The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  13th Moon, Vol. vi, no. 1-2, 1982

  The Futility of Fixed Positions

  FOR THE sake of clarity, a strong, avian nose. A pose not to be confused with the same pose by any other man. Head, not so much raised, but as though pulled from the shoulder, up, as though about to be lifted, so that, in the whole body, a sense of about to move forward. The eyes are half closed. Waiting, one could think, for a reason to open wider, and yet that reason does not manifest itself. The thoughts—and I do think I know something of the thoughts—preoccupied, certainly, with self, frequently with digestion. It’s preoccupation with the stomach that gives that proud and philosophical look. His digestion has always been bad, or at least, he is always noticing it and complaining of it.

  What little bit he knows of love, I think I taught him. Not that I have much to give in that line—my skills all lie in entirely other directions—but I knew enough, even in those early days, not to kick the cat.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he says. I do, I do, and willingly. And he’s often wrong. I tell him so and he’s grateful for it. In the long run, that is. Recently I struck him (lightly) to rebuke him. He had taken (or so I thought for just a moment) vaguely the outlines of a moose, and with the dignity of a moose, had proceeded with his comments in spite of my whispering into his huge and mooselike ear that he should retreat, and quickly, into the background. I had not, and I admit it, waited for a more suitable moment to reprimand him. I had allowed myself to do it on the spot and in front of two other people, but he behaved like a gentleman, not, at this time, grabbing me by the ankles and pulling me out of my chair.

  And I think I can, in general, call him a gentleman. In his own way, that is. Yes, generally a gentleman, with all that that means, especially in terms of aloofness. But kindly and thoughtful, no, though often worried that someone might think him not. But if he is (and it’s true, he is) so preoccupied with seeking approval, fame and praise, etc., from the populace, who is there left in all the world to praise me? I have often asked him that and will again I’m sure.

  “The universe,” he says, “has need of abstractions.”

  Recently, while studying (with the help of a T-square and ruler) the connections between music and architecture (and in a moment of deep preoccupation with pillars, plinths, triads, angles, and appoggiaturas), it occurred to him that one must move away, in the end, from seeking universals to seeking the universe. For that thought alone, he has achieved, or so he tells me, recognition of a sort. He says that laying this foundation for some future magnificent piece of work by another man is not an insignificant accomplishment. Others have not done so much in whole lifetimes of effort.

  Having achieved this much and proud to have done so, he has already turned to a different kind of study. Now he is hoping to be able to reduce emotions to their essentials and to arrange them in a hierarchy where “love,” as he says (quoting Mallarmé), “must be given no more consideration than fear, remorse, boredom, hate or sadness.” To Mallarmé’s group of emotions he has added several of his own choosing: loathing, malaise, mild psychological distress, deep depression, contempt, pride, jealousy, rage, and blame, among others.

  He saves the best emotions for last: ecstasy and joy, fervor, exhilaration, and so on, but he says he has no desire to feel one emotion more than another. He would want to make sure to give (hem all equal time in his poems if he wrote poems. Also though, as he says, all these emotions are going on consecutively inside him almost all the time, he generally hopes to exhibit a placid exterior. And it’s true, he has managed to look placid and completely unconcerned under almost all circumstances as long as I’ve known him, which is well over forty years.

  My own feelings tend more to the simple love/not-love sorts. That is, am I loved or am I not? My moods swing on that fact alone. Unfortunately I can never read his face. As I said, it is deliberately bland, though perhaps if I dared to look into his eyes…. They are small and deep set and, as already mentioned, half-closed; but I know, from some old memories, that they are blue. Not a brilliant blue, but blue enough nonetheless.

  He has always maintained that the door must remain shut between us and that we should, except occasionally, remain on our respective sides of it. He says I must make an effort to keep quiet and out of his way. Also an effort to protect him from everyday life that it not impinge on his working time. He believes that sex is an excuse for not doing productive work… an alibi. He doesn’t want to fool himself with sex. He is always telling me he can’t think about other emotions coldly and abstractly when I’m around bothering him. He says he is not concerned with mere irritableness nor with mood swings. He says real emotion is something quite different… something quite beyond the depressing fog in which we view each other. He says, “Find someone else to share your little life with or stay with me, as you wish, but I’m telling you you’ll regret it when you start cooking and washing socks for someone not worth cooking and washing socks for.”

  I was going to leave. I’ve said I would before. Even made it as far as the back seat of the car where I spent a tearful hour examining my own emotions and in their usual order: rage, guilt, hopelessness, then dependency, then love… one sort of love or at least it feels like love sometimes. And then what if he does become a famous man someday?

  But now, suddenly, everything changes and he says wild mood swings count. This morning’s brief bout of rage and grief brought a glimmer of interest. I could sense it even before he said anything. “If you must suffer, why not suffer for a good cause?” He only wants the facts. The “what” not the “why.”

  I never thought that I myself could become the object of his studies. I never even hoped for it. It’ll be nice to take part in some real way. Actually, I have already grown fat in order to give myself some reality in his eyes… some substance. To be worthy of note, if only as a fellow creature large enough to attract attention now and then. Large enough to be hard to ignore. It was the only alternative. At barely five feet, one doesn’t say, stand tall. One doesn’t bother to pull one’s self up to one’s full height. Neither does one say to one’s self, Speak up, when one’s voice, under stress, turns squeaky.

  So I never thought I’d be allowed into the laboratory, or to share in the long, deep thoughts, or sit waiting and watching as he thinks them. But now I’m thinking that perhaps someday I may even have my name alongside his on some article or other, or on a book he may write, as: “Assisted by my wife of forty-eight years, with love (of a sort) and appreciation. Without her, the book would not, could not, exist.” Something like that.

  Can I do it properly, whatever it is he wants me to do? Will I try too hard? What if a serious failure of emotionality right at the moment it might do me some good? Can I, at the very least, take on the appearance of emotion? And what will the first emotion be, humiliation or ecstasy?

  Standing mooselike at the laboratory door (the sweaty smell, the dull eye), he towers above me, thin, with paunch. He is wondering if I’ll be willing to submit to some mild forms of torture.

  Now if he tells me he never loved me, I’ll know it’s to elicit an emotional response. If he calls me insane it’s for a special reason. Perhaps it always has been. It would be nice to think so.

  Enter room. Not much there after all. One big, comfortable chair with footstool. Several small tables piled with papers. No empty space left on any of them to write. Must write in chair. Yes, clipboard there. Paper in it. At the top of page: a manual of despair and annoyances. Under that: Chronic reality, with a question mark. Then, and underlined: Alternatives to strong emotions, exclamation point. After that, a short paragraph. I read it while he clears papers off a straight chair for me to sit in.

  One evening when all desire and fascination had gone out of my life, I felt, for the first time, what I like to think of as the vertigo common to poets and philosophers, in fact, to artists and scientists of all sorts, though only the best. And in this state I experienced what might be called an emotion beyond all other emotion
s, and what’s more, completely abstract, and with it I felt a satisfaction beyond satisfactions, and yet the world was dull… at last dull, it seemed to me, and I thought: I am no longer a lover, but this was long ago and now I….

  But already he is sitting in the big chair and I’m sitting in the little one as though I acquiesce to everything that may happen here, and evidently it’s wired because he has pushed a button and given me a mild electric shock. I managed to hold myself stiff and pretended it hadn’t happened. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  He checks to see if it’s plugged in.

  “Is everything ready?”

  “Remember little emotions, like little virtues, don’t count.”

  “On the contrary,” I say.

  Perhaps we will start with my own personal tragedy. (If, for instance, he strokes my hand, I will cry.)

  “I’d stroke you if…. I’d most likely run my hands over your old body as though you were young and beautiful. I’d kiss. I might, that is. I’d probably run my fingers through your hair. Even murmur things. I could have done all these things forty years or so ago, but I would have felt nothing. You may have thought I didn’t know about them, but I did. And I could do all those things—think of it—right now and yet feel nothing. You, on the other hand-you see I know you better than you know yourself—you are a creature of everyday life… everyday love.”

  I’m trying to guess which emotion is involved here. I’m trying to feel something. Nothing comes. I was afraid of that. Should I fake it? And if I fake it, will he know? I smile tentatively, but already it’s too late.

  “Lack of affect.” He writes that down.

  I’m thinking that if he has, at any time in the past—or the present, for that matter—had a way with women, I certainly haven’t seen it.

  Another mild electric shock.

  “You’ve missed the pleasures of an open mind.”

  “On the contrary,” I say. I’m thinking that, more than anything, I don’t want to be known. That I will not be known—especially by him. That I will change so as not to be known. Change now, or at least, soon. To what, though? And for the worse or for the better?

  And what if I really did leave? Now while I’m still able to? Out into the other part of the house? My part of the house (kitchen, bedroom). What adventures lie in that direction? What liberation? What conflict? What excitement? But if I don’t submit to this, life will probably pass me by altogether and here, it seems, it may be just beginning. And, anyway, I don’t want to wander endlessly in search of a smaller man, one who’s more interested in sex and less inclined to confrontations with the cosmos.

  “I’ve changed,” I say. Nothing like saying it to make one have to do it. So, though I don’t know yet which direction of several to make my changes in, I tell him. I say it twice and hope he’s listening though I can’t be sure if he is or not. Which leaves me pretty much where I was before I said it.

  “Lean back, relax,” he says, “and shut your eyes.” (I don’t.) “Now tell me, are you giddy when looking up at the stars? Does the Milky Way scare you out of your wits? Does the thought of aeons make your heart beat faster? And then does that selfsame heartbeat take your breath away? If so, perhaps you aren’t as accustomed to the cosmos as I am. Winter/summer/winter/summer/winter again. I suppose you think they’re miracles.”

  “No, no,” I say, and, “Yes I do. I know!”

  “Perhaps you want to rest back into love… lean back in it; let the stars turn as they may and take reality in simple, sexual doses (as though that could save you)? And yet, always a little doubt to set at rest no matter if in love or not.”

  But I am staring at the far wall on which there is a monochromatic picture of a famous bridge. It is nothing but shadows (as is this room). I forget the name of it though I know I should know it… did know it once. So much for the names of things. I’m remembering that he once told me if only he could have a street named after him, no matter how small-one small street, one alley, one court, is all he asks-he’d feel much better about mortality, but I say it’s not enough. I have frequently forgotten whole cities, so that even if a hundred alleyways were named after him it couldn’t help much.

  “… no joy other than in this” he says. (I didn’t catch the first part. It may have been important.) “So instead of a return to bourgeois values, always a little doubt to set at rest.”

  Was that a question or is an emotion called for? I pick the first emotion that comes to mind and squeeze out a tear. Only one. One would think an isolated tear would be too small a thing for him either to notice or, if noticed, to admit the existence of, but now he is leaning forward and touching my knee. It’s been a long time since he did that. (He has always preferred being close from a distance and often said so.)

  “I could laugh with instead of at,” he says. “We could see eye to eye if only for an afternoon.”

  I can feel the tear drip down my cheek to chin and fall on my collar bone. Stops there. Not enough substance to it for it to go any farther.

  “I could look at you with delight. You’d see it on my face. I have devices right here in the laboratory. Devices you’ve never heard of. Something to drink. Something to smoke. I could promise an experience you’ve never had before with anyone, least of all with me. Afterwards, inner peace for sure. I could promise that or something very near it.”

  “If that’s a question, the answer is yes.”

  And there is, I see it now, a strange contraption collapsed in the corner of the room, partly hidden behind a pile of old newspapers, a rocking device with harness and with what might be wings. Combination black leather and black lace (some pink) and a bicycle seat, the long narrow kind for men. Has this been my rival all these years? However, cobwebs on it now and a lot of dust. Looks flimsy. Might be broken already by the look of it. How to back out gracefully if offered a ride on it, I wonder? (He hasn’t kept himself as pure as I thought. )

  But now—his finger must have slipped or (and I do know it’s true) tears make him angry, though this was only one—but now, a severe electric shock. I come to, head hooked on back of chair, my legs stiff out in front of me. As I try to sit up, I fall flat on my back on the floor. I turn from supine to prone, telling myself I should—could if I wanted to—at least be sympathetic. After all, he’s probably having a hard time too. All this work and still no fame at all that I can see. All the days cooped up in here. And who, if not I, to understand him? Who, if not I, to stay with him, loyal to the end? The very end. Who, if not I, no matter what happens? Still, all the failures do reflect on me. And perhaps a man gets the kind of love (as they say is the case with governments) the kind of love he deserves. Am I it, then? Do I serve some higher purpose not of my own choosing, merely a sort of sidelight of his life? The avenging angel or some such thing?

  I turn and bite him on the ankle. Rather hard, I think. (Should I have kissed it instead, avenger or not?) But it’s partly to attract attention—to say, Here I am down here, you blockhead. As though the world were not already painful enough as it is, he kicks out in annoyance. I think he thinks it’s the cat. He’s haunted me before just like this in my nightmares, kicking out at me in almost this same way, and though I might think I don’t deserve it, it isn’t as if I’ve lived my life without complaining, or had many moods of cheerful affection.

  But I think I have changed. I don’t think I would done such a thing as bite a few minutes ago… or, at least, not done it quite like that, through the sock and all (and not a very clean one, either). I believe I am quite different and becoming more so all the time. Certainly my next move is as unknown to me as it must be to him. I am, at last, unfathomable. Perhaps not to be grasped in a whole year of close observation. Just what I’ve always wanted to be: a surprise, whether a pleasant one or not. Also I can suddenly remember the name of that bridge, but have, for the moment anyway, forgotten his name (not to mention my own).

  “The cosmos,” he is saying, “is not as simple an object as some people se
em to think, nor on the other hand, as complicated as might be supposed by those who needlessly complicate things.”

  Suppose I could short-circuit not only the chair, but this whole area of the house? I look around on the floor for something metal. See a piece of yellow paper with a list of facts to face, facts to face written along the top. Under that such things as bleeding from the mouth; the death of children, especially one’s own (we have no children); being left out in the rain or-worse yet-sleet, and at night, no stars, just a reddish glow; being caught in a trap for a large animal or buried alive; bitten by a rabid rat (also at night, same red glow), or the dream of it and waking up screaming; and so on and on… I have already faced every single one of these facts, and a long time ago, and would tell him so to his face if I didn’t feel all tingly and happy-as-I-am for once, ears still ringing.

  “And,” he says, “speaking of the cosmos, a glimpse of it can sometimes make a man either less or more forlorn, depending on if the man has status or not. I suppose it’s the same with woman.”

  I don’t say, “on the contrary,” because now I don’t want him to notice me down here on the floor, but I’m thinking it’s the hand on the knee or the lack of, and not only not on the knee, but not on other places either, or seldom… though perhaps one is really forlorn because one’s breasts are no longer as firm as they used to be.

  He says, “If only my name had been Anatole or Marcello or (and especially) Nicanor!…”