The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  At this moment I yearn to reinvent the wheel (heating damp wood until it can be forced to form a circle), making a light, quick vehicle for myself. I want to reinvent it slowly, one step at a time; first as a toy, later on in a bicycle, then a vw, skipping the ox cart altogether or anything ponderous. But I hardly get started before you return of your own accord, having tied your fig leaf back on the tree. You are humming. “Come share an intimate moment with me and the camera,” you are saying. You order more film and a drum and a flute and a basket of feathers. This reunion is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The possibility of muffing it makes you (or so you tell me) feel as if you are adrift in a small, un-seaworthy boat. Perhaps you have, in the hiatus, become a poet of sorts. The children (there actually are children by now) are told not to expect too much from Daddy and Mommy in the next few days. The title of your new work will be See the Lovers Still Attacked. I know you mean Attached… Still Attached. You missed it by only one letter.

  We hollow out a log in order to see what sort of musical instrument will result. Then we will move, decorated and with hats.

  I see by the chart on our wall that we have moved on up into another category. The tan line, which was followed for a short time by a sort of ugly grayish-green line, is now followed by the beginnings of a more or less blue line. There is an infinitesimal, but clearly perceptible, upward swing. We are also one full square outwards. Love is along the top and to be aimed for. Time, at a quarter of an inch for half a day, is along the bottom. Freedom (a subdivision of space) is outwards from a fixed point. (You.)

  New Directions 42, 1981

  Queen Kong

  LIFE, WHEN SEEN as though through the eyes of small women or when looking at a small woman… the close attention to details, for instance, or the taking-pains-with of small women wherein even the monumental can be made, fundamentally, minute… the elegance of tiny women as they closely scrutinize, nearsighted, squinting over tiny stitches or tiny brush strokes…. This is the essence of art, and moreover, art within which the actual function of being a woman is similar (if not identical) to the function of art. Tiny women, then, and with their hair down—on the one hand, adding themselves to the paintings and sculptures of men, or on the other hand, lending themselves to magicians in order to be raised into the air on platforms with no visible supports. Preoccupied with texture, they exhibit themselves on the passenger seats .of cars wearing ornate hats. Preoccupied with gesture, they put on shoes that prevent them from taking any steps not in keeping with an organized whole.

  Large women, however, do not have the capacity for art. They are anti-art women. Even their breasts are impossible to think about. They are neither art (no matter where or how they lounge about) nor quite real-life either. They are against all elegances, and no wonder, when even seeing them at a distance or simply in silhouette is unnerving. But the potential of large women! The huge, unrealized potential! Their great longings, their colossal grudges, their long-term memories, their rage! No wonder they deny all art… deny all civilization and try to convince their tiny, more discreet sisters to join them.

  Men have already (and long ago) gone in search of the smallest woman in the world. She was found in a tribe living far beyond the pygmies. Men marveled at her tiny breasts which were exactly in proportion to her size. They marveled at her tiny vulva, at her tiny ways of thinking, at her small, feminine conclusion exactly in proportion to her tiny breasts (as was expected). Men have not, on the other hand, gone to look for the largest woman in the world. They have not entered that jungle, crossed those mountains, those deserts, those vast lagoons…. They have not marveled at her largenesses, at the huge perfection (imperfection?) of her nostrils, at the size of her ears, at her eyes, that really seem like pools.

  She, however, has arrived here in the largest city hoping nobody will notice, and no one has. Nobody glances up and back or turns around, and that’s not so surprising since she’s hunching her shoulders, squatting down, one hand on the sidewalk, other hand trying to keep the lower part of her hair from tangling in the upper branches of trees. Seeing her, therefore, one doesn’t think: My God, here on this very street, the largest woman in the world! but rather, glances aside, hoping for a better view of what’s behind her. (And this, in spite of her rather handsome face.) When she is seen, however, with a sprinkling of light and shadow and partly behind a medium-high wall, eyes carefully avoiding eyes; or when seen after she has come around a corner fast and having slipped to the ground in a fairly deep puddle, she becomes almost accessible to the average man. But even so, if one of these days this average man or even some other above-average and taller man takes a liking to her, sooner or later he will notice that she makes him look small even when he is standing in the foreground. But then, she doesn’t expect real love, though perhaps marriage is not out of the question.

  There is a magician, quite a small man, really, who looms large on stage in top hat and tails. He had a close call with a tiny woman once and now is willing to make do with a large one. Since he’s so small, but looks so huge, the largest woman in the world is hoping he can help her achieve an illusion, not only of refinement and artistry, but most particularly, he should be able to change the gargantuan to the merely large by the use of strategically placed lights and mirrors. (She already knows she should dress on the bias and use at least three colors.) She’d like to be coaxed and taught and goaded by this little man and yet give satisfaction… long-term satisfaction, but being neither small nor artistic, how do that? And what do men want, anyway? (Freud’s perennial question) What do men really want, and are they never satisfied, going as they do, from woman to woman?

  What are they searching for? And why is it that just when things have settled down, nicely, suddenly some other woman is required, or two or three, each one smaller, younger, and more artistic than the last. But their ultimate goal is never reached. That smallest, youngest, most artistic—and therefore most desirable of all—is somehow not found. (Perhaps we must leave the answer to Freud’s question to the poets.) How, then, can she ever hope to give long term satisfaction, having, of these three attributes, only youth, and youth for so short a time? But can she encourage a man’s feverish attempts at meaning and grandeur? Can she follow directions? Give constant approval? Make minimal demands? And at the very least, keep smiling? But the questions are by now merely rhetorical since the largest woman in the world has already married the magician. She married him quickly before he found out her shoe size.

  That feeling when you’re just a little bit drunk and you can suddenly HEAR… you can hear the ambience of a place… every little sound having meaning and a strange clarity. That’s the way small women hear things all the time. Notice every tinkle and thunk and respond to the inner implications. But she’s much too large for that kind of listening. Eardrum’s thick tickle. No finesse. Can make out only the lowest notes of any given piece of music. Eyes can hardly trace the line of demarcation between a leg and a hat in any given work of art. Where’s the artistic fulfillment in that? And what about the leisurely enjoyment of tiny cupcakes served on fine china? What about whispered catch-phrases… the flash of a signal that might be meant for her? And now, already a whole year has gone by and no art done. Nothing to show for it, not even one little clay pot or a part of a quilt or a sweater, not even a scarf to give to her husband . And everything refined or polished keeps slipping out of her hands, falling to the floor, and she steps on it. It’s more or less the same with all the impedimenta of everyday life. The knobs and switches made for finer fingers: her husband’s little dirty socks, his little bits of food and drink, his slippery little penis. (She sat on his glasses. She stepped on the cat.) How can she be expected to keep track of the details of life even though, as a wife, that’s her main job?

  What she’d rather be doing is taking some part in his magic show. Go on stage with him. Stand beside him in the spotlight (all in sequins). Be sawed in half. Curl up in a box and have swords stuck into it. But she shouldn’t
have to ask. He should ask her. He should have asked her a long time ago.

  But now it is interesting that she longs to take a risk of some kind. Risk a grand gesture, perhaps even on stage. Risk… actually risk standing up to full height, aiming for the monumental mode. (It is clear that she suspects that she might be numbered among the ten tallest women. She wouldn’t dare think more than that.) And now she allows herself to imagine what it would be like to go on stage with her husband as the featured part of the act, in pink and silver and swinging her tassels. “Ever see…” for instance, “Ladies and Gentlemen, ever see a five or seven thousand pound… Ladies and Gentlemen, twelve or fifteen thousand pound woman perfect in… almost perfect in every detail, though can’t be exactly perfect because of the Square-Cube Law, which is why elephants are built as they are and, therefore, why she is as she is? When she steps on stage it is a moment suffused with an out-of-the-ordinary femininity… an out-of-the-ordinary roundness and fullness. Some of you may object, saying that while she certainly is female, she is definitely not art, but what is ‘not-art’? Good and bad art, yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, but what can be ‘not-art’ when already pointed out as such? Large as she is, I can assure you she is, nonetheless, much in the company of poets, and that her grief is as boundless and inconsolable as any. Also she’s capable of misconceptions as large as any known so far. Capable of sweeping overstatements, of great bewildering and labyrinth conclusions, gross misunderstandings…. All, in short, commensurate with her size. Come, Ladies and Gentlemen, and listen to her speak out on the larger issues of the day wearing nothing but a bra and G-string, and for just one small extra dollar, topless.”

  (She is willing to risk all in her daydreams.)

  (Actually, if she wants to go on stage with him, she really has no need to ask permission.)

  (She could liberate the men’s toilets just by looking in the door.)

  He had fondled her earlobe instead of her breast. He has sucked at a wart on her neck. He has slid down her body little by little by little, kissing all the way. She had wondered where he was by now. Felt the tickle of him here and there. (It is clear that she is leaving it all up to him… letting him make all the discoveries all the wild surmises….) It’s fun for her, too, but doesn’t fill the days. No wonder she’s—and quite suddenly—no longer under his control. Imagine, then, looking towards the window one moonlit night and seeing her huge hand reaching in and picking up a fairly important and rather fat executive who has been working late, and she’s half way up the World Trade Center already.

  Up on the roof now, and looking down at her, there are several psychologists, all Ph. D. s and all well over six feel tall. They are experts in cases not unlike this one, in which, for instance, some rather large, sad woman will suddenly appear at the top of a flagpole.

  “Lack of long-range planning.” “Explosion of some inner, narcissistic frustration.” “A tenuous hold on femininity.” “But what do women want, and in what order?”

  It is decided that she should get no special consideration in spite of, or because of, her size.

  The man in her fist is the father of three girls. He understands this sort of thing.

  Appeal to her conscience (if such exists), asking: “Can a worthy cause be aided by a heap of debris? By fragments of torn flesh and broken bones?”

  (“Come on down now, Margie, before you hurt yourself.”)

  Imagine a model of the World Trade Center just a few inches high with a model of this girl halfway up one of the buildings, long hair blowing, torn nightgown, one breast partly exposed. It’s not a work of art, but you’d buy it anyway, thinking that what the creature probably needs most is a good lay. Men who are magnanimous by nature think this, and sometimes several times a day, and with spectacular generosity, proffer themselves in a semiprofessional capacity for the act in question. They will say that they do not normally scatter their love in this fashion, though they are obviously not finicky. Perhaps such men haven’t yet realized the scale of the operation. Perhaps they see her, in a way, as part of the landscape, therefore to be climbed, cut down, or bulldozed into a shape more suited to their needs. It’s an easy mistake to make.

  Always, after rage and tears, comes sadness and regrets. Things lapse into their opposites: hate to love, love to hate. And in the same sense, the large always have their smallnesses; the fat their thin; the meek their ferocities; the foolish, their profundity, and vice versa. Therefore she must be feeling awfully small and insignificant by now, being so large. She must feel pretty foolish up there. Who wouldn’t? even though we are all somewhat in her situation—if only figuratively speaking (stuck, that is)—and with every direction impossible. Climbing a tower, an act of desperation, a cry for help. What’s there to come down for, in other words? And if she should go up, why up?

  Certainly, at this moment, she is at her most human.

  But now, slowly, everything is becoming suffused with a pale, pink light and she has turned a calm face towards the sunrise. A sort of euphoria possesses the onlookers. They are all, yes, as if in love, even though the whole affair is not only in dubious taste, but against the law. Even so, everyone—including the psychologists on the roof—has stopped talking.

  Over a loudspeaker the crowd below is being informed that in spite of the transient beauty due completely to the rising of the sun, nothing of any great consequence is or has been happening. Also, that everything is well under control and that that woman will not be allowed, under any circumstances, to remove her nightgown, so there’s no danger of that kind of disrespect. (This last is a message to those who had been worrying about it.)

  The psychologists say that one must try to invent a future for her however false it may really be, otherwise why would she move at all except to strike out?… except perhaps to toss away the fat executive? She must not find out now, in other words, that her husband is filing for divorce, having finally discovered the true dimensions of his wife. Must not let her know that she serves no useful purpose even as the largest anything. Not let her know that a committee for the monumental wants to go her one better. They have suggested that a French woman, depicted as large or even larger than the largest woman in the world and in an even longer nightgown, be put up in the harbor holding a symbolic lamp of some sort and with uplifting words on her plinth, such as “Give me your tired….” Such an idea is patently absurd and we already have too many tired people as it is.

  Things take a turn for the worse because now she has taken off her nightgown. Torn it away in one big sweep of the hand. Perhaps by mistake. So the giant thighs for all to see, and besides the one big boob, now another, slightly more pendulous, flopping in unison with the first. Don’t look. Pretend she’s not there. She won’t get any sympathy this way. If she wanted to be taken seriously she should have stayed as well-dressed as possible. That’s always the best policy, particularly where large women are concerned.

  She needs a firm hand, but even so, it has been decided instead to ignore her. It’s so much cheaper than calling out the National Guard. Were she the largest man in the world or some huge beast, of course things would be different, but a woman is so easily made to feel insignificant… invisible even. The psychologists think one has only to turn one’s back for her to withdraw quickly in shame. The spectators are advised, therefore, to read their morning newspapers, but under no circumstances to let her see that she is pictured on the front page. And so all eyes—or almost all eyes—have turned away and many of the spectators have already left to go back to the serious business of the world, some into the very same building she clings to. It is hoped that she will tire of the whole affair and disappear tonight at the latest; though if no one is watching, who will know about it?

  But now she is moving. At last. Up, it seems. No, not up. Wait. It looks as though she is simply changing her position in order to get a better view of the crowd below her. It’s good hardly anyone is watching. Most are obediently reading their papers, though a few stare off into the side st
reets. She looks puzzled and almost as though she just woke up. And now she stares at the horizon, East, then West.

  The solution to ignore her was obviously the correct one. Here she comes, carefully, down. With a kind of elephantine grace she places her big, flat feet onto the road below (one giant step for a giant woman… backing down). Perhaps the magician, if he’s watching her right now, is having second thoughts about filing for divorce because look at the tender way she places the fat, important executive on the sidewalk and he’s only slightly rumpled. See how carefully she steps around the crowd. No harm done. And the building is in fine shape. She seems changed, though. Perhaps it’s because she’s standing up straight for the first time. Quite a sight, too. The crowd is sneaking looks in spite of the directives not to. They can’t help it. Thank goodness she isn’t paying any attention to them. She steps out briskly. North. And soon disappears from view. The spectators sigh and fold their newspapers. They know they will have to wait for the six o’clock news to get the rest of the story. Within the hour they will all be back at work. Later they will see pictures of her taken by helicopters as she crosses the George Washington Bridge and heads West on Route 80, walking stolidly. Not looking back. Probably heading for wide-open spaces.

  Now some of them are saying that in spite of her size, or because of it even, she has had artistic validity after all. Like writing the longest poem in the world (as has already been done), this might be or, rather, have been—an act on a par with the Spiral Getty laid out in the Great Salt Lake. Well, let her have that small victory and let us get back to the business of the world… to our everyday tasks as guardians of the culture as a whole, back to that particular kind of enjoyment that is the enjoyment of small women (and of the smallest woman in the world) whom we treasure. Everyone does admit, though, that this huge woman was not without fascination of a sort. But time does fly. Wherever she is, by now one can assume she is no longer quite so young and so, not quite so interesting. Let her clump around out of sight, then, in a land she is more suited to: Grand Canyon or some giant redwood forest. It’s for the best.