The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  But now, when she can finally see through her glasses and get a really good look at Mr. Snow-here, so near, across the tiny table—she feels fat and awkward. Even her rather graceful (or so she’d always thought) hands look dumpy next to those of Mr. Snow, which are of extraordinary delicacy and finesse. All of him extraordinarily fine, the little hairs of his mustache like a silverpoint drawing… all of him like a silverpoint, and she, wishing she had not ordered a cupcake, which will surely make her even more the opposite of Mr. S. than she already is. If only she could sit in front of him every day, she might become like a sylph. An elderly sylph, if such there is, but sylphlike nonetheless.

  But now it’s as though he’s asking, “Want to be a sylph?” though not in so many words. (Is there a choice between sylph and salt-of-the-earth? They might well be mutually exclusive.)

  “You are caught”—he has just said it— “as, in the ultimate analysis, we are all caught, in the vagaries… in the swarms and eddies, and so forth, of time.” (Had she not always known just such a thing though not had the wit to voice it?) “You are in a void,” he has said, “a significant void.” (Significant void! Had she not always known that also? Helpless, in a significant void!) “When, on the other hand, you’d rather be going forward with zest or something closely akin to zest.”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “What’s needed is a great metamorphosis.” (Exactly what she’s always wanted, and especially now. How had he come to know so much about her in such a short time?) “Transmogrification,” he says, “and in one single season. The question is, how?”

  And he leans very close across the table toward her. She’d like to pull back, but she doesn’t dare. Now he seems to her as though his mother might have been a fox… a silver fox. But now he turns sideways and lifts his feet, both of them, to show her his shoes. (They’re black and white wing tips.) “Look,” he says:” see how they turn up at the toes like little hooks.”

  Mr. Snow. Mr. Fox. Like a bat is what he really is. Very like a bat. Not a fox, but a foxy bat, and his shoes, she’s sure of it—well, not that sure, but it does occur to her—are for hanging upside down. Why is he bothering to show them to her?

  She’ll answer no. Whatever it is, she’ll say no.

  But he’s reading no on her face, or so she thinks. Shows sharp eyeteeth. It’s a nice smile, though, a nice V under his white mustache. “They don’t squeak,” he says.

  How do you make love to a bat? Could she be that acrobatic at her age, and especially at her weight? And what about her acrophobia?

  He has little pinpoint eyes. The pupils show so black in all that lightness, she thinks he must live in a house made of nice thick slices of snow with clear ice windows. Even inside you’d see your breath and even if everything weren’t white, it would look white because of the light. Would she dare go there? She’s never liked the cold, though today something has warmed her. Maybe it’s her craziness that has kept her warm. The chief inspector would say so, but he calls her crazy every day anyway and then this morning he said, “That’s it. This has gone far enough. That’s it, now. What a to-do.” That’s what he said as he watched her out the window and then said it to her when she came in, so she knows that this is it, therefore what? Never come back? Therefore run off with Mr. Snow who hasn’t even asked her? Say yes instead of no? And what about the two new hats she hasn’t got yet? It could have been those hats that would have really changed her. Some hats take a lot of courage to wear, but she’d have done it. Even in front of Mr. Snow. And those hats… they would have been hats like she would never have worn before and yet each one the opposite of the other; one black and hard, one soft and yellow; or one gray and one red; one wool, one silk, as: one like her scarf, one like his.

  But now, after another cup of tea and another cupcake, here she is creeping into her own house by the back door wearing Mr. Snow’s black and white wing tips. (They pinch a little at the sides. His feet are, of course, narrow and long.) And here it is, or so it seems to her… here it is, the significant void. She could tell the minute she came in and stood in the dark back hallway, listening. Void. Even though she can hear him humming in the kitchen. She can hear the crunch of crackers or celery (it’s way past supper time) and the rustle of papers. Munching and singing. The chief inspector’s not so neat. He’s not as neat as he says he is. Leastways when he thinks she’s not around. And it’s only right this minute that she realizes she doesn’t want him to know she’s back… doesn’t want him ever to know that she came on back and not even with two new hats for him to complain about… though it’s true she does have these shoes and, surely, “many curative possibilities” in them.

  What a fuss the chief inspector would make if he saw them! And she’s gone catatonic again with that fear he’ll come upon her as he always does, jumping out at her from dark places though she is the one in the dark now… but he might jump out at her even as she stands here with the snow melting off the wing tips allover the back hall, thinking: no, please, no… and, for once, he does stay put and sings so she knows exactly where he is. And the shoes (they hurt; but not that much) soft and silent, white parts glistening in the dark—even the black parts shining out—let her pass through to the stairway and up it, undiscovered. Pinching more and more as they dry, they let her creep around her bedroom and then tiptoe across the hall and up the attic stairs and not a single board squeaks because she knows where all those boards are though, before, that never seemed to matter. He always found her out, anyway, not doing what he’d told her was essential, or reading some silly, romantic book or other. But now it’s as though these flashy shoes make her invisible. And he had said it, Mr. Snow; that these two shoes were just as good as two new hats, only here she is, not having to do without the hats either.

  Up here there are clothes from allover, and two hats, one salt-of-the-earth bonnet, blue cotton, and the other this pile of thin, gray-green stuff with feathers, rising up extravagantly on a purple platform. There’s also an old, saggy bed and an encyclopedia from the 1930s… Almost everything she’d need up here, and Mr. S. (now wasn’t that nice of him) had bought her, just at the last moment, a heart-shaped box of chocolates so, if she can make these last by taking tiny bites, not gobble them all up like she sometimes does, they’ll do her, maybe, for a long time, especially after those cupcakes. She can suck on the chocolates very slowly and read that encyclopedia.

  Maybe it’s a “significant void” because there’s so much to learn and she hasn’t been learning it. It’s as though the chief inspector, and she also, had closed off the world. Not closed it off as much as inspected it for flaws—as though the earth were too earthy; animals, too animal; women, too womanly; men, too mannish; dogs, too doggy (she’s heard the chief inspector say that last many times); and she, also, no doubt about it, too much who she is… much too much herself, though now what a wonderful, great, empty void inside her. Like being a balloon.

  And Mr. Snow had kissed her on the neck. Just once. That made her feel like floating away, too. Had the chief inspector ever done that, even in the beginning? Surely he must have, though, if he did, ‘she’s forgotten. But Mr. Snow. Alucard. His cool lips had brushed her cheek and then brushed on down and landed on her collarbone almost as though by mistake. For just a second… hardly a second. She wasn’t even sure it had happened. Perhaps it hadn’t. But there is a little red mark there. She looked and there was a mole beside a little pimple more or less in the same spot he’d touched. It still tickles.

  No, she’ll not eat the chocolates! For once not to do that. Or, at least wait a while. Just look at them and then go to bed on the saggy bed (with the shoes on—if she takes them off she’ll never get them back on again), the wind and snow blowing about outside. There’s so much white out there that, even though it’s night and low clouds, the two little windows glow so she can almost see the whole attic and, instead of being dusty and dull, everything looks magic. She can’t sleep for how magic it looks. Besides, her feet hurt too much, but
she won’t take those shoes off. Now salt-of-the-earth types probably would do that—would take off anything that hurts, but she needs this pain. It keeps reminding her that something’s happening.

  She can hear the chief inspector downstairs walking up and down. He doesn’t know how cozy and warm she is up here and how bright everything is, how nice the wind sounds. She could sleep for a very long time…

  But this is all wrong. Not sleep now. Something must be done, and, though not acrobatic, she must become so right away. Climb up, yes, like bats making love. Unless, that is, they do it as they fly.

  Now these shoes have got to get up there in the eaves feet first. (If they were on Mr. S. they’d be there by now.) And must be quiet about it, though the chief inspector’s already asleep. Now and then she can hear him below, faintly snoring.

  Chair on bed. Feet up, as on monkey bars a long time ago. But that was before sciatica, and not such a klutz back then, or at least didn’t know it. Nobody kept saying it, though maybe Mother did say it a little bit. Yes, Mother shaking her head, “You’ll fall.” So now she does fall. Thinks: naturally. Bed is there to catch her, though, and no harm done. When and if she does get up there, it will be just like Mr. Snow would do it.

  Falls again. Tries again. Falls again. Tries again. Falls again. But finally feet at apex. Toes pointed and hooked up and in like little claws and hope not to fall again.

  Falls again. (Mother would have said, “What else is new?”) But what’s going on? Sound of birds and the brightness. Not snow and night, but spring and morning. Shoes still stuck up there. How come they let her go? What time is it? Looks like April. She tries to get to the window but trips over some gray silky stuff that’s hanging about her shoulders. Has to crawl the last few yards. Yes, it is later. The apple tree’s in bloom. And she’s ravenous. Thank goodness she didn’t eat the chocolates all up the night before… or whatever night that was. Her arms are so tangled in the gray stuff she can’t open the box. She fumbles them free finally and, after all, the chocolates are gobbled up… (It’s one thing about her not changed, though she’d hoped for that almost the most of all, but she can still eat a large box of chocolates at one sitting.) She tries to straighten that gray stuff out. It seems attached to her back. Finally she crosses the stuff in front, lets one side hang down almost to the floor and throws the other over her shoulder as you’d wear a large mantilla. It’s nice stuff. She doesn’t think she’s ever had such nice silky gray stuff before. Like wearing a cloud. And it’s elegant. Though it seems she’s not changed at all in all this time between the third fall and the fourth, for she’s still fat and no smarter for having spent all this time up here with the thirties encyclopedia… she may even have forgotten things. (What was his name? Has she forgotten that? Oh, it was beautiful! Alucard. Yes, Alucard Snow.) And still sciatica… still limping around and still bumping into things even with the gray stuff wrapped up around her and out of the way. But she does feel pretty good. Though she’s hardly changed, maybe joy, or something very like it. She’ll go right on out to the bus stop to find Alucard and tell him. She wants those shoes, though. She puts the chair on the bed again (it had fallen oft) plus three volumes of the encyclopedia. Makes it to the rafters in just one try. (This time she’s not trying to go up feet first.) Balances there, afraid, but doing it anyway. Thinks: Well, that’s a change… one change, at least. Maybe really could do “it” with a bat. (Is one ever too fat for lovemaking? And what about having had too many chocolates? Already sated, that is, in a different way? Perhaps not eat so many next time so as to leave more room for love.)

  I’m a gambling man, etc. Maybe those are not just words now. But salt-of-the-earth? Is that really the question? No, she’ll not wear the salt-of-the-earth bonnet to come downstairs in. She’ll wear that bird’s nest hat that matches this gray shawl thing so perfectly. And she’ll wear the shoes, tight as they are.

  “Where have you been?”

  That’s the first thing he says to her. Now that she’s back, he’s all of a sudden hungry for some of her cooking. “Where in the world? Attic all this time? Talk about crazy!”

  She just smiles, wondering what she had seen in this odd old man who always says she’s crazy? “Take off that hat.”

  “No.”

  “That’s my grandmother’s hat. She was a great lady. She wasn’t your kind of woman. That’s her shawl, too.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “I recognize it.”

  He snatches the hat, but she snatches it right back. A few feathers fly off, but no great harm done. She’s really angry now, but, for a change, at him and not herself.

  And then, slowly, the wings come out-as though angry air were being pumped into them. Good, clean, angry air. They grow… all that gray stuff fills and throbs until they touch the ceiling. One has to be bold with such as these stuck to one’s back. Perhaps joy is necessary, too, though she has a moment of panic when she wonders if she’ll be able to get outside with these things on. She has to curl herself around awkwardly, squat down and creep along the sill to get them out the front door after her and then, just as she straightens up, she falls down on the front steps for no reason at all. She never has had good balance, but perhaps the wings upset it even more.

  Now she’s jumping around as though she thought she could fly. Up and down, up and down, like a baby bird not yet fledged. At first a few more feathers bounce off the hat and then the hat bounces off. She puts it on more firmly so that it almost covers her eyes.

  “I’m a bat. I’m an acrobat. I’m a fly. I’m a butterfly,” she says, and now there’s some truth to it. “My name is my name. My name isn’t Jane.” (She thinks Alucard will say he knew it all the time.)

  (How does a bat make love to a butterfly?)

  Now, she leers over her shoulder at the chief inspector watching from the window, and he’s thinking his same old thoughts, that she looks really silly out there and is she ever coming back inside?

  Jump, jump, jump, and still not off the ground. She doesn’t even care, but the chief inspector doesn’t know that jumping up and down is almost as good as flying sometimes, when you’re in the mood for it… just exactly as good as flying—or hanging upside down. That was done, though she thought she couldn’t, and who can tell, maybe flying will come later. There’s this big, ballooning void inside her that might lift her up and keep her up.

  (She’s right to wonder, how does a bat make love to a big fat butterfly?)

  Anyway, there’s a black dot in the sky. (She can’t possibly see it because her hat’s too low over her eyes.) No, it’s a white dot and rapidly getting larger as it nears. If she saw it, she’d know who it was right away. The sun is shining. April. But, even so, there are a few flakes of snow.

  The Start of the End of It All, Mercury House 1991

  Emissary

  “GREETINGS to the men and women of the garden that is Earth and to all the important creatures alive there at this very moment. Greetings, though we, at the time you receive this, will be dead. Others of us will have replaced us, even down to the longest lived of our creatures, but we, ourselves, will be long gone. You, on the other hand, will have been born, and will be there to receive our greetings and our message of good will.

  “We have looked at your world and found it to be as beautiful as you, yourselves, must be finding it right now as you look up and down and around in the wide arcs of your eyes, at the gardens of your yards, and the gardens of your pastures, and the gardens of your forests, and the gardens of your deserts—deserts that, even so, do bloom. You must be frolicking with joy all the days of your lives as you step out into your world and go up and down and around saying, ‘Good,’ and, ‘Good.’

  “But we are making do with less here and so we are coming to see how to make do with a little bit of what you have so much of, hoping that we should live with you on your planet with no less joy than you do. Those of us from the lesser worlds will call you ‘friends-of-the-lesser-worlds’ and will thank you with gifts
. The time for coming is soon, so collect the bonnets and banners of celebration.”

  Of course nobody believed the message, and rightly so. We thought it was a hoax originating right here on Earth, and then, when that was (more or less) proved not true, everybody wondered what these beings were up to and why was everything in English instead of some other language? Though perhaps that wasn’t so strange, considering it’s the language of pilots and the main language in India, and lots of other places you wouldn’t think it would be.

  We did believe something was coming, but not that it would be of any use to us. And what was all this “Good, good” stuff? Already the rivers were polluted and the air acid, the climate changing. Last winter had been the warmest on record and this summer was beginning to be the hottest. A yellow haze hung over every city.

  And then she arrived, wafting down at Kennedy Airport. In her palace. She said she had come “home.”

  She was enormous, ungainly, lopsided. Even so, when she first crawled out (backward) and stood up, it looked for a few minutes as though she was trying to dance for us—crutches, props, and all (clearly our gravity was too much for her)—but she gave that up, thank goodness, when she got a good look at us. Then she began, instead, to try to make herself look smaller, to squeeze herself down into her pantaloons as though she hadn’t realized, until right then, how small and thin we were compared with her.

  Right away she began telling us how much she loved us. Of course nobody believed her. Love, we all knew, doesn’t come that easily. You have to earn it. You have to make sacrifices for it. You have to really know the other person and accept some faults, though not all, and be strong enough to make changes in yourself, too. We knew all about love. We had studied it, read about it, experimented with it (double blind).