“If you want to consider phonemes over morphemes, that’s quite all right with me,” I say, more for the benefit of the older men who have just arrived than for the three young ones. The oldest of them seems almost my age and has thick black eyebrows contrasting with his white hair, and very dark and, I think, suspicious eyes. When he looks at me I wonder, suddenly: What of the sensual pleasures of intellectuals at play, and of linguists in particular?
“Are you speaking ironically?” He asks it.
I wink and try to look sly. (Actually I’ve no idea how I ought to mean it.) “Those that are linguistically naive,” I say, “do not understand that sound is merely a substance to be put in use by language.” I had been surprised, too, when I read this in Saussure. I had no idea either. I confess that now. “Not so long ago,” I say, “I had no idea either.”
No one answers. Perhaps I shouldn’t have confessed.
Then I remember an apt quote from Fries-the-son: “’Language is used to fill awkward silences,’” I say, “’once social contact,’ as in this very case, ‘has been made.’”
They all laugh. It was the right thing to say. I see that in their eyes—in his eyes.
Things go well. By late afternoon my future has already become a foregone conclusion. I have, and in just a few hours, accepted several invitations to lecture at universities all over the country. I’ve said a tentative, yes, to taking a job at a well-known college not far from where I actually live. Only two days a week on campus and that’s called three-quarters time. (I never realized how easy academic work was though I did know about the long vacations.) “I’m honored,” I say, modestly looking at the floor—my silver shoes. I have been saying that frequently this whole last hour, and, in truth, I am honored. I am, finally, to be given my due. I begin to enunciate every word clearly (especially after this last offer)… every syllable, the way the very best linguists would enunciate them. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy. What it is, is I’m reaping the rewards of my courage. They could, all of them, do worse than to learn from me. What I’ve needed all these years was just a little praise. I didn’t understand that until right this very minute, now that I’ve had the courage to come and get it. There’s a TV set in my room here at the hotel, and I’m sure there’s a good Saturday afternoon movie on, but would I watch it? Not with that older man looking into my eyes. (Though where has he gone?)
By now there’s a large crowd in the room. One can hardly push one’s way across it, but suddenly I hear a rustling—a whispering. People pull back, pressing against each other, leaving me exposed and alone, and as though I come from another world entirely.
Hold glass by stem, first finger and thumb only. Take one sip. Force laugh back and, instead, smile. Confidently. Across the floor the real me appears. I don’t know how I know, but I do. It is the Isabella Présempailles.
She’s very small and dressed all in brown, several shades of it. She’s like them in their tweeds and corduroys. Hair pulled back. Can’t weigh more than ninety at the most. Flat-soled shoes, though she could use more height. I would tower over her even without my high heels. Beside her is that man with the black eyes and caterpillar eyebrows. He is whispering into her ear. He has to lean far down to do it. I may be old, still I was hoping for a lover from among the learned—the mysterious learned (though not any longer quite so mysterious since I, myself, have become one of them). But perhaps all this time the look in his eyes was suspicion. Yes, that would account for the starey quality. The piercing look that I had hoped was meant to undress me, really only wanted to undress me figuratively speaking.
It’s so quiet you can hear the sound of the waves outside. No, no. It’s the air conditioning system.
Suddenly she, the real me, begins to sneeze. Probably an allergy. Her nose is red. I, too, have been troubled by the same problem, though, surprisingly, not at all since I got here. Fame has been good for me. It has cured my sneezing.
And now I do let my laugh ring out. I lean my head back and laugh like my mother said I never should. “The oral cavity offers a wide range of possibilities,” and that’s true. It is a diphthong laugh. If I know anything about diphthongs, and I think, by now, I do, this is one—or, rather, several in a row. I don’t know how they count them, if by two’s or three’s or what. I will research that later and put the answer in my new book.
“And this is Madame Présempailles.” It is he who introduces us. He says it once, presenting each to each, one name for both. She sneezes. I nod, looking down at her from my high-heeled shoes.
Are we not, standing here together, living examples of two linguistic viewpoints, the synchronic versus the diachronic? I, the synchronic and in the here and now. She, belonging to the past and (possibly) the future. But I think it’s just as well if I don’t mention that out loud. Her allergies make her look terrible, and, sneezing as she does, how can she expect to give the keynote address?
“Who is this person?” I ask. “I didn’t catch the name.”
“Isabella Présempailles.”
“Is this person expected to speak tonight?”
My meaning is clear to all. No one answers. Of course no one can, not even the real me. Not even the handsome older man beside her.
I’m thinking that what she needs is a little fame and fortune such as I have. That would stop those allergies. Shall I tell her that? Lean down and say it, loud enough so he will hear me and see the kindness in me? My largesse?
I remember an old saying: “Eating a mouse includes its tail.” I do owe her something, I suppose, though it sticks in my throat.
But I want to be the one to walk out on the beach tonight, if not with him, then with some smaller man, or a balding one, or one with ordinary eyes. I don’t care as long as it’s with some linguist or other of the opposite sex.
There. She has only to look into my eyes to start her sneezing again. There. Her handkerchief is out. As much, I think, to hide my face from her… or maybe for her to hide her own face in. Wiping her nose, her alibi. Perhaps that’s the purpose of people’s allergies. It’s why they have them. Perhaps it was that way for me, also, hide behind the sneezes, get lost in my handkerchief, not be seen except as that: sneezing. I have been fat for the same reason… maybe the same reason that she is very thin. Both of us wanting to disappear one way or another, I, into my flesh, my face unrecognizable, the features all gone to mush. But that has changed. I changed it. I took control of my own life. When opportunity knocked, I answered. And one thing I’m sure of is that I am certainly almost the Isabella Présempailles, except for only a couple of misplaced letters. And I have made something of myself these last few weeks, achieved this much so far, which is a great deal. Her joys are, clearly, the lonely ones, and she has those… has always had them. My joys are these, which she can’t deal with anyway, it seems. I will not let them be taken away after all the hard work I’ve done to make this happen.
“Eating a mouse includes its tail,” indeed, but maybe it means the opposite of what I, at first, thought. Yes, I will see it through.
“Is this person expected to speak?” I say it again, this time standing on her foot, the fringe of my scarf hanging down into her eyes.
She has such a sneezing fit, then, that she has to leave. There’s no question about it, she has to, but I make it so she must pull hard to get her foot out from under mine. He goes with her. I’m not surprised. She shouldn’t be left alone in that state.
But later on I am the one on the beach with him. We found each other after supper, he, in running shorts and sweat shirt, and I, hot though it still is, my black sweater buttoned to the neck. (They say sweating takes off pounds, and I can still afford to lose several more.)
“She’s a pitiful creature,” he says right away. “I could not persuade her to come out to watch the sunset.” He looks at me (piercingly). “You two are so very different.”
“‘In language there are only differences,’” I say, quoting Saussure again, “and I suppose that’s true in life
, too.”
“A complicated situation.”
And I, again from Saussure: “‘Language being what it is, we shall find nothing simple in it.’” Then I switch to Sapir: “‘It almost goes without saying that two languages, A and B, may have identical sounds but utterly distinct phonetic patterns.’” Of course I’m thinking how our names are, to all intents and purposes, the same.
“Which are you, A or B?”
I clack out my long, long laugh. It’s getting so I’m not as afraid of it as I was when Mother was around, but, even so, I know Mother was right. It’s a nervous laugh and certainly of the lower classes. Not a single one of the linguists has a laugh at all like mine.
“A mouth and an ear are different organs,” I say, only slightly misquoting Miller. (How can I go wrong if I stick, basically, to quotes? Certainly I won’t inadvertently sound uneducated or perhaps even uncouth.)
Now he’s laughing. It was a serious quote which I found in the middle of a scholarly article, but he’s laughing.
“That’s from George A. Miller,” I say.
The sun has gone down. I hardly noticed. It was him and his stringy legs I was looking at. Stars are popping out.
“I believe we met a long time ago,” he says. “I remember out on the end of a dock. We lay on our stomachs and watched the water lapping around the pilings, and the stars reflected in it. Do you remember any such thing? It was you, I think. You were… thinner….”
“You know,” I say, “what really did surprise me… I mean I was surprised that I hadn’t known it before, and that was, that” (and then I quote from Fries) “’The graphic shapes we call “numerals” are not alphabet signs but “word signs.”’”
“I never know how to take you,” he says and laughs again. “But I gather you don’t want to remember. I suppose it’s just as well.”
“The simplest thing one can do in the presence of a spoken utterance is to listen.” (From Miller again.) But I really do want to remember.
“I wonder that you never married.”
That’s something I’ve often wondered myself. Am I so ugly? So repulsive and I don’t even know it? And yet why would anyone have lain prone with me on a dock watching waves if I hadn’t had some attraction? I wonder, though, would I have sacrificed my linguistic career for marriage? Might I sacrifice it even now? It isn’t too late.
“Is it so out of the question,” I say, “that I might marry, even now, at my age and at the height of my career?”
“You were a tiny little thing. Wearing a black bathing suit, I think. Your hair, beginning to dry and curl back up.”
“You have remembered it all these years.”
“That was Wisconsin. In those days you came to the meetings.”
“Yes.”
Had he kissed me, I wonder, one oral cavity against another? Had he put his arm around me? Had we, even…. I would have been attracted to him at first sight, just as I was this afternoon. It had been like it is right now, only we are supine, not prone and the stars are up, not down in the water as they were then.
“It was like right now,” I say.
The waves lap, lap, lapping. How could anyone forget it? The weathered boards of the dock. His arm around…. Not now. Then.
“It’s an odd name, yours. There’s an opera singer by the same name, or, rather, almost. She spells it differently. A couple of letters. Have you heard of her?”
That he suspects me of not being a linguist has been clear from the start, but that he suspects me of being an opera star!… I only just understood it now. I see, though, once I think about it, that it’s an easy mistake for him to make, all my faults, those of a prima donna: fat, loud, flamboyant clothes, my laugh (it must span octaves), my silver shoes…. He has recognized me as that other. Shall I hum a bit? Quietly so he doesn’t hear that I can’t carry a tune?
I lie, odalisque, propped on one elbow, looking up at the stars. “You like opera,” I say.
“Yes, and I like that singer, too.”
He likes her! (Fat as she is.)
His voice is right in my ear, soft and close and male. Especially that. Very little in my life has had to do with anything male. But why haven’t I married! Indeed, why didn’t I do it a long time ago instead of wondering why not all the time? At twenty I wondered. At twenty-five, twenty-six, thirty-seven, and on and on, wondering, what’s wrong with me? But he said, a little thing in a black bathing suit, my wet hair beginning to curl again. Nothing wrong there. I sense an answer, hidden and simple. Still, would I sacrifice a career in opera for it? That’s even more exciting than being a scholar and a linguist. But he likes her! And just as she is. And there… up there in the sky, the whole universe all spread out! Knowledge surrounds me. I feel it tingling in my bones. Answers, hidden and simple. Hidden and simple. Divide the universe into units, smaller and smaller units: on/off, 1/0.
I tell him, “Up there it’s exactly as it is in language, there are only contrastive minimum pairs.” And then I quote from Fries, “‘The important question is always… are the two… like or different.’ Even as you and I are just such a contrastive pair as we sit here now, how odd that the universe should be made up of such as we, and how simple it is once one sees that.” (I do not say it, but I’m thinking that, of the 1 and the 0, I know which of us is which.)
But he’s laughing again. Somehow I’ve broken the spell that I had hoped to create: the mystery and the whole universe thing that I had wanted in it.
“I never know how to take you,” (again) “but I suppose your attitude is all for the best and I appreciate it.”Why, I’m wondering, and what attitude? But if he should lean close to me and say, “I know your secret,” I would say, “I know you know,” and then I would hum for sure. I know very little opera, but I think I could fake a rendition of the Toreador Song though that hardly seems appropriate. Isn’t there a Queen of the Night and a Venusberg? But things are not turning out right at all, and now he’s getting up. I wanted magic moments. I wanted his voice in my ear here in the dark like it was. I wanted to confess. Have I gotten sand in my hair for nothing? Perhaps ruined my shoes?
“I know your secret.”
Now he says it, standing up and looking out to sea. It’s clear he’s about to go back to the hotel.
“I know,” I say. I’m on all fours in the sand, struggling to my feet. At my age (and size) it’s not so easy to get up anymore, from so far down. I’m glad he’s not watching.
“And I, I married someone else.”
“I know,” I say, though I didn’t until just now. (So that’s my reason for never marrying. It makes a lot of sense.)
I’m up, finally, and without any help. He’s still looking at the surf. I had been thinking that, with the universe out there and all, anything could happen, but it didn’t. There’s one more day, though, and other men, and the keynote address. I’m eager to end this evening and get to sleep and then to get up and get on with it. “Let’s go,” I say.
The next morning there’s volley ball again. I know whose side I’m on by now. I wonder, is she out there playing, jumping around in her long brown skirt and black oxfords and wiping her nose? Not likely. Maybe I should play, then. Show how different we are. Yes, I will. (If she did play, we would be on the same side, of course: for tagmemics, anti-Chomsky.)
And I do play, though not well. He plays beside me so I’m trying hard to be graceful. It’s him I want to impress, but every time I try for grace—left arm extended behind me, fingers pointing up, right hand delicately poised—I miss. The ball goes right by. In fact through the whole game I never do hit the ball except once, with my head. It bounces off me and down to a little bald man who then scores. It’s our only score. Of course the Chomskyites win. Even though I’ve heard them arguing, and hotly, all week-end, nobody seems to care much. Perhaps they are just being kind since I had had such a role in losing the game. I had set my silver shoes on the sidelines and played barefoot. With shawl, though. I had thought to swing it back and forth as I
ran here and there with little steps. And I did that, ran from one end to the other. I was always in the way, and so we lost. Yesterday they had won. I am wondering what all this will mean linguistically, and I am thinking that I must not think about myself so much, and that tonight, especially, I will not think, but do and be exactly what I am regardless of what I look like and whether graceful or not.
I think this as I dress for the banquet. I put my blueish hair back up the way I had it when I first came in. I put on the dress I bought for the occasion, silver and pink and full of pleats. It makes me look fat. I see that only just now, but no more deceptions. The truth or one loses the game, and I may lose all I have accomplished so far. Nothing but, then, the truth, from now on. What if I had hit the ball once or twice and gotten it over and not cared how I looked? What if I had not run back and forth so much? What if I had paid attention to the game? No, I won’t even care that my silver shoes are spoiled by the sand and the wet. I won’t care whether I laugh or not. I’ll be the real me (whatever that is).
At the banquet I am placed at a long table above the other tables, next to me, the dais. On my other side, he is sitting. The Isabella Présempailles, still all in brown, hair-do exactly the same as yesterday, is down there, almost lost, off to the right and at the back. Just the sort of spot she’d choose to be in. I might not have found her at all if I hadn’t heard sneezing.
I’m sticking to my resolution to be the real me. I eat and eat—his dessert as well as my own and then another from farther down the table. I laugh octaves of my laugh. It’s musical even without my trying to make it so. And then the time comes. He gets up and introduces Isabella Présempailles. How hard I’ve worked, he says, there by myself, and what a lot I have accomplished, and that now I am working on a book on the diphthong. Only such as I would have thought it needed so much work. Only such as I would have understood the significance. Only I…. And, for certain, there will be new and startling conclusions.
The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1 Page 60