The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  Think twice.

  Think three times.

  Saturday maybe take ferry to Staten Island. (He once had a friend there.) So, whispering a secret number, he does that but misses her by half an hour because he gets lost in the subway. It’s the same on the way back. Sits on deck in the rain thinking: Mother had a right to be angry, dying a slow death every day and not even knowing it (but she suspected). And then one tube down the left nostril, needle in arm, etc., etc., etc. Nothing left but bones by now. Teeth and hair. The boat hums. A sad guitar plays in his mind. (Classical). The Times said rain, but he could feel that in his knees before, anyway. Thinks: Me, a little younger, a little thinner, and that girl “under a sheet,” as we used to say when we were fourteen, fifteen. I’m very gentle. She’s never known anyone as gentle as I am. Until suddenly. And right now. Very nice. Just fine. Fine. “The best I ever had,” she says.

  Be the last one off the ferry.

  Thinks: An encounter group might teach me to touch my fellow man.

  Dear Mother; I’ve been having a glorious time. Brief moments of… Well, it’s wonderful how sometimes the penis ... in conjunction with the thoughts, that is…

  Dear Mother; I’ve moved to Florida. It’s a lot better. I’ve found love. More than you ever thought I would.

  Dear Mother; Look at me now!

  Dear Mother; In the forest . . . the smell of pine needles blocks out all else. I lie back. I shut my eyes…

  Dear Mother; (May fourth, 1973 or 1974.) We have forgotten all about you by now. We are happy.

  A week goes by.

  He writes: Dear one who has not read the Birth of Tragedy. (Instinctively he knows this.) I’ll meet you at the movies at the Museum of Modern Art. We’ll have lunch in the garden. You are all goodness, kindness, charm, all delicacy, all sensitivity. You are artistic. I know because I can read faces like the palms of hands. I also see that my own handwriting is ever optimistic. But I wanted to tell you most of all that, from my lifeline, I know I will die suddenly and in great pain. I write you this because I want you to know something intimate and important about me.

  A week goes by.

  He comes home a little late the next day.

  “Is that you?”

  “What?”

  “Listen, this is important.”

  Who can that be?

  “Listen,” Mother calls from back room. (Somehow she’s not dead after all and she still doesn’t even know she’s dying.) “I’ve been waiting all this time to tell you this. I heard it on the radio. Something in the hot dogs. I forget what. You should be careful. And taxis, too, you should be careful.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Yesterday I thought I’d try to get up…”

  But yesterday they robbed her of her TV set and all her blankets right before her eyes, and they robbed him of his umbrella and they took the ten lucky silver dollars in his top bureau drawer. Tomorrow they will surely come for the radio and the leather bookbag he sometimes carries his lunch in.

  Dear Mother; I have moved to the country… to a country where grown men are crying every day and drinking themselves into stupors. You wouldn’t like it here so don’t ask me any questions about where it is.

  Certainly she must have gotten a second chance on life at the age of fifty-five or sixty. Took it in exchange for her only son, paid in advance. How did it happen? “Raymond, Raymond, fat old cave man.” He sits now in Central Park reading from the Birth of Tragedy:

  … “The old tune, why does it wake me?” And what once seemed to us like a hollow sigh from the core of being now merely wants to tell us how “desolate and empty the sea.” And where, breathless, we once thought we were being extinguished in a convulsive distention of all our feelings, and little remained to tie us to our present existence, we now hear and see only the hero wounded to death, yet not dying, with his despairing cry: “Longing! Longing!…”

  And she, who has never read this, comes to Central Park no doubt looking for the simple, outdoor life (as he is) wishing there really was a god of the forest hiding there. She will look up at the new buds and see His face instead of buildings. He’ll be tall, brown, thin, bearded, beautiful and invisible…

  Tall, fat, bearded and all in brown sits in Central Park now facing West and visible, though not too. Boy steps on his leg. Dog pees on his book, the Birth of Tragedy. He doesn’t notice this till later. He’s talking to himself in stage whispers. Says, “If I see two 747s and six regular planes in the space of half an hour, and surely I will, then she’ll come ten minutes later.” She does, only she’s early and she’s looking for a tall, thin, invisible man who peeks out from behind the largest trees, and he, he has his back to her and is busy counting planes. He notes that the shadows of the planes sometimes go right over him. It can’t be by coincidence. .

  Discovers peed-on book, feels bruised leg and thinks: There’ll be one more bad thing happen before any good ones therefore how can they meet today? Thinks: Mother had a right to be angry, dying a slow death like that and not even knowing it until the very last moment and then not any time to say what she really meant. Maybe I should have moved her to the country. Yes.

  So it’s love, love, love and six kisses on the surface of the mirror… six kisses on the surface of the water in the sink. He finds a secret message in the dust on the old upright. Something tells him THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE! (He suspected it all along anyway.) Like a drop in the barometer, it gives him a headache.

  LAST CHANCE FOR WHAT?

  Murder, rape or incest?

  Think twice. Can this really be love?

  And think of it! Mother alive and fairly well and living as happily as could be expected in the back room, calling out, “Hey. Hey there. Is that you? Is that you out there? Who’s out there?”

  No answer.

  Never marry a woman with a thin upper lip. He heard that someplace. Well, it doesn’t matter now.

  Is his wife his mother?

  Or the other way around?

  Meanwhile remember that condemned men are allowed one last phone call, one last good meal, one more cigarette, one more jerk-off.

  Sometimes it feels as though the sky is full of swans and the sound of their big wings… a few feathers falling down. They’re hardly built to fly, but they do it. Dearest one, he’ll write: You’ll know me by the way I look at you, by the way I walk, my bulbous nose. I’ll be older than you expected. I’ll be looking around, humming. I have only one secret, unacceptable, lewd desire.

  (Nietzsche loved his sister and went mad.)

  Go on do it. Make one magic gesture in that direction. Fill in all the Os on three pages of the Birth of Tragedy, but if you miss one O it’s all for nothing.

  Go on do it. Nobody looking. Hand to crotch. Yes, somebody looking. Oh well, some other time.

  Stay away from the river.

  Thinks: I already know my future.

  But no. That can’t be. Certainly a death one of these days and other chance meetings. She will drop her purse, or lose an antique brooch. Cairn Gorm, they call that kind of stone. That will make her Scotch. Dear Scotch person; I’m a mild-mannered man. I expect to come into a small sum of money soon and then I’ll move to the country. Also you should know that I snore. But sometimes I can’t sleep. I think my breath smells. My teeth need attention. My mother is dead.

  But wait. He must have gotten the right combination for once because right here in his room, after having blacked out dozens of Os, his back to the light, and having muttered forbidden words that a long time ago his mother .said not to say, there she is. Not Her, though. A tall, blonde, silent creature with eyes like a fox. This will be an episode in his life he ought to forget.

  He’s wary. She’s wary, too. Not a single word.

  He tells himself she’s no human being. Can’t be, so it doesn’t matter. Any kind of strange and secret desires OK under these circumstances. Get her to come at him from behind with that that he keeps for these purposes. (He remembered to bring a lubricant.) For
a minute he knows he doesn’t love his mother and is guilty of it and of this, too. (He can’t stand the sight of blood or bruises, so has to find other ways.) All night will be $100. It’s gone up. All right. All right, but not in this place. “To hell with you. To hell with you. To hell—with you.” She doesn’t mind. Neither would the other. It wasn’t Her, though.

  He’ll forget it by tomorrow.

  Yes, of course, there she is, the real one, sitting on the steps of the library with her lunch. It must be Spring. Her dress is a peculiar shade of purple and black and he wonders what it means.

  LAST CHANCE!

  “Hello,” he says. “I saw you someplace recently.”

  Well, she doesn’t want to be picked up by an older, fat man with spots on his tie.

  “I’m a philosopher,” he says. “I know the future. All that can happen is nothing happens. Other people have babies, but not you and I. Life or death, with us it’s a long time between events. Some people live at a different pace.”

  He sits down very slowly while she gets up. He supposes she is thinking she won’t have lunch on these steps anymore. This is just like life, he thinks, no murder, no rape or incest and not even going on a diet, shaving beard or whatever, but maybe getting robbed of a few dollars on the way home today.

  And to think that Mother continues to live without either TV or radio!

  Tragedy is easy. A matter of waiting, sitting here on the steps in the sun.

  Edges, Pocket Books, 1980

  Abominable

  WE ARE advancing into an unknown land with a deliberate air of nonchalance, our elbows out, our hands on our hips, or standing one foot on a rock when there’s the opportunity for it. Always to the left, the river, as they told us it should be. Always to the right, the mountains. Every few miles we stop and telephone back to headquarters. Over the phone the Commander says we are already in the area of the sightings. We must watch now for footprints no bigger than a boy’s and of a unique delicacy. “Climb a tree,” the Commander says, “and call out a few of the names you have memorized.” So we do. We call out: Alice, Betty, Elaine, Jean, Joan, Marilyn, Mary… and so on in alphabetical order. Nothing comes of it.

  We are seven manly men in the dress uniform of the Marines, though we are not Marines. But this particular uniform has always been thought to attract them. We are seven seemingly blasé (our collars open at the neck in any weather) experts in our fields, we, the research team for the Committee on Unidentified Creatures that Whiz by in Pursuit of Their Own Illusive Identities. Our guns shoot sparks and stars and make a big bang. We carry only a few blurry pictures, most of these from random sightings several months ago. One is of the wife of the Commander. It was taken from a distance. We can’t make out her features—she was wearing her fur coat. He thought he recognized her, or at least the coat.

  So far there has been nothing but snow. What we put up with for these creatures!

  Imagine their bodies as you hold this little reminder of their possibilities in the palm of your hand… this fat, four-inch Venus. The serious elements are missing. The eyes are simple dots, the hairdo almost covers the face, the feet and hands aren’t there at all. Accept the challenge of the breasts, of the outsized hips, and then the biggest challenge of all…. If we pit ourselves against them, can we win, or at least finish without their analysis of our wrong moves?

  Here are the signs of their presence that we’ve found so far. (We might almost think these things had been dropped in our path on purpose if we didn’t know how careless they can be, especially when harassed or in a hurry, and, since they’re nervous creatures, they always are harassed or in a hurry.) Found in our path, then, one stalk of still-frozen asparagus, a recipe for dip using onion soup mix, a small purse with a few crumpled-up dollar bills and a book of matches. (It’s clear they do have fire. We take comfort in that.)

  And now the Commander tells us to leave the river and go up into the hills even though they’re treacherous with spring thaws. The compass points up. We slide on scree and ice all day, well aware that they may have all gone south by now, whole tribes of them, feeling worthless, fat, and unloved. The possibilities are endless, so any direction could be wrong, but at the first sign of superficialities we’ll know we’re on the right track.

  One of us is a psychoanalyst of long experience, a specialist in hysteria and masochism. He says if we find them they will probably make some strange strangling sounds, but that these are of no consequence and often mistaken for laughter, which, he says, is the best way to take them. If, on the other hand, they smile, it’s for the purpose of disarming us. (It has been found that they smile two and a half times as often as we do.) Sometimes there’s a kind of nervous giggle. It’s essentially sexual in origin, and, if it occurs when they see us, it’s a good sign. He says if they get angry, we should be careful that their rage doesn’t turn against themselves.

  Grace is the name of the one in the picture, the Commander’s wife. She must be all of fifty-five by now. Slipped out of a diner one moonlit night when the Commander was looking at a younger woman. But what was there to do but go on as usual, commanding what needs to be commanded? He said she had accepted her limitations up to that time. He blamed her leaving on incomplete acculturation, or on not seeing the obvious, and did not wonder about it until a year later.

  I have a lot of questions to ask them. Where did we actually come from? How come we’re so unlike? How did we evolve interests the opposite of theirs? Do they manage to survive in this cold by living deep underground in vast, warm kitchens heated by their ovens? Is there, as they say, always the smell of gingerbread? Are those of childbearing age perpetually pregnant from the frozen semen of some long-dead movie star? Do they leave the male babies out to die in the snow instead of, as is usual, doing that to the females?

  But now the sudden silence of our first sighting. She’s on the heights above us, huge and in full regalia, as in the Commander’s photograph, mink and monstrous hat, the glint of something in her ears, motionless, head raised and on one leg. She was gone when we reached the spot a half hour later. The psychoanalyst waited by the footprints all night, ready with his own kind of sweet-talk, but no luck.

  One of us has said for sure it was just a bear. The sun was in our eyes. He said, right after standing on one leg, it humped down on all fours, but they might do that, too.

  The information has been phoned back to the Commander. (“Tell her I think I love her,” he said.) It has been decided that we’ll put bananas out in the snow along the trail. When they come out to gather them, we’ll follow them back to their lairs, down into their dark, secret places. They’ll like being followed. They always have.

  The bananas are gone before we have a chance to catch up to them.

  Next time we’ll not lay the bananas out in such a logical straight line.

  They won’t sit still. They don’t take anything seriously. There’s nobody to coordinate their actions, so they run around in all directions, always distracted from the task at hand, always jumping to conclusions, making unwarranted assumptions, taking everything for granted or, on the other hand, not taking anything for granted (our love, for instance).

  When we finally step into those kitchens! The largest mountain completely hollowed out, my God! And the smells! The bustle! The humdrum everydayness of their existence. We won’t believe what we see. They’ll tell us things are better than ever. They’ll be thinking they no longer need to be close to the sources of power. They’ll even say they like places of no power… live powerless, as friends, their own soft signals one to the other. They’ll say we hardly noticed them anyway or noticed that they weren’t there. They’ll say we were always looking in the other direction. Well, we did sense something, and we’ve felt a lack we can’t quite pinpoint. Unpaid creatures, moneyless, but noticed even so. We’ll tell them this, and also that the Commander thinks he may love one of them.

  They have refused the bananas this time. What we offer them is never quite right. What they
like today they don’t want tomorrow. We’ll try one more time. These glass beads that look like jade, a fine ceramic pot, a self-help book, How to Overcome Shyness with the Opposite Sex, but (especially) we offer ourselves for their delight as sons, fathers, lovers…. Their choice.

  The psychoanalyst says they’re entitled to their own opinions, but we wonder how independent should we allow them to be?

  Well, if I had one, I’d wash its feet and back. Venture the front, too. Let her hair hang down. I’d take some time out now and then, even from important work, to do some little things like this of hardly any meaning. I’ll listen to its idle chatter, or at least seem to.

  We’re telling old tales about them around our campfires in the late evenings, but it’s not the same kind of frightening tales it used to be when we were young. Tales about the snapping vaginas with razors inside them. Since they may be lurking out there in the shadows listening, we have to be careful what we say. What’s scary is we have no idea of their size. On the one hand, the Commander insists all of them are quite a bit smaller and definitely weaker. Others say they are capable of swallowing us from below. Some say they may be the missing link we’ve searched for so long and stand somewhere between Pithecanthropus Erectus and us. Some wonder if their orgasm is as specific as ours is, or is it more diffuse? The more romantic among us think they are cute and loveable even when they’re angry. We wonder how best to penetrate their lines of self-defense, and their defensiveness. Playing the role of the dominant partner won’t be easy; how nice, even so, to have a group of beings whose main job would be to tidy up.

  Pedestals have already been set up for them.

  But now we have had a disturbing message from the Commander. Important politicians have said these stories of sightings are hoaxes. It’s been proven that the photographs have been doctored. In one case a gorilla superimposed on a snowy mountain, in another a man in drag. Several people have confessed. Some had never been in the area at all. Only two pictures remain unexplained. Perhaps we have a hoaxer even here among us, stealing the bananas himself and making footprints with an old shoe on the end of a stick. Besides, think if we should discover that they do, in fact, exist. We would only be adding to our problems. Cures would have to be discovered for cancers in peculiar places. A huge group of Sunday poets and painters would be added to society which society can well do without. Why should we come searching for them simply because they’re there, as though they were Mount Everest? Anyway, the funding for our search has run out.