The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  Anxious to please and to be pleased, Bog gave us sex. Bog loves life with love and sex in it. You can tell by all the goings on among the birds and the bees, the worms, the flowers… the passers-by, headwaiters, salesmen, people seen out of train windows, men of letters, men of action-and women too—even the most level-headed of them. Bog said, “Let there be sex,” and there was, and a lot of it, especially on the night side, and every creature had a lot of fun and had babies and the mothers turned as playful as their children and cooed and kissed. Girls were even named for the sex organs of plants, such as Lily, Rose, and Daisy. It turned out to be a game where everybody wins and Bog didn’t mind that. He saw that it was good and (usually) in the public interest.

  This is the symbol for sex:

  As is self-evident, it is two monthly ups and downs combined in one figure. Also, as is self-evident, it is the penis seen head onand the vulva:

  There is a kind of wispy nothingness all around us that, if it were gathered into one place, would hardly fill an ordinary picnic basket. That is the stuff of Bog. The teachers of touching say it has no feel at all, but if we think somebody strokes our cheeks sometimes in the evenings, that’s it, brushing by.

  (Silence is like that, too; sometimes we hear it whispering in our ears. That, also, is Bog.)

  Having been touched and standing in that heavenly light making appropriate gestures .… Are we more likely to succeed after these ceremonials?

  Sometimes, while expecting assistance and protection, we get nothing but bad weather. Sometimes he seems to favor slugs and toadstools over any of us.

  Innocent people drown every summer. Don’t ask why.

  He is a nonconforming, avant-garde god, inventive and playful. Witness the giraffe, the platypus, plants that bloom only once in four years, the ginkgo tree (and the word for it), peacocks, the sexual practices of the snail…. Get out from under your roofs and up on a hill or a tall building for an uncluttered view of the sky. Look! Out in the milky way and beyond, there are nothing but absurdities… a lot of crazy stars without—get this—hardly any pattern at all, simply strewn all over the sky every which way. One can hardly find a dipper, dragon or swan in a dozen of them. Sometimes the universe looks a lot like the top of my coffee table, completely out of control, or so it seems from down here. More cautious gods might at least have checked the lay of the sky before tossing things out so rashly. Who knows but what, later on, Bog may vote no to the whole bit in one final paroxysm of disgust, or out of carelessness, or simply because the whole thing’s no fun anymore.

  Entropy does not mean that the fire and fight have gone out of him.

  Bog’s penises: to infinity. Don’t laugh or think that’s wrong. It has to be that way. But being both eschatological and scatological, he will be the least of all to be censorious. What he wants is to be laughed at sometimes with a wink or leer, and other times he likes both arms upraised to the heavens and a shout or a good song about himself, but mostly he wants to be believed in.

  Bad news: You will all die.

  But smile. Make a joyful noise unto Bog and do not think: How could this be! And so suddenly! It could, it could. (Did you look in your tea leaves?) Even if you’ve done many miscellaneous holy acts, it happens.

  He is responsible for the lollipops, combs, pens, calendars (especially those), the tiny boxes of laundry flakes, and all the other free things including the air. He himself may be a kind of something extra, a sort of lagniappe of the universe (as if there wasn’t enough already even without him).

  How he sometimes gets his kicks: “I will offer thee three;” he says (in Second Samuel), “choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee.” Enemies, famines, floods, and/or pestilences. Locusts may come. Other things might happen in subways or unlit vestibules. (Once, my car keys fell into a street drain just when I was about to hurry home.)

  I bite my finger as hard as I can if I find myself thinking agnostic thoughts. But not too hard because sometimes a lesson can be so painful to learn that one forgets it as soon as one can.

  Bless us and bless our gross national product. Let our brakes hold and our gas be plentiful. Let us also find alternate sources of energy. And let the world keep twirling and the sun last in its present form as long as you can possibly manage it.

  But to him, actually, one silly solar system must seem much like another.

  from to

  infinity infinity

  Pulpsmith, Summer 1985

  Eclipse

  FINDING MYSELF improperly dressed and among strangers who all spoke better French than I did, and having forgotten to bring a gift… or, rather, having not realized that a gift was called for until I saw them piled up on a table by the door, I was wondering was it, perhaps, the wrong party all together, or was it the wrong day, or the wrong address? Was it even the wrong little town? (I suppose there’s a street named Harvard Place in almost every suburb.) And I was starved. I had skipped lunch in order to be ready to overeat later on at the party and then I had wanted to arrive fashionably late. It was, by then, after half past nine.

  I thought I would just slip in and grab some avocado dip and pretzels but this turned out not to be that sort of party. Waitresses in black-and-white uniforms passed trays with hot things to be dunked in Japanese sauces kept warm over candles. I moved towards these trays, first one and then another, but either the tray would recede faster than I could make my way through the crowd or, whenever I finally reached one, the food was already just gone. All I wanted was a few bites of almost anything to tide me over for the walk back to the train station where I thought I could probably pick up a stale peanut bar from some dispensing machine. I actually felt weak from hunger and discouragement and from the idea of the walk back to the station and then the train ride back to the city. At this hour I knew the trains didn’t come often. I would have to wait for a long time on the empty platform nibbling my peanut bar. Had this been the party I expected it to be, I’m sure I’d have been able to get a ride back. I sat down in an ornate antique chair wondering, not so much what to do next, but when to do it, all the while trays of food hurried by over my head on their way to people who were standing up.

  I’m not good at parties, anyway. Especially not this sort of party. I confuse Hess with Hiss, eschatology with scatology, anathema with anachronism, Bilbao with Balboa, Simone de Beauvoir with Simon Bolivar… If I drink I fall asleep.

  Suddenly I heard loud laughter, louder than any other laughter in this room full of laughter, and I looked up to see a tall old woman in a sort of Turkish outfit: pink and purple turban, several scarves (same colors), loose pants. I guessed that she would have an accent and that her teeth would remind me of her skeleton. Have compassion, I told myself, but I was too hungry to do so. Yes, it was to me she was coming. I had hoped to remain inconspicuous. I could have turned around right then and left, I was still so near the door.

  “You have arrived, my Darling.” She kissed me. She blew on me when she talked. “Why not telling me you’re here? Why not speaking up?”

  “I should have,” I said. “I suppose I should have.” Was she thinking I was a long lost relative? Or had she, perhaps, seen some of my poetry? though I had only published a few poems and those in unknown literary magazines. But how nice if she had seen some and liked them.

  “Come.” She held my elbow, pressing on a nerve. It could have been by mistake, but it could have been that she was practiced at holding people by their funny bone. She steered me, with little twinges of pain, through the crowd to the piano. “Here,” she said, “what will you be playing first so I can tell everyone?”

  I’ve never played the piano in my life and I said so frankly—I even mentioned (modestly) something about my poetry—but I knew she would be very angry.

  “You are Doreen or not?” she asked.

  For a moment I wanted to deny it. I tried to think quickly of other names that I might rather be called, names I’ve always liked, like Julia or Eva, but at that moment I could only t
hink of Mary and Betty and Joanne, names as unpleasant to me as my own or even more so, and so I found myself answering that, yes, that was my name.

  “You were to play the piano,” she said, but I insisted that I couldn’t. I was watching her teeth. Obviously they were her real ones.

  “The flute then, of course, my darling. I’m so sorry. Why here it is right here,” and she handed me a flute that lay, ready, on top of the piano. I wondered whose it really was, but I took it without thinking.

  “No,” I said.

  “Your name is Noreen,” she said, “and we know who you are.”

  “Did you say Noreen or Doreen?” I asked. “I thought you said Doreen. My name is Doreen.”

  “What a strange coincidence,” she said, “that you should play together and that one of you should be named Doreen and the other Noreen. I believe you must have made that up just now to sound nice, my Darling.” She put her arm around me. “On the other hand,” she said, “I suppose that’s one of those things so true to life that it has to be real. No one would ever be thinking something like that up—Noreen and Doreen!”

  “But I don’t play the flute ,” I said.

  “Well then what are you here for?” She removed her arm from around my shoulders and leaned her head back in order to look at me closely through the lower half of her bifocals.

  Why was I here indeed. Why was I here? I certainly had no answer to that and could only stand and stare down at my worn-out sneakers. She told me to hurry into the kitchen at once, and help out there where I was needed or she would have the police after me and that I shouldn’t eat anything until the party was over.

  I moved quickly away from her, trying to look as though I knew where the kitchen was. I wandered aimlessly among the guests for what seemed a long time, hearing bits and pieces of conversations in many languages, some in English.

  I didn’t suppose that the police really arrested people who got into the wrong parties by mistake, still, perhaps they did in the rich parts of town. At first I didn’t notice that I still held the flute. I certainly could be arrested for stealing a flute.

  A flute is, actually, quite large, shiny and noticeable. People did notice it. And me. They would look at the flute and then study my face as though they were thinking: So that’s what a flute player looks like. At first I thought I would stand it up in with the diefenbachia, or perhaps lay it down in a corner next to the wall, but I didn’t want any harm to come to it and I didn’t know what sort of things would harm it. I was sure whoever’s flute it was didn’t want it to be carelessly handled by strangers. I held it carefully, back over my arm, one end against my cheek, rather like one might hold a baby to be burped, and I wondered how a real flute player would hold it.

  Soon there was the sound of the piano (Chopin) and I left, to escape it, through the big glass doors at the back of a hall and found myself standing at the edge of a drained swimming pool (a few fall leaves clustered in one corner of it). I was wishing the lights were turned out so I could see the moon better. I had managed by then to grab a few carrot sticks and some raw broccoli, but they stuck in my throat. I couldn’t swallow.

  Then I felt myself pushed from behind. I thought I was going to fall into the empty pool, here at the deep end, but the arms pushed and then held me back. I was safe in the arms of a short, wide… in the arms of a powerful man.

  All of a sudden I wanted to be dressed in something low necked and black. I wanted one of those very, very fine gold chains around my neck. I wanted expensive little shoes, all strap, that make your feet look tiny. I wanted earrings and a soft shawl.

  Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and know something has stopped—a sound has stopped.

  And then they did turn out the lights. Everyone came outside and there began an eclipse of the moon which everyone knew was about to happen but me. They didn’t watch long, though, but wandered back in and soon the lights were on again and the eclipse hardly half over. The man’s hand was on my arm through all of this and I had noticed by then that his beard hid several defects around his mouth and jaw or, rather, tried to, and that his hair was combed to hide his bald spot, but I didn’t mind, especially when I found out that he was, though not a full fledged psychologist, a student of Jung and a specialist in dreams.

  “I dreamt,” I said, “that I couldn’t get over a wall, but that if I could have gotten over it there would only have been another wall beyond that one, and another and another. I also dreamt I was imprisoned in my jacket, but when I finally struggled out of it, there was another jacket just like it underneath.”

  “Of the three primary emotions,” he said, “fear and hope are the easiest to deal with.” Then he told me how much he loved the sound of the flute, and then he asked me my name.

  “Doreen,” I said, suddenly not sure. “Though perhaps you like Noreen better.”

  We were now seated in deck chairs and he had managed to get me some little cheese dumplings and some champagne. I began to feel light headed very quickly and such warmth for him simply for having gotten me some food I could manage to swallow that I decided to confess.

  “If I don’t play the flute,” I said, “that woman will kill me, but I can’t play the flute.”

  He was leaning very close to me and I saw, under the open neck of his wine-red shirt, that he was the one wearing the little gold chain.

  “I wish I did play the flute, but for you.” (This after the second glass of champagne.) “Only for you.”

  “What you lack is confidence. Though I’m not actually an analyst, I have office hours every Wednesday evening. Are you free….” Now he was whispering close to my ear. “Are you free on Wednesdays?”

  “Yes.” I merely mouthed the word.

  “And now, tonight, you will play the flute better than you ever have before. I guarantee it. Lean back and look at this little light.” He had a tiny pocket flashlight on the end of a key chain and he held it in front of me rocking it back and forth slightly.

  But I was wondering, just then, what about a Jungian who almost throws someone into an empty swimming pool?

  “No,” I said, looking at it.

  “You’ll do it for me.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe for you I’ll do it.”

  “Then watch the light.”

  Behind him I could see the moon, which now had a misty halo around it. He, too, seemed luminous in that light. A kind of moon himself.

  “Noreen, you feel very comfortable,” he said. “Extraordinarily comfortable.”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Comfortable and confident. The sounds of the party recede into the background. They don’t bother you. The light mist feels good on your face. Almost warm. You breathe deeply. Your eyes shut now. You are deep inside yourself. Deep inside. And deep inside you know you play the flute beautifully. You have a gift to give. Joy and beauty. You are calm and ready to give it. Calm and clear headed. Ready. Now you will play better than you ever have before. The notes will come easily. All is clear. Bright. The full moon. The eclipse. You are ready. Come, Noreen. Come.” He pulled me up.

  “But I wasn’t hypnotized,” I said.

  “Yes you were. Come.”

  He led me off to the old lady and told her I was ready to play.

  “Voila!” (Her arm around me.) “Vous avez décidé enfin. You’re not being any more so coy, Mademoiselle Doreen. Thank you, Emmanuel. You always work miracles.”

  And so they all sat down and the pianist, Noreen (Doreen?) came and Emmanuel (Emmanuel!) stood at the back looking at me with beady black eyes and smiling in anticipation.

  I was huge, luminous, confident, lucid at last. Everything he said was true and I was his, Emmanuel’s flute player. First I blew my nose and then raised the flute awkwardly, my elbow out, and I stared straight at the old lady. I was thinking, I can win. I can best her, and it must have shown in my eyes because she took a few steps back. I held the flute as I thought it should be held and pursed my lips and blew. And blew and
blew and all you could hear was the breathy, noteless blowing. Noreen/Doreen sat at the piano staring at me while I continued blowing until the old lady ran from the room, her long scarves flying out behind her. She was making tiny little squeeks more like I might have made, earlier in the evening, when she had grabbed me by my funny bone. And I blew and blew and blew and when I looked back to where Emmanuel had been standing, I saw that I had blown him away, too. And still I blew. I had the self-confidence. People crept away one by one. I heard their cars go. Pretty soon I stopped (it really hadn’t taken all that long) and then I ate. All that I wanted. And then I walked to the station and waited almost an hour for the train, still self-confident and happy. Still glowing. And I never found that house or man again. (I never tried to. I knew I couldn’t.) But I will always remember him, Emmanuel, and the brilliant moonlight that one night when I had self-confidence for a couple of hours or so.

  The Little Magazine, vol. 15, no. 2, 1986

  The Circular Library of Stones

  THEY SAID ALL this wasn’t true. That there had been no city on this site since even before the time of the Indians . . . that there had been no bridge across the (now dried up) river and no barriers against the mud. “If you have been searching for a library here,” they said, “or for old coins, you’ve been wasting your time.”

  For lack of space I had put some of the small, white stones in plant baskets and hung them from the ceiling by the window. I don’t argue with people about what nonexistent city could have existed at this site. I just collect the stones. (Two have Xs scratched on them, only one of which I scratched myself.) And I continue digging. The earth, though full of stones of all sizes, is soft and easy to deal with. Often it is damp and fragrant. And I disturb very little in the way of trees or plants of any real size here. Also most of the stones, even the larger ones, are of a size that I can manage fairly well by myself. Besides, mainly it’s the stones that I want to reveal. I don’t want to move them from place to place except some of the most important small ones, which I take home with me after a day’s digging. Often I have found battered aluminum pots and pans around the site. Once I found an old boot and once, a pair of broken glasses; but these, of course, are of no significance whatsoever, being clearly of the present.