Riddance

by Shelley Jackson

  The Cyclical Model

  If it is true that the dead too die, dropping out of speech-space as we drop out of speech-time, into what do they drop? And if the dead die, why not the dead dead, too, and the dead dead dead and so on? A number of necrocosmological models have been advanced to account for these possibilities. Headmistress Joines herself proposed a ring of worlds around which we move, departing one station for the next each time we die, until eventually we die right back to life, as shown in her splendid and still useful map.20

  In this model the dead die into a world of solid objects, something like our own—a step back or down in complexity from our first, multidimensional death. Each subsequent death conforms to this pattern, removing a dimension until there are none left to remove. I.e., the three-dimensional “dead dead” die into two dimensions, a world of grammar we can best envision in the form of the sentence diagram; the two-dimensional diagram dies into the one-dimensional line; the one-dimensional line dies into the zero-dimensional point, which has no substance in itself, only punctuates, as it were, the movement of the line. The death of the point is thus indistinguishable from the birth of the point—and so we rise through the dimensions again. The point dies “up” into the line, the line dies into the diagram, and the diagram (which we glimpse from time to time, angling into our world, as one of our splendid but somewhat didactic angels21) dies into us. We are grammar that has died and been buried, as it were, in matter. Our bodies are, in the Founder’s words, “brown-pink, stinking, animal coffins.” In another sense, of course, they are wombs in which our voices are born, eventually to die into what we must now recognize as their highest, most complex state: death.

  Reversible Linear Model

  There are problems with the cyclical model. It is uneconomical to posit two two-dimensional planes, two one-dimensional planes, and so on. Perhaps the world of the dead dead, so much like our own, really is our own, though entered, as it were, from the other side. In one revised version, the dimensions are not linked in a ring, but form a simple chain. We die and move one link to the left (right and left are, of course, just metaphors); when we reach the end of the chain, we start back the other way, and so on, back and forth, forever.

  A variant of this model ventures to account for the existence on our plane of both animate and inanimate objects. Life is defined as rightward motion through our plane. On their leftward journey, the dead manifest as inanimate objects.

  In the inventive “two-ply” theory, these objects would include our own bodies. Every person has two parts, body and voice (the more common term, soul, is a misnomer). The voice arrives on our plane of existence by moving rightward, the body by moving leftward. We are the temporary conjunction of two parts moving in opposite directions along the chain,22 the marriage of 1. the ghost of grammar, also known as a voice; and 2. the ghost of a ghost, also known as a body. Thus we die into life from two directions.

  Many thinkers would add at the rightmost end of the chain another plane not described by the Founder: silence. The other dimensions are as in the ring model, only traffic is two-way; thus our dimension may not be the only one to boast of two-ply inhabitants.

  Some thanatomaths make sense of this idea by explaining the half moving leftward as idea, meaning, or diegesis and the half moving rightward as its material matrix. Linguists will recognize the familiar pairing of signifier and signified. In silence, as the turnaround zone, signifier and signified are one. Intuitively, we feel this to be true; while silence may possibly under certain artificial conditions be said to “represent” silence, it also, undeniably, is silence.

  You will note, however, that silence introduces an enigma into an otherwise rational order. We can certainly imagine that, after a long series of transformations, we might at last, with a sigh of resignation or relief, cease altogether to be. What is a little harder to understand is how, having already become nothing, we can die yet again. In nothing there is nothing to die, at least that is how it seems to us. So dying becomes an wondrous act of creation ex nihilo.

  But I will remind you that some scientists claim something similar for the entire universe. Theorists of the Big Bang unpack whole galaxies from a single point; we could call that point a period. Or a comma, its curved tail a saucy hint of more to come.

  Infinite Linear Model

  Some would argue, however, that there is no reason to stop and turn around at death, except our sentimental attachment to what we call life, combined with our positive inability to imagine what death-sub-2 might be like, let alone death-sub-3, death-sub-4, and so on. It is entirely possible that while it is true that we will keep on dying forever without ever quite ceasing to exist (as the adherents of the other models aver), we will never return to this world.

  If there are in fact an infinite series of deaths, this would put paid to the contrivances of the two-ply theory, unless there are two sets of inhabitants of the necrocosmos, one dying rightward forever, the other dying leftward. The latter, upon reaching silence, either turn around to go back the other way; pour into silence to be extinguished forever; or—the most attractive solution, for its symmetry—continue on past silence into echelons of ever more ineffable negations. But on this topic nothing definite can be affirmed.

  Letters to Dead Authors, #14

  Jane E.,

  I have had a disappointment. The centerpiece of our Theatrical Spectacle was to be the release of the Sky Lung. It would have been a stirring sight, swimming up into the heavens like a whale—an unbeautiful one if truth be told, made of patched sheets dipped in melted galoshes and thus a dull, uneven, grayish black with hints of green, but still marvelous, especially if one reflected that it was full of the mingled voices of hundreds of dead souls! But it has become apparent that it will take weeks if not months of effort to fill it. So we have had to postpone that treat, and stuff the thing half filled into the old carriage house, where it surges and wallows like some inconceivable sea creature rippling through the submarine abysm. The children sneak in to wade across its buoyant swells, which fling them from side to side as if alive. They will put holes in it; I must install a lock—first I must install doors—that is rehang the doors, their hinges having rusted through—but I am so tired—no, not exactly that, but—

  There is not much of me left, and what there is hurts. It feels as though I am trying to sand myself down from the inside. There are easier ways to remove oneself, as I ought to know.

  At least I am dying beautifully, and in red. I pay myself out of myself in ropes that startle my linens.

  To add to my grievances it will not stop raining.

  Plink, plink, PLUNK. That is not rain. The information that someone is practicing the piano, no doubt in preparation for our Theatrical Spectacle, has tunneled up through the pipes, unerringly steering right or left at tee after wye in its zeal to arrive at my inhospitable ear.

  It is perhaps strange that for all my devotion to the voice, I have a tin ear. I am not referring to my hearing trumpet.

  I do not believe that reveals anything in particular about my character.

  They say that I am cold, who take a woman’s temperature by her men. It is true that I have refused love, after a few ghastly stabs at it, and hoped thereby to lower my temperature to the absolute zero of death. But there are other passions.

  I have no reason to doubt that I sucked a teat as ardently as anyone, for instance. When I was young enough still to be excused certain peculiarities in my manner of speaking, my parents were kinder, to each other and to me, and life seemed sweet. We were wealthy enough that I wanted for nothing that my father deemed suitable, but it was in communion with the natural world that I found real bliss. The whole world seemed to breathe then, groaning and hissing under my feet and in the trees over my head. Green life squiggled through veins in the earth, then fountained forth as weeds and trees. Bits of the world broke loose as bugs, squirrels, foxes ran to other places, then were reabsorbed; other bits lay quite still, but with a
gleeful and provocative air, as if they had something to say and were daring me to guess what it was.

  I took that dare.

  They say that I am cold, but a charred stick can have a ruby core. And Eyjafjallajökull smolders in its dress of ice.

  Eyjafjallajökull. Now that is what I call a word. I have dreams that in the vocabulary I spit up daily now will be the one word to end them all. A Blitz of meaning to give speculation its quietus. But wouldn’t such a word stick in my throat, not telling me what it is to die—but showing me?

  Death is a word on the tip of my tongue. Mine the ear for whom alone it is meant. I will rest my hopes in the chance that causes do not infallibly precede effects, and die listening.

  Yours affectionately,

  Sybil

  15. The Final Dispatch, contd.

  Do you hear it too? That low, cool, reasonable voice going on and on in the underwater light of the curtained room that smells of mouth, of alcohol fumes and sleep, saying, “You might almost think you were imagining the low, cool, reasonable voice going on and on, it isn’t the sort of voice that a child would have, that any ordinary sort of child would have. Of course yours isn’t an ordinary child, or a child in ordinary circumstances: your child has lost her mother, lost, that’s a good one, as if she had just put her down somewhere and never picked her up again, as if a child could ever forget where she had left her mother, where her mother had left her, lost, that’s a good one, I wonder where I got that idea, her mother was taken from her, someone took her, it was somebody’s fault she’s gone, I wonder whose.”

  [Pause.]

  Barely a pause, and then the voice continues, “The voice continues, after barely a pause, continuous and meandering as thought, perhaps it is thought, not a voice, perhaps it is just someone’s idea of a voice, the idea of a voice that never stops talking, talking about what, talking about what you did, and also about the voice itself, which voice, the one that never stops saying that you are responsible, that you have a debt to pay, that you have to pay it, the debt you incurred, there’s only one way, and it has to be done, so there’s no point in talking, only in doing, doing it, the voice will stop if you do it, if you don’t do it the voice won’t stop, the voice will keep right on saying that you should do it, that you know you should do it, that you will do it, that you are doing it, only you aren’t, you know that, but you know that you should, so you will, won’t you, the voice says that you will, so you will, won’t you, because the voice is only putting your own thoughts into words, the voice may not really be a voice at all, only your own thoughts, imagined as a voice, the voice of a child, but no ordinary child, no child in ordinary circumstances would talk like that, on and on, low, cool, reasonable, bloodless, but yours isn’t an ordinary child, of course, or a child in ordinary circumstances, your child has lost her mother, lost, that’s a good one . . .”

  A hitch, silvery sound of a flask unscrewing, slosh, glottus, outbreath . . . [hitch, silvery sound, etc.]. “It can’t be the child, you know it’s not the child, the child’s an idjit, can’t talk straight, child’s defective, tongue-tied, a circus freak, it’s not the child, not that child, not any child, no child would talk like that, low, cool, reasonable, bloodless, unrelenting, saying that there’s no payment for what you did, no payment but one, and even that one will not cover your debt in full, saying that the ghosts are keeping your accounts, adding it up, the pluses and the minuses, precious few pluses, a peck of minuses, all down in the book, what book, does the child have the book, what book, there’s no book, it’s a figure of speech, there’s no book, just an idea of a book, a book of accounts, your accounts, kept by ghosts, the ghosts who spoke to the child, who are speaking to you, in a child’s voice, but it isn’t a child’s voice, not that child’s voice, that child’s an idjit, not any child’s voice, any ordinary sort of child, any child in ordinary circumstances, but your child isn’t an ordinary child, she’s an idjit, circus freak, defective, haunted, spooky, nor are her circumstances ordinary, your child has lost her mother, lost, that’s a good one . . .” Pause, creak of floorboards. [Pause, creak of floorboards.]

  The child is crouching beside the bed, feet numb from the cold floor, knees stiff, haunches aching, unable to stop now. Her voice is low, cool, reasonable. She never stutters, not once. It is not like speaking at all, what she is doing, opening her mouth, letting persuasion through it. Persuasion is not speaking, she understands, it is letting another person’s thoughts flow through you, your father does not recognize them, he senses that they aren’t yours, but he doesn’t yet recognize them as his own, but he will, you are helping him, he is almost there now. Stare at the plaster flowers on the ceiling, stare at the stain on the coverlet, his breath is steady now, drop your voice, let him sleep, for now, let him go to sleep hearing the voice (your voice, his voice) saying [echo], “Maybe it’s the mother, not the child, maybe that’s who it is, who it’s got to be, not the child, talking, on and on, like this, low, cool, reasonable, bloodless, unrelenting, adjudicating, offering arguments for and arguments against, mostly for, for what, for putting an end to it, to what, to the voice, how, you know how, why, you know why, it was your idea, not hers, not whose, not the mother’s, not the child’s, but yours, you’re the one who thought of it, you’re the one who’ll carry it out . . .”

  A hard hand grabs her wrist and yanks her up. She sprawls half on the bed, convulsing away from his body, feet exploding into sensation, bee stings, stars; “Talking!” is all he says, choked voice, smell of alcohol and of mouth, “Talking! You’re a little talker!”

  “What? No!” She recovers her composure, adds, cunningly, “I thought I heard something.”

  “Heard what?”

  “I don’t know.” The hand tightens. “A voice!” Another hand takes hold of the bow at her collar and begins idly twirling it. Scrape, scrape on the underside of her chin. “I heard someone talking. I thought—I thought it was, was, was, was—”

  “Was who?”

  “Y-y-y-you!”

  The hand releases her. She sprawls back onto the bedcovers and now she arranges herself there, now luxuriates, now she stretches like a cat, an odalisque. “I thought I heard you talking, on and on, and I came in to find out what you wanted.”

  “Nothing. I didn’t want anything.” Adds, “I didn’t say anything.”

  She taps his flask, which chimes. “More hooch?”

  “Hooch. That’s no way for a child to talk. No ordinary child. No child in ordinary circumstances . . . Go! Get out of here! Get!”

  Then, later, as the man slumps on the couch, staring at the joint of the wall and the ceiling, hand plucking idly at his crotch: the child sitting gently down beside him, the voice saying, “If your wife were here, you would be covering her now, but your wife isn’t here, wonder why that is, you know why,” and pausing, picking at a horsehair poking through the velvet, drawing it through, “Nothing’s left of you of any value, if there was ever anything to you of any value, you’re done, through, better leave this mess to others to clean up, you’ll just make it worse,” then humming a little, a tune the wife used to sing, when she forgot herself, not often, but too often, it was all her fault, but then the voice as if hearing his thoughts, no, as if overheard from his thoughts, from a deeper layer of his thoughts, saying, “No, it was your fault, all along, your failure, your sin, your damnation . . .”

  A man of no great conscience may have that conscience so fretted and pricked and teased and inflamed by constant consultation that it swells like a cirrhotic liver. A man of no great will can be goaded into decisive action—it had happened once, it could happen again. In the hours when he came home from drinking at night, when he woke up drunk and drank more in the morning, in the afternoon when drunk he waited for the dark to come to cover his walk to the bar, the voice emanating from the narrow space beside his bed trained his thoughts, led him like a Lipizzaner through his paces until he could take his cue in a word, an inflection, and canter through
his lines to the end.

  Then, unfortunately, he would uncap his flask. Take another drink. The voice would have to start over, from the beginning. The voice was patient, though. He would do it eventually, the star turn, the “airs above the ground.” The voice was sure, and so the child was sure.

  The child had come to feel that someone spoke through her. Her mother’s ghost? But her mother, she was fairly sure, would not have counseled hatred. That was her mother’s great weakness, for which the child despised and even, in a way, hated her. Her mother had let herself be killed because she would not see that her husband did not deserve her love or patience. The child was made of sterner stuff. She had her father’s gift for hate. And she had the voice, whoever’s it was.

  It would start again, low, confiding. “Look what a mess you’ve made of things. Look what a mess you’ve made of yourself. Look how you’ve disappointed yourself. How you’ve disappointed God, if there is a God. Your wife. Your child. Your mother. Everyone who knows you. And if anyone else knew you, they’d be disappointed in you too. Better not to meet people. Better not to know people. Better not to show your face. Better not to uglify the scenery that way. How can you fix what you’ve broken? How can you replace what you stole? How can you pay what you owe? You can’t. You’ve got nothing of value to give. If you live longer, you’ll just owe more. All you can do now is cut your losses, ease the burden on better folk, improve the world by ridding it of yourself.”

  The first time in my life that I spoke with perfect clarity, fluently, nimbly, volubly, and it was to kill a man.

  I had miscalculated, however. Had not imagined that my father, cowed as he was, obedient as he was in the end to the voice that seemed to address him from his own alcohol-clouded mind, would try to take me with him. Maybe he sensed just enough of the truth to blame me, if not enough to know what to blame me for. Or he regarded me as a part of himself, ineligible for independent life. Or it was simple malice.