“I am Big Water Ma,” I say. I begin a song and dance which isn’t like any song and dance I’ve ever seen or heard. I pick up some of the ma stones and I dance on more fie and put that part out, too. I sing, “Big Water Ma. Big Water.” I sound so good I slap my thighs, but nobody dances with me. I’m too much for them. I say, “Here is Sweet Sweet Red,” and Sweet Red stands up in the bowawa for them to see her and puts on my hauwa which is only a little less yellow than the one I’m wearing. I say how the strange uncle is going to take her off the bowawa so she can dance with them. I really think Zat One will have to do that, but he says no! so loud that everybody looks at him in a funny way.
Then I say, “Those who say no to Water Ma are all worth sand. Do him the sand dance.” So they do, everybody laughing and crying together except I know Zat One can’t cry because he has no tears.
By now the sand has put out all the fie and I see how all our things can put out that thing of Zat One’s. Then I whistle, Shark, thinking the People will come and help me, but they think I mean a real shark and they run up the beach away from us. Zat One is running to the water, to the bowawa. I can get to him when he’s in the water. That’s where I’m fast and he’s slow. I hold his head under. I don’t stop to think. I pull out his sharp thing. I should have cut away the zap thing right then, but I’m only thinking to get Sweet Red free, which I do while Zap is sputtering in the water and blind with sand. Then Sweet Red jumps out of the bowawa and we push Zap into it. I tie his hands and tie him to the bowawa just like he did to Sweet Red. She helps me. How she helps is she sits on him. Even though she’s not into her full fat, she can keep him down. Then we push away from there, both of us in the water pushing him along. I tell Sweet Red that she should go home, but she doesn’t want to. I’m thinking we’re becoming stranger and stranger and that I don’t even know what I’ll do next because here I am, going on to the second corner of the world instead of back home, even though Zap is tied up and can’t make me do it. I want to watch the shores change and maybe get to see those wrees.
And I’m thinking the bowawa isn’t such a bad thing upside down on the shore or to use to carry things along as you swim or to carry a person.
Sweet Red thinks she should stay with me and that we can help look after each other. She says it isn’t good to be alone because there’s nobody to laugh with. At first I don’t tell her that I have in mind to get rid of Zap before he zaps any more big uncles, but then I do tell her. And I tell her why and I tell her about you coming into being. I also tell her how I’m going on to see wree.
We come into shore late. We just have time to turn the bowawa over on Zap. Then we go and make ourselves a nice sleeping place. We like each other so much we make just one pit.
In the morning we see that our flowers are beginning to wilt. Not just ours but all over. We’ve missed the best part of the flowering land, and yet we still feel like singing.
ZUESA
“Gods,” I shouted, “come leer at me and laugh. The devils are the lucky ones.” So spoke Garshin, though he was an unbeliever.
They say there’s a shark out there, so we stay where we are. They gave me stones so I could carve. It wasn’t so easy with my hands tied together. We stayed where the waves could wash over us, the boat partly in the water, and us in its shade. They lay for a change not even playing. Well, perhaps playing for they twined their fingers together and now and then counted up strange combinations of numbers. I thought, in this quiet mood of theirs, I could persuade them to let me go, so told the truth. I won’t scale down my thoughts for them anymore.
“There is a place where everything is known,” I say. “This is the place called Tree of Lightning. All bow down to the thunder of its name and to its men of fire. I want to tell you the truth for the sake of hurrying on. There’ll be a new kind of people. I, myself, as you can see, am not one of them. I’m working for the sake of the future. You think this sex and seeding is fun for me. You should be able to tell that it isn’t. It’s a duty, and more important to me than my own life.”
For the first time since I was dropped here, I spoke as if to my own kind and with some of the gestures befitting my station, and, though I’m but a lower prince among the princes, yet a prince and speaking like a prince. And I saw that they heard and stopped their fingerplay in wonder at it.
VENUS
The land makes for strange ways of talking. Zap is saying a lot of odd things, and I don’t know why he would think we wouldn’t believe him, but says, over and over, that what he says is true. Why would it not be? Sweet Red and I laugh behind our hands.
But I have a different idea of the future than the one Zap talks about. I have the one Old Man Lost Egg tells of when he listens to the biggest of the conch shells. I think I’ll look around for a good one and see if it will talk to me. I’m not one that would listen in on anything that belongs to Old Man Lost Egg except I’m so far away and I’m not the same person I used to be and I need to know things.
I find one. The inside is the color of Sweet Red’s hair. I go far from them and sit and stare out to sea like I’ve seen Old Man Lost Egg do, and then, when I feel ready, I put the conch to my ear.
For a long time I hear nothing but waves and wind. I wait and listen and then I seem to hear Old Man Lost Egg’s voice, but he’s whispering, so I can’t make out what he’s trying to tell me. Then I hear that the voice is whispering that he isn’t Old Man Lost Egg, but a different old man. His name is Last Verse, for he sang a long time ago, the last verse of the last song of all.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he says. “I’ve been whistling out of every conch. I’ve been on the wind to you. I tell you you must go along a ways to get to the second corner of the world which is full of wrees. You must do the things to be done in wrees and eat strange eggs of wree bird.”
“But what about Zap?” I say, because this is the reason I was listening into the shell.
“Never once will he be called uncle. You, however will be ma, and not only ma, but great ma, not of the cruel sun, but ma of the weeds of the sea, so you’ll be called Weed. You’ll be the egg, for out of you will come the new time, so you’ll be called Egg. You’ll hear things in conchs, so you’ll be called Conch. There’s nothing you won’t be called, and everyone will be calling you.”
His voice is fading, but he’s going on and on, though not about anything I need to know. “Zap?” I say, “Zap? How or when should he be ended?”
I look up and see that Sweet Red is playing by the water but Zap is looking at me through the finger eye of the zapper even with his hands tied. I get behind a rock though I don’t know if that thing can go around and find me there or not. But he doesn’t zap it. Then I think how silly I was not to take that zap thing away. I see I’m not a good thinker about this kind of thing. I name myself Silly Old Do Nothing When It Should Be Done. I laugh at such a funny name and I know Zap hears me. I wonder if he’s naming me The One Who Laughs When She Should Be Afraid. Sweet Red comes to me and I tell her about it and we laugh together.
Sweet Red says we should just go off and leave him here. She says, “He can have his zap thing for a friend.” That makes us laugh again.
I haven’t had a time like this since I left my brothers and sister at my beach. We needed to laugh. It makes us feel like no matter what happens to us we had a good time right now.
I tell Sweet Red we have to get the zap thing. I tell her to keep on laughing and go out to him as though to sit in the shade of the bowawa, except she should sit on him like she did before and I’ll come and take the zap thing away. I tell her we’ll have to be strong and fast as if to snatch a fish.
But no wonder Last Verse didn’t tell me what to do about Zap, because it isn’t something I wanted to know about.
Zap on land is different from Zap in the water even with his hands tied. He saw Sweet Red was going to sit on him before she began to do it. We both tussle with him, but he’s trying to turn his zap thing towards me. Sweet Red keeps getting in hi
s way on purpose so he can’t point it at me. She’s moving fast, so it’s Sweet Red that gets zapped, that rolls on the beach, and tries to hold herself together but can’t.
Zap says, “No,” a lot of times and, “Gods, come leer.”
Then Sweet Red is really dead and I get angry like I never knew I could be. I get on top of him while he’s still holding Sweet Red. I take the biggest of the ma stones and I hit and hit until he stops. Then I take him for the sharks to have. When we get in the water he wakes up and struggles, but then he says, “All right. Go ahead. Drown me.” And I say I will and he sees I will. Then he says, “You said you’d not leave my son out for the storms to take,” but I’m thinking he’s already a dead man, why should I bother answering? There’s a lot of blood on his head so the sharks will come in the time it takes to catch a fish.
Five new ma stones sit where The Killer Of Sweet, Sweet Red sat in the shade of the bowawa. They’re all me. I wish there was one like Sweet Red so I’d have something to remember her by, but things are just things and I’ll always remember her anyway.
I pick one stone ma up. I like it. Mostly there were bad things about the Killer Of Sweet Red, but there were one or two good things, like some of the things he told me about. Flying around in and under land things is a thought I never had before. And wree, though I’d seen their bones, I don’t know what they’re really like. I’ll go see wree and the second corner of the world. Killer Of Sweet Red is right, I’m going to have a baby. I’m not sure what I’ll do about it. I’ll see who it turns out to be before I decide.
I pick up the conch shell then, wanting to hear Last Verse again, more for company than for advice. I already know what I’m going to do, but he tells me some things I do want to know. He says my baby is going to be a girl. We both have a good laugh about that. She’s going to have red hair just like Sweet Red even though she isn’t Sweet Red’s child. Last Verse says I’ll call her Sweet Red and not just now and then, but all the times I call her, which will be many, many times.
Edgewood Press, 1992
Modillion
HERE, a manuscript full of sun and moon signs, rams’ horns, ammonites…. Marks that look like bundles of sticks. Marks like human ears. Marks like little cat faces. I’m trying to get used to them. I count their repetitions. I write them down in rows. I list their variants.
One sign in particular, I copy over and over. It’s a large, curling M shape and graces each page in several places, always surrounded by its markers, small servants of its meanings, and appears in both a long and shortened form. Now and then only the M shape is unmistakable. I always recognize it even though it’s decorated well beyond simple serifs. Often there’s something fat and feminine about the way it circles, yet there’s menace in its sprawl—in the way it dominates each page, arching above the other symbols. Something architectural about it. Corinthian. Though this was written well before that time. But I refuse to believe that it could stand for anything merely architectural—this lord—this king of all the signifiers.
I almost know the meaning of it. It’s like a slip of the tongue that makes a word that seems vaguely understandable. Or like a word I once knew the meaning of a long time ago. Modillion, for instance. I used to know what that meant. I call this big M shape that. I can feel the hair rise on the back of my neck, I see goose bumps all along my arms because of that word and what it might mean. Could be the name of an emperor. Or that place where his winter palace overlooked the sea (therefore, “Come back to Modillion,” she might have begged him, having spent all the lonely summer there leaning over the balconies). Could be a weapon—a giant, two-headed ceremonial ax. (If it is something architectural, then, surely, something that holds everything else up, nothing that merely decorates.)
But it could mean an act of violence. Perhaps against the reader of the manuscript, as if written in poison. Though more likely against the writer, as why does the manuscript end in mid-sentence (like the history of Thucydides? Therefore a tenderness towards the manuscript I’d not have felt had it been completed.). Were I, myself, to finish that last phrase, then, between one syllable and the next, could be thousands of years of wondering.
In the dim light the writing takes on more meaning than in bright. It is written with silver-point on unbleached paper. Sometimes I wonder, is the writing there at all, yet only the ruthless would question its existence, though the ruthless are many.
* * *
It is the unknown that always bears fruit. It is the unknown that informs on its way to becoming the almost known. I’ve heard tell of those who can catch a fish by hand, therefore I will plunge in against the current. I will make a great leap of understanding. Befuddled as I might be by a creative despair, out of my mouth might come, just at the lowest moment, words—strings of words—full of unexpected
possibilities: Once there was…. Yes, once there was Modillion….
* * *
If a palace by the sea, white against white cliffs, and with all its banners flying, black-headed terns perched on its balconies… (this part came to me after I’d fallen asleep, my head resting on the manuscript) one prince after another tossed from the turrets. Seven princes, then, all perished on the same sad day, except for Modillion, dressed as a girl. No wonder the manuscript ends in mid-phrase.
* * *
Reading up or down, side to side… each direction tells a different story, but all the better since the truth is but a series of approximations. The same words can tell many conflicting tales. How could it not be so?
* * *
(Surely this is not just a list of the dead, or, worse yet, a list of the slaves and concubines of the dead, or, and even worse, the number of sacks of lentils stored in the store rooms of the dead. Yet who would write such things in silver? Except that they belonged to Modillion.)
* * *
To stand on the balconies of Modillion and watch the moon sparkling in the waves would be as mysterious as trying to decipher this writing is to me. To watch Modillion himself on the prow of his trireme, silhouetted against the water, a hundred and eighty oarsmen dipping oars, and the sound of them would be as trying to decipher this writing is to me.
* * *
In the manuscript is written, “Oh my love, oh my love, come back before dawn,” and the spaces between the words stand for words that have been left unwritten. First there would have been shouts and curses, and then prayers, and then this. In the beginning was…. The most important word escapes me, but in the beginning there were words, the word for the place where small birds sing, the word for the way cats fall, so soft and smooth, the word for waking up (still alive!) and with a new idea.
* * *
Strung bows are symbols for the bow of the sky and also for the lips of Modillion as well as for his eyebrows, which come together in the middle over his Roman nose. Arrows are for his glances, though his eyes are indicated by the lupine flower. The arch is the arch of his forehead. Two symbols, jet and silk, mean his hair.
His walk is as only a king can walk. His toes point east-north-east and west-north-west. Even if alone, when spied upon, he has not been seen to falter from the perfect ways of leaning over, lying down, or getting up. Sometimes he takes what seems a reckless stance, leaning against an important tree.
* * *
At the highest curving of the cliffs stands the palace. Modillion, at the age of seven and still dressed as a girl, crosses the beach below it with his grandmother. They live quietly among their enemies. “When this becomes the past,” his grandmother tells him, “as all things must, you will not be able to forget that you were once as if you were a woman.”
He was called by a woman’s name, then, and took on women’s ways before he became the wide warrior that he did become, wielding his ax.
It is written that he once said, “Though the conqueror’s children hid, I knew where to find them. I had already, long before, hidden in the same places myself, and I had already learned not to let any children, male or female, escape to bec
ome what I have become.”
It is written that he raged and rode so as to kill five horses in a row and that he yelled and cursed because of his sweet, high, womanlike voice.
It is written that he loved no creatures except for one horse and one hound and that they died.
* * *
I want to live a lively interlude in someone else’s life. I want even to have seen all my half-brothers thrown from palace towers… I, already among the foolish lovers who desire a phantom—the one who persists in not existing, perhaps persisted in not existing even when he was alive. If alive, and if under the same name.
… foolish lover, here in the dim light, but I don’t feel the need to see the sun when the sun is on every page, and then there are all these rows of full moon signs, and the sea, the beach, the seventy ships. Life is too short for any other joys than these.
* * *
Happy is he who is alone and working. She, I should say. She who is alone and doing away with chaos, making life readable, as it should be. It is I who have seen order in what seems like confusion. And I do see order everywhere. Or, rather, the possibility of order: Patterns on stones, wood grain, the palms of my hands…. I work so hard at my deciphering that I can’t stop. Sometimes I find myself trying to decipher the secrets of my shoelaces.
It’s a cozy carrel that I work in. And live in, though they don’t know that. I work all the time, so what’s the difference? I sleep with my head on the manuscript. I eat little. I don’t leave crumbs. This carrel is away from the others and high up, with a dirty little round window that I love. Often, when tired of puzzling over faint curlicues and dots, I spend an hour or two looking out and thinking—perhaps even longer than that. I lose track.
Sometimes at dawn the sun’s rays shine directly on the manuscript, and then all the signs and symbols take on different meanings: Amphora become women, arms akimbo; oats become grapes; rams’ horns become ammonites; helmets become bowls of milk; chariots, chairs…. All of a sudden there has been no loss of princes off the balustrades. Modillions, painted turquoise, gold, and red, decorate (democratically) every cottage. A wide man with eyes the color of the lupine flower wears white linen and prays to the Pleiades instead of to Orion, though he calls the constellations other names and writes their signs in what looks like bird wings. But when the sun moves on, all returns to what it might have been.
The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1 Page 77