listening to his assistant’s reassurances, he twisted round the nondescript room, attempting to tidy it, flicking his white cloth into dusty corners, kicking an old carton under the sofa. Then he whisked over to the recess in which I stood.

  ‘I don’t think she ought to see you, sweetheart; at least, not until we all know each other better,’ he said, and he pulled down the blind that concealed me from the eyes of the world.

  Almost before he had left the room, hurrying through the back door, Rowena Church came through the curtains. She too was nervous, but she had herself under control. A certain natural female poise helped her. She sat down, looking without understanding at the few pieces of electrical equipment stored here. After a minute, she stood up again. Again she adjusted the imaginary wisp of hair. Under her dress, except for two narrow belts of whiteness on her body, her skin was brown; she had been lazing frequently in the summer sun.

  When Ninian came back and introduced himself, he had flung on a blue shirt and matching blue slacks. He was still sweating. Rowena was immediately affected by his shyness; in a minute however, when they began impersonally to discuss the models, they both became more natural.

  ‘I only tried your buttercup,’ she was saying, ‘but I was immensely moved by it. Wonderful, really wonderful! It was like nothing I ever experienced before. I just felt I had to – well, come and tell you how I felt.’

  ‘And how did you feel? What I mean is, can you put your feeling into words?’ He never took his eager eyes off her.

  She looked puzzled, then she said, ‘I felt that – that in the circumstances to be a buttercup at all was a very wonderful achievement, but that because all the circumstances were so many and so big, it really was a terribly insignificant thing to be. With the sky and the sun and the soil and the earth and the other growing things all pressing in, the buttercup had no choice, no room for choice … It was sad in a way. Does that make sense?’

  He laughed excitedly.

  ‘Do you realise I could make a model of your experience of my experience of a buttercup – and it would then be a different model from the one you saw?’ he said eagerly, smiling.

  ‘I can’t see how they – the models – work,’ she said confusedly.

  ‘It really is a new art form,’ he said, ‘but it is quite simple. And you get full instructions with every model you buy. They’re easy to operate.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, I wasn’t trying to pry out any free information – ’

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘I know you weren’t.’

  He jumped up anxiously, sorry to see the rebuffed look on her face. He waved his hands as she too stood up, trying to explain what she had meant.

  ‘I fully intend to buy the buttercup,’ Rowena said. ‘Your experience of the buttercup, I mean.’

  ‘But you have not seen the other models. I am completing a new one now, a beauty. You ought to look at that! I have an idea! Will you – you wouldn’t like, I suppose, to come round here and see it after the shop is closed? Say at eight o’clock this evening?’

  The warmth was coming up in him, flooding him, flooding his cheeks.

  ‘What is the model of?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s my experience of a bonfire.’

  ‘Thank you; thank you very much. I’d love to come.’

  ‘Say eight o’clock,’ he repeated. She was hooked.

  It was twenty minutes past eight. Outside the shop, heat still slumbered even in the long troughs of shadow across the street. Inside, the bonfire burned.

  For a long while it seemed to burn in their minds as Ninian and Rowena stood there watching it. I grew tired of it before they did. At last Ninian reached forward and switched the psi-tuner off, releasing the spell. The smoke which had seemed to fill the room died, the fire itself turned into a big dollop of brownish, spiky stuff like clay, resting prosaically on its humus base.

  ‘Wonderful!’ Rowena said. She and Ninian were touching, and she did not move away. ‘I felt I knew all about fire. It was most extraordinary.’

  ‘I’m going to do a series of models about flame experiences. I started with a simple candle; it turned out surprisingly like the buttercup.’

  ‘But the bonfire,’ she said, anxious not to be diverted from her appreciation. ‘This was a wonderful, special bonfire. I felt I knew all about it. It was a spring bonfire, burning in a big apple orchard. It was composed entirely of pruned twigs and sticks, and as they burnt they popped, whistled and sang like a thicket full of birds; because although they had been cut off in the winter, they would not recognise that they were dead; the sap was rising in them still, and so they sang. That part was rather pathetic, but oh, it was beautifully done, Ninian.’

  A sudden silence fell between them.

  ‘It’s pleasing to hear you use my name,’ he said awkwardly.

  ‘It’s an unusual one,’ she said, because she could suddenly think of nothing else to say. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Celtic,’ he said, before he too was struck dumb.

  Hidden in my recess, I pitied him. Chiefly I pitied him because he could never be what he wanted to be and because, unhappy and introspective fellow, he was far more lovable than the smooth-tongued seducers he attempted to imitate. But I also pitied him because anyone who sees into a human must find a hundred things to pity.

  Now he blundered into a description of how his models worked, talking rapidly to hide his self-consciousness.

  ‘You’ve probably heard how they’re synthesising new complex molecules all the while,’ he said. ‘Some of them, like the plastics bunch, start up whole new industries almost overnight; others aren’t as successful as expected. The material I model in is composed of one of the unsuccessful ones, a substance called Cathus 12. It is unstable and is no longer manufactured; I have enough of it in cold storage to last my lifetime – tons of it. I got it cheap.

  ‘I can record anything I like in Cathus 12. It takes thought impressions like a gramophone record taking sound impressions. This simple little psi-tuner, which is not much more than an amplifying circuit, directs the thoughts. With the buttercup, for instance, I simply look at it with the tuner tuned to its frequency, and knead the Cathus as I concentrate. What gets into the Cathus, of course, is my interpretation of the buttercup.’

  ‘At one time I used to sculpt,’ Rowena said, bringing out the proud confession with downcast head. ‘I can’t say how much I envy you. It wouldn’t work for anyone else, would it, this process you say is so easy? I mean, you must have special mental powers, mustn’t you?’

  He smiled with a sort of shy pride.

  ‘It’s a kind of gift to make up for all my other deficiencies. Working in anything but Cathus 12, I can’t get a likeness. I’m hopeless in ordinary clay. The only drawback with Cathus is that the stuff is not stable; it is inert until I’ve modelled it, and then it has a life of about five years, or ten at most.’

  ‘Depending on how often you tune in to it?’

  ‘That makes no difference. It has a fixed rate of decay, like a radio-active material.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s all wonderful,’ she
said vaguely.

  She stood up after a minute’s silence, smiling and saying formally, ‘It’s been awfully good of you to tell me all this. I’ve taken up too much of your time; I really think I ought to go now, because – ’

  Ninian stood up too. With sudden nervous bravado, he went over and kissed her on the lips.

  After that evening, Rowena Church came frequently to Ninian’s back room. Apart from Wrybaker and one or two tradesmen, she was the only person Ninian ever spoke to. Some days he even hid from Wrybaker.

  Not surprisingly, he began to spend more time with me, when Rowena was not there. He would stand peering at me as if I were his reflection, which in a sense I was.

  ‘It’s going to work,’ he said to me. ‘I think I’ve done the trick! She’s artistic, you see. Rowena’s artistic. She sees a part of me that nobody else would, the real me. She’s better than Lettice, or Joy, or Queenie was, because she understands me.’

  It is beyond me to describe how these words affected me. I could not, of course, feel melancholy or any other emotion of my own, but still I was hurt to hear him dismiss the other three girls with whom he had been intimate. He was abandoning everything for Rowena; he had stopped making models. I too had become merely part of the lumber of his dismal past, something to which he was attached still, but more by circumstance than sentiment. And this was painful for me, for I could hold nothing but love for him.

  His terrible shyness prevented him from pursuing Rowena as fast as he secretly desired. She came to see him on most evenings, timid herself, but determined. As they grew to know one another better, these meetings became quarrelsome.

  ‘Your chief failing is that you won’t see there are other points of view than your own!’ Rowena exclaimed one evening when they were discussing art. Willy-nilly, I had to listen.

  ‘Of course I can see there are other points of view; the trouble is, they are idiotic as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘If you mean my point of view is idiotic, it would be straighter to say so.’

  And unfortunately Rowena’s point of view was idiotic. The snag, as Ninian had said, was that Rowena was artistic. That is to say, she was not an artist: she knew a certain amount about art and no more. Her attempts at sculpture had been failures; she could see that but for Cathus 12, Ninian’s models would be failures too. Her frustrated desires – and Rowena’s desires were only artistic – impelled her to try and direct what Ninian was doing into the channels of which she approved.

  Ninian sensed and resented this; he did not want an art mistress. Still she insisted in pressing her pretty little theories on him.

  ‘Your models are too harsh,’ she explained. ‘You should be more selective, my dear, make them more beautiful. The buttercup, for instance – it’s really just a sweet and simple growing thing; all the complicated business you incorporate in your model about implacable forces making it what it is – well, isn’t that just a little bit morbid?’

  ‘If you call the truth morbid, yes,’ he said, but she was not expecting an answer.

  ‘And the bonfire, for instance,’ she went on. ‘Couldn’t that just be a rejoicing, boyish blaze, instead of all these terrible thoughts of death and the twigs dying wrapped up in it? I mean, don’t think I’m criticising, will you, but I do feel …’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You feel art should tidy everything up and look steadfastly on the cheery side. “Onward, Christian soldiers” all the way! You don’t see that any real art must contain, must be big enough to contain, all of experience.’

  Yes, they were old arguments, used a thousand times before. They still had power to wound, because their present holders remained unalterably opposed.

  Ninian broke down. He burst suddenly into a savage weeping new to Rowena, though familiar enough to me.

  He broke down not because he cared a fig for her arguments, but because he didn’t. If he had been sincerely interested in what she had to say, he might have quibbled happily all night; but it happened that on art, on his art, he knew he was right, did not mind a scrap what others thought. He had not intended to discuss art with Rowena, so his tears were tears of frustration.

  She jumped up in distress.

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, dear, only to try and explain my point of view,’ she cried, putting an arm over his thin shoulders.

  This feminine blend of misunderstanding and physical proximity drove Ninian further into anger.

  He stood up, confronting her with a red face, his eyes and nose running.

  ‘You think you’ve got me where you want me, don’t you?’ he demanded, extravagantly. ‘You think you can boss me. You can see the sort of life I lead! You know I’m just a sort of bright freak, a sport, a mutant, and you want to come in and take charge, don’t you? Well, you can’t! I may be a nervous wreck, but I’m not going to be a slave – not to your stupid ideas, anyway!’

  ‘Oh, you’re so unfair!’ she exclaimed. ‘You look so ugly!’

  ‘Never mind what I look like. I’m not a work of art!’

  And so on and so forth, all the biley, irrational rubbish of a quarrel. Five minutes later, Rowena walked out.

  But because she was not only a silly girl but a kind one, she came back the next evening to see how Ninian was. She could not leave him just like that. Ninian had not appeared all day, not even to come down to his workshop; he remained upstairs in the room over the shop; I knew – sensed – perceived – he was lying on his bed, brooding, revelling in the blackness of life.

  ‘Ninian!’ she called, coming timidly in and standing only a couple of feet the other side of my blind. He barked some sort of a tough answer down the stairs.

  ‘I’ve come back to say I’m sorry,’ she said meekly.

  He sat bolt upright on the bed.

  ‘Wait there!’ he called.

  She was not at ease. She seemed to be under some compulsion to come back here. She was unhappy about Ninian, but he and his art fascinated her. Otherwise she would not have compromised herself, coming alone here so frequently. Now she walked about the room, occasionally glancing at the ceiling, preparing herself to meet Ninian.

  Unexpectedly, she turned and pulled up my blind.

  We confronted each other, Rowena and I.

  She had that wonderful dampness of eyes and mouth, and that luminous quality of the skin which go only to very young and healthy women. I saw the freshness of her lips as they parted slightly in horror of me, and realised how poor Ninian must covet them; they would be the oasis in his desert. Staring ahead, she made that futile gesture of brushing an imaginary strand of hair from her forehead.

  She was still gazing at me when Ninian came down.

  He scowled when he saw what she was doing, coming forward to pull down the blind again.

  ‘What is it?’ she said curiously.

  ‘What does it look like to you?’ he asked with equal curiosity, staying his hand.

  Aversion on her face again, she turned back to me.

  ‘It’s another model in Cathus,’ she said. ‘But it’s so much less clear than the others when they’re switched off. It’s so blurry. It’s some sort of a statue with three heads, isn’t it?’

  He smiled.

  ‘I’ll tell you about it,’ he said. ‘It’s a new experiment of mine.’

  And so Art, over which they had squabbled, drew them together again. I saw – divined – felt – by his face when he came downstairs that he had intended to be difficult; but the intention faded under that most prosaic of human urges, the wish to instruct. They sat cosily together on the sofa.

  ‘So far I’ve only shown you models incorporating one single experience,’ he said. ‘A cactus, a buttercup, a cloud, a laugh, a bonfire, or whatever it may be. This one incorporates three experiences – similar experiences blended together.’

  He blushed.

  ‘Pleasant experiences?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, really it’s one experience, my experience of women,’ he said. ‘I’ve only known t
hree women, you see, previously …’

  ‘I see,’ she said, and strained silence fell.

  ‘That’s what I call it: My Experience of Women,’ he explained unnecessarily. Again there was silence.

  Rowena turned to look at me again, her face full of a strange, moving hunger. Perhaps she had seen for the first time a way of sharing intimately in the warmth of another’s life. Whatever her feelings, I knew her next words before she spoke them.

  ‘Switch it on,’ she said huskily.

  ‘It is on,’ Ninian said.

  ‘It’s an ugly thing, a deformed thing!’

  ‘No, Rowena, you don’t understand. This model’s private. The others, being for sale, are attuned to a general waveband of receptivity; anyone can experience them. This one, being mine, is tuned only to me. To anyone else, My Experience of Women will remain ugly clay; only to me is it living and beautiful. I keep it switched on all the time; it radiates a sort of personality of its own; why, it’s generally my only company here.’

  Getting up, Ninian pulled my blind down in an attempt to change the subject.

  ‘So you’ve really got a statue of love there,’ Rowena said, her voice fluttery.

  ‘My kind of love …’

  ‘How – how does that differ from other people’s?’

  ‘Everyone’s is different. I’ll show you.’

  The next morning, Ninian came downstairs like a changed man, as he had done after experiencing those elements of Lettice, Joy and Queenie which now resided in me. He sang, he pranced, he chirped, he brushed the shop down before Wrybaker arrived. He was a man in love.

  Then he came across to me.

  ‘Good morning!’ he exclaimed, flinging up the blind gaily.

  I had been waiting for him in fear and dread. Only half-living, I cannot feel emotions properly. I felt only a little fear, yet it was the most I could feel. A fly dying feels only a little death, but it is enough.

  ‘Now I can add to you,’ he said. ‘I can alter you, enlarge you, transform you, make you twice as wonderful.’

  He could do so very easily. He could now make something bigger, better, more complex than I was. But he would be killing me.