The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  Then there were those two people, so unlike me, from whom I was accused of descending. No one told the truth, not even others of my own age. They giggled and whispered and told “under-a-sheet” jokes. False. Even the jokes. I knew that at the time. At least I knew it was false for me. All of”us” knew that.

  We thought we’d learn the real story when we were old enough, but we never seemed to get old enough, and then we got used to things as they seemed to be and I and we kept on pretending we were like everybody else, did what was expected of us, dressed like them, talked like them. What else was there to do? We had no other models. Besides, we were afraid of who we were. We hardly dared to think about ourselves at all sometimes, especially as we grew older, for fear of what we might find out.

  We all remember it like this, but now we are trying to think back… back to before we had been given so many wrong answers—right for “them” but wrong for “us”—back to when we were saying: How come all these bridges, and Eiffel Towers (two of them now!), and clothes? Back to when we were laughing at shoes and umbrellas.

  Our captors are right. We must have come from other planets. And, as we live here now, confined to this space, our differences from “them” become more and more clear. We actually are “we”and they are clearly “they.” Take our names, for instance. We are Rhodanthe, Leatrice, Alastair, Diamanta, Celandine, Ethelbert, Zipporah, Odelette…. The guards’ names, on the other hand, are Jim, Ben, Sue, Don, Bill, Tom, etc. They are, clearly, not from the same world as we.

  We’ve had little luck remembering our planet. “Airy,” someone said. “Free,” another. “No clothes, of course. No clothes needed.” “No higher values. No higher values needed.” “Or at least we never talked about them” “Or perhaps that’s all we talked about.” “In any case, we were always good. No morals, therefore. No morals needed.” “No rain.” “Yes, rain. It’s needed.””No, no rain except in the mountains. It rolls down to the valleys. It covers the plains with just the right amount of water. Poppies bloom.”

  “Earth men,” we say, and often, “we must have come in peace. As far as we can tell, we must have come in peace, bearing gifts of technological advances which we have forgotten and are, therefore, unable to give to you at the present time.” (Surely we must have come with plans for a better and fairer life than this one is.)

  The guards stare at us in strange ways; hostile, but also as if admiring, and in truth, there is much to admire. Perhaps they are falling in love. They are cruel, but that may also be a sign of their love. There are strange electricities that pass between us.

  Our prison is large, a palace of a prison: high, rounded ceiling, tall windows, mirrors. Small birds, nesting atop its pilasters add their tweets to our songs. It’s so large that even with all of us here, standing around in little groups of four or five, there’s plenty of room. Perhaps this is deliberate on their part. Perhaps this great hall is meant to suggest outer space and we, as we stand here, clusters of planetary systems. Perhaps they hope this will help us to remember. We play their game. We circle in planetary ways. We sing in thirds, fifths, and octaves—music of the spheres. (We have high, sweet voices.) When we dance, and we often do dance, it is in stately imitation of what goes on in the heavens, though as it gets later in the night, after only the young are left, the dances change—degenerate, some would way—to wild imitations of punk and rock. Good imitations, as with everything we do.

  I am young. Am I young? They’ve kept telling me my age all along, but I never did believe them any more than I believe any of the other things they say. I can feel how young I am—slim and willowy. I think young thoughts. I dance when the young dance. I’m so young as to know only as much as the young know.

  There is one particular guard who watches me. (Why would he bother if I were old?) I never look at him. I flow, twirl, I nap my long, cold hands. I pretend to play the spinet. (I’m the one who looks like Wanda Landowska.)

  We hear rumors that there will soon be torture, but we have already confessed—have confessed, in fact, from the start, before we were sure of anything, before we understood what they were asking. “Guilty,” we said, “whatever the charges.” We’ve often felt we shouldn’t be here on this earth, we should be somewhere else or never born, if, indeed, we were born. (To ourselves, we simply appeared. “I am here,” we said, looking in the mirror.)

  But they are saying that torture will help us to remember. They say it’s for our own good. They say we will, at last, know ourselves as we want to know ourselves. So when that particular guard takes me to a side room, I am forewarned. I don’t expect it to have anything to do with love. (Though who can guess what “love” means to any other creature? I don’t even know what I mean by it.) But why did he pick me? Did I give some unconscious, secret signal?

  He is a wide man (not fat) with soft, practiced hands. When he’s finished there won’t be a mark on me. I’m thinking he would make a good lover, knowing what he does about the hidden places for pain.

  He doesn’t accept any of my answers. I had, even before, wondered what sort of Bach-like planet Wanda Landowska would have come from: water flowing with the sound of triplets, three giraffes against four white hillocks, two moons, the whole sky twinkling like the music does. But the guard keeps saying no until I get so tired my mind works in a different way, and I see he was right to go on like this. Now I do know—or at least my mouth knows. “Outer space is sweet,” I hear myself say, “and full of dust. It glitters. My head aches at the thought of it.”

  “True,” he says, and takes his thumb from my wrist bone.

  We have been through a lot together by now. Do we love each other? The torture has been with such sweet, slow passion. He has even said “My love” though as if inadvertently… absentmindedly.

  But now he has put his thumb back on my wrist and his other thumb at my elbow. His left foot is poised over my instep. He holds the long end of my scarf in his teeth as though to cut short my next words. I speak quickly. I tell myself to stick to the stars as they are perceived by “them.” “We floated for centuries in the glimmer of space,” I say, “always as young as we are at this very moment.” But the torture has already begun again.

  They always say to live in the present, but I want to be free of that tyranny. I will skip the now. I will move on to another time before now can catch me up in it. I will levitate into the future. I am already dizzy with acrophobia. But I have to fill in these few seconds of the now while I take the jump beyond them. I have to keep talking. “This world,” I say, and I have already said it, “in what other world than this one would the moon be as this moon is and the sun as this sun, and clouds, sunsets, dew, smoke, oceans….”

  He pulls the scarf tight—has already pulled it. He has already said, “My dear, dear lady.”

  If I could have spoken, I would have said, “I love you just as if I really loved you,” but I can only sputter. Then suddenly, he lets my green gauze go. Perhaps he can see I’m not in the now anymore. He lets go of me completely and I fall at his feet, nothing left of me to hold myself up by. I’m as if fit only for a watery world. Perhaps that’s it: water world! But I can hardly speak.

  Has this, then, already been the final moment between us? (He has lifted me up. He has held me in a lover’s grip, one hand on my breast.) I wanted to make the moment last. I wanted to be in it, but it eluded me. I lived in the future instead. I was already back here, surrounded by mirrors and by “us.” I hardly noticed that he held me before he had already dropped me in the middle of the great hall. Without his powerful arms about me and one hand on my breast, without the bristles of his beard against my cheek, without his rapt… enraptured attention, I’m but a rag—a sweaty, panting thing—imitation of a thing. I lie here being me only as if me, the birds as if birds (tweeting and swooping), my gauzy scarf as if wings.

  But no. A change. “Look!” I manage to croak it out. “The real me, and yet—imagine that—only a little different from the way I was before!” I’m thi
nking one tiny change can go a long way, but he’s already down the hall, traveling at the speed of time. It’s too late to call him back. It’s too late to tell him I’m believing what “they” tell me as fast as I can.

  Verging on the Pertinent, Coffee House Press, 1989

  Secrets of the Native Tongue

  I HAVE BEEN INVITED to participate in a symposium on modem linguistics, which I know absolutely nothing about, but my transportation will be paid. I will be put up in what is described as a hotel of nineteenth-century grandeur only one block from the beach. All meals will be included as well as the banquet at which I will be expected to give the keynote address. I am wondering why I, of all people, have received this invitation when I notice that two of the letters of my name are wrong and two other letters are reversed, so I think: of course the invitation is meant for someone else with almost the same last name as mine. However, it does have my correct address, and, since my last name is a hard one and is frequently misspelled, I write back accepting the invitation.

  I have refused so many things over the years, I think it’s time to accept something—time to reach out, particularly to the world of knowledge and success. This could be the first step of many steps to come in a general plan for self-enrichment.

  And it isn’t as if I don’t have a few weeks to prepare for it, time to dip into some books on the subject, time to take a few public speaking classes, time to take, consecutively, one-week cram courses in French, Spanish and German, time to lose a little weight (possibly all fifteen pounds by then), time to buy a whole new wardrobe two sizes smaller, get rid of my (I must admit it) slovenly look, wear a lot of eye make-up.

  I might not have accepted so quickly if I hadn’t, as a matter of fact, already embarked on a massive campaign of self-improvement, at least to the extent that I had already made out long lists of things to do and not do from now on: get up earlier, clean up, eat less, holler less, smile a lot and so forth. Also become adept at something, if only one little thing. Show what I’m capable of, whatever that may be (though why not modern linguistics?). Opportunities have been few-have been lacking altogether, actually. My own fault. I’ve read that. Always your own fault and I suppose that’s true, but, for one thing, I thought life would be a lot longer than it is. I thought there would be time. That things would happen, and now, something is happening. I feel pretty good as I mail the acceptance. I think I’m right to say yes, even though I can no longer consider myself to be an object of desire.

  Ludicrous to attempt to appear younger. Perhaps, at my age, ludicrous to attempt anything at all, but I keep telling myself that it is no small feat to have gotten this far. It must have taken a modicum of courage merely to stay alive in the face of the many setbacks of a long and neither particularly happy nor productive life…. But, actually, I’ve not had set-backs. To fail, one must have, I suppose, tried. Well, now I will.

  Courage! I tell myself, for now even more courage will be called for. There’s the fear of academics to be dealt with, and the fear of those who write books, the fear of experts, and, of course, the fear of men in general, and women, too.

  In Saussure I find out that the linguistically significant parts of the vocal apparatus are: lips, tongue, upper teeth (I have not realized that the lower teeth are not directly involved with the production of language. That’s one of their secrets I’ve learned already), the palate (front and back), uvula, glottis…. “The oral cavity offers a wide range of possibilities.” I memorize it to repeat at some later time should the occasion arise. I’m thinking that, while I’m at this symposium, I might even create a few new words myself, and, perhaps if I try hard, I can discover one new sound in which the lower teeth are linguistically significant.

  In spite of all my careful preparation and my feeling that I’ve come, in the last six weeks, closer than I’ve ever been before to being an intellectual of sorts, the moment I enter the hotel lobby I see that I have made a terrible mistake. I forgot that academics are inclined to rumpled browns and grays; to corduroys and tweed; to, if elegance at all, a simple elegance, even the women. My new clothes are all wrong. (Unfortunately I have dressed to impress myself, not them.) I hunker down into myself as I register at the front table, but they notice me anyway. I sign my name as I always do. I’m not pretending I’m that other name. They look at each other and whisper. “She’s here. That’s the one.” I hear it all down the hall. I don’t speak to any of them. I hurry to my room, remove the heavy jewelry and comb my freshly blued gray hair into a knot behind my head. Wipe off all my lipstick but leave the eye shadow and my nice new long lashes. Unfortunately I have only one black sweater with which to cover up my glitter, my peacock greens and purples (and it’s hot), and I have no other shoes than these of silver. Perhaps I can transcend my clothes with my dignity. Or perhaps I can be incomprehensible in the best sense of the word. Ambiguous. Enigmatic. At any rate, I will try to stay in the dim light (if there is any) and look proud but, at the same time, sincere—very sincere.

  I come back down. Enter grand ballroom for the opening reception. I’m trying to forget that I was already seen by many of them in the lobby with my blue hair piled on top of my head. No dim light. I hear again “There she is. Here she comes,” and so forth. How to walk in with everyone looking at me? Keep head up. Affect a slight springiness of step, toes first, hands extended just a tiny bit, balance perfectly centered (as best I can, that is, on these high heels), not too much roll from side to side (black sweater buttoned to the neck)…. Why, a whole room full of them here, and standing upright on two feet as though it were the most natural thing in the world! They’ve gotten used to it and so have I, balancing, just as if it hadn’t taken a million-maybe millions of years to evolve to this point. As if it was perfectly normal to be walking around on their hind legs, to be hairless except for a tuft on the top of the head and tufts here and there in other places, and to be (and completely arbitrarily!) one or the other of two existing sexes. Alive and in a state of uncertainty! Alive and in motion and at this single point in time! I can hardly breathe at the wonder of it.

  And here I am, upright and among them!

  Well, I always did yearn to wake up some day as a completely different person and in a completely different place. I think from the moment I knew that I was I, somehow it wasn’t the right I. Perhaps now it is, and I am changed enough. I am who I’ve always wanted to be. And (and also as I’ve always wanted) here I am appearing suddenly as the mysterious stranger from who-knows-where. So everything is coming true, and finally. You make your own life, they say, and I’m doing that at last, and it’s not quite as hard as I thought it would be because here I am now, already surrounded by several scholars from distant universities. All admiring me. I hope I don’t inadvertently let slip a grammatical error.

  “I’m glad you finally decided to attend one of our little gatherings. I’ve appreciated your books so much.”

  Books! My God, why didn’t I think to look up the books I’ve written instead of struggling through all that Saussure, Fries, and Todorov? I don’t even know the titles of them. Still, I find, at least for the moment, that there’s not much I’m called upon to do in the way of response except to say, “Thank you,” and “How nice of you to say so,” smile a lot, murmur once or twice phrases I’ve memorized such as: “Explication du texte” and, “The sign is always arbitrary.”

  I must be careful, though. Laugh beginning to get too loud. (Mother always said my laugh was raucous.) Certainly such a laugh would take away all my mystery and glamour, if one of my age may be said to have any of either. Still, I don’t feel glamour’s completely out of the question, nor is the fact that I might have written some of those books, whatever they are. Can appearances—and by appearances I mean this whole setting with myself here, waving my fringed scarf, one plastic bracelet clacking against the others—can appearances lie to such an extent that I haven’t even written one of all those books? Or even one little part of one of them? I think not.

  �
�We must abandon our word-centered thinking about language,” I venture to say (quoting from Fries). It must have been the right thing, for now several young professors of both sexes are asking me to walk out with them to the beach. It seems there’s a linguistic volley ball game going on between the tagmemics people and the Chomskyites, and they’re asking me to take part. I decline. I say it’s because of my age and my high-heeled shoes. They say, of course, “Bare feet,” and “You’re not old.” I laugh from my highest registers to low. A bit too loud, I know, but I’ve done it worse than that and probably will again sooner or later. They leave for the beach, but three young men stay. (The real reason I didn’t go was that I didn’t know which side I’m supposed to be on or rooting for.)

  “And what are you working on now?”

  (I’ve overheard a few things in the meantime and I already have a good answer to that.)

  “I’m beginning a long work on the diphthong.”

  “Fascinating.”

  They’re hanging on my words. They’re wondering what I’m going to say next.

  “Some fundamental problems still await solutions.”

  “How modest of you not to have brought any of your books with you.”

  I’m thinking: here I am being noticed by important scholarly men and not even all of them young ones, for here come two older ones to join us.