The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  * * *

  “Do not speak with the women. Do not look at them. Let them bathe in peace. Keep yourself for your rage. Also do not let them make you their queen, though they will want to do it when they see you grow so wide and powerful. They will want a wide and powerful woman to stand up for them against the men that keep them in harems.

  “Enemies are all around you, for it is told that there were not seven, but eight princes, and that one still lives.” (Still lives!) “Your ax awaits, hidden in the tomb of your grandfather.

  “And all you others, when you see him coming, keep your eyes on your sandals.”

  * * *

  I do. I do. I always do. I hunch my shoulders, hunker down. I lean away from people and towards buildings. I think of nothing but the lines of the sidewalk, I, faithful scribe. Blessed, as they always wrote at the end of every manuscript, blessed be the faithful scribe.

  But some act of violence is about to be committed. I have suspected it from the beginning. The scribe will have been the first to die. I hear sirens in the distance. Enemies are all around me. I’ve always known that. I realize, suddenly, that that’s why I’ve spent all my time in the library, though even here…. Even here! I leave in mid-sentence. I climb down my little stairway and cross the tunnels of the stacks. I have become aware, and just this moment, of yet another story not yet told.

  At certain times in early morning (as this is) things look brighter than they really are. Pinkish. The library, as graceful and as luminous as the winter palace would be at sunrise. In the swish of traffic one can almost imagine the sound of waves along some shore below it. I can see that even I am luminous in this light. I trot down the long, marble steps, flanked—even such as I—flanked by lions.

  There’s a man lying there, head on white marble. Looks dead, but then I see he’s not yet dead, though I’m not sure. He’s wearing two overcoats, one on top of the other. They’re both women’s. (Of course!) One has a fake fur collar. Both are too small for his wide chest. He smells bad. But they would all have smelled bad back then, no good places to wash, as none for him now. The toilets would have been merely holes in the outside walls of the palace. The white stones must have been stained in those places. And, down on the beach below when Modillion and his grandmother walked there, it must not have smelled as sweet as I have been supposing. Also he is darker than I expected, and I realize that all the people, even the blessed scribe who wrote it all down—all the people of the manuscript are of this same reddish-brown.

  I lean over him to make sure it’s him. I see the strung bow of his lips and his eyebrows that come together in the middle over his Roman nose. I have already recognized the arch of the sky in the arch of his forehead. I see the tangled silk of his hair. His toes point East, towards me. Both his hands lie, symbolically, at his crotch.

  “Your majesty.”

  First I say it softly, and then louder so as to wake him, but he doesn’t wake. I dare to touch his foot then. I shake it. “Awake,” I say. He mumbles, in a high voice—seven words in a strange language, but doesn’t wake up.

  A prince shouldn’t lie here like this, head on cold stone. I make him a pillow of my big, floppy purse. I think of the things his grandmother told him, as that a prince should throw off woman’s things and rise up against the enemies, which are around every corner. “Up,” I say, as she said. “It is already written that you did rise and conquer, and if not already written, then I will write it.”

  I squat beside him. His enemies are, I’m sure of it, the same as mine. I swear allegiance. I’ll follow where he leads. I’ll write it all down as it happens. Blessed (as is written at the end of the manuscript), blessed be (as I will be blessed… if faithful… if true) the scribe.

  Strange Plasma, no. 8 1994

  Green Mountain Review, 1994

  After Shock

  SHE’S here because she has decided, if she is to be alive, then be alive in the mountains or the desert, or a little bit of both, which this place is. Smell of sage. Red of buckwheat.

  This house, they say, was built by a crazy man. They still call it Silver’s Folly, though nobody remembers old Silver. It was built long before there was the town of Independence down below. (Still misspelled Independance on some of the oldest signs, as though independence were a dance.) Lumber to build it, and then the furniture, including an ornate little foot-pumping organ (now unplayable, the mice having built nests with the felt, the bellows rotted) all came up in a bucket on pulleys. Nothing left of that system but some rusty pieces of iron; bits of cables lying along the rocks; fallen-down stone braces. Now no way to get supplies but to carry them up in knapsacks, or have them brought in on mules.

  And one couldn’t be exactly sane to live here, especially with the south rooms crushed by land slides. Some day the house will tumble off its promontory. She’s not afraid, and not afraid here alone in the dark either because what’s to be afraid of now? Now that never again this and never again that? Never, that is, again.

  Suppose someone had told her, back when she was a child, “You will not be able to forget anything, and even the good memories—especially those—will make you cry?”

  In the Mojave they had walked a dry arroyo hand in hand. He carried the water. Now she’ll have to do it. He always kissed her when he liked the view. Other times he kissed her: Once inside a hollow, burned-out redwood, once under the oldest of the bristlecone pines, always when they’d reached the top of anything, always when the mist came rolling in below. Once hail came down and they ran for cover, only it was above the tree line and there wasn’t any cover. They lay in a depression, he half on top, his arms around her. Those were the hugs and kisses of the dead and she’d not know it. And she’d kissed the dead when still warm and then again when cool. She’d played her finger around in the dead’s hair. There, beside the newly dead, an hour went by like no time at all, and she wasn’t even thinking of anything. Now, though she didn’t believe in them, she hoped for ghosts. “Kiss of the dead” would be nice. How had it ever happened that people go to be afraid of such things when it was their own beloved dead that would be kissing them or haunting?

  But she was never knowing, all that long time, what love was. Now not know what death is all about. Not know what going on being alive is either. (That, most of all: How be live?) Sometimes, back then, love seemed like hate; same old arguments over and over, even in her dreams, and still in her dreams sometimes, same old arguments now that he’s gone. But sometimes love did seem like love.

  Now hide inside this big old house. Make a place to eat while looking out the window. Put the dead’s things in their proper spots, the dead’s ashes in a little cardboard box, as centerpiece on the table (she knows she should put them in something nice even while waiting to take them up to the top of the mountain). Call out his name. Call out, “Hey…. Hey….” The house thumps and creaks. Something lives in the chimney. Something seems always to be going up or down the stairs. Call out, “Who’s there?” and, “I know you’re there.”

  She wants to worship something. Anything. She wants to sit quietly and take… something… in: As, so this is what it’s like to be still alive. And she does worship, though she doesn’t quite know what. It’s in her pauses. In the sudden stops. In the breathing slowly out and then forgetting to take the next breath in. It’s in the way she stares at small things. It’s when she drinks from his mug.

  And here she is, drinking from the dead’s mug, sitting in his chair, reading the dead’s magazine that keep coming and coming. (She picks them up when she goes to town to get her mail and her supplies.) Why didn’t all these things die also?

  She’s spending most of her time inside now, comforted by the sounds of the house. Comforted by deer mice. Comforted by the bats that rustle out of chinks in the outside walls at twilight. She has to force herself to go out and down for food.

  One day there’s a rattlesnake curled up on the doorstep. Earth colors. Her favorites. She and the rattlesnake watch each other. He blink
s with nictitating membrane. Here is a creature worthy of contemplation. Bad things happen. The snake knows that. She steps boldly out, right on to his doorstep, knowing she shouldn’t—she had even seen him coil himself into the position from which to strike—heard his warning rattle—and been bitten.

  Pain is pleasure. This is as it should be. Not thinking, she calls out the dead’s name as if he could help her, even though he never had helped her much. Usually, that is, he wasn’t there to help, just as he isn’t here now.

  At first she thinks she’ll be dead, too. Tells the snake, “I love you,” as if those ought to be her last words, though they weren’t his last words. He sank away gradually until he couldn’t say anything at all anymore. But tears were in his eyes at the end, as if he knew it was too late, and didn’t want to die. She hadn’t had the chance to say any sort of goodbye when she was sure he could still hear her. Now she says, “Goodbye. I love you,” but death isn’t what happens. Either she becomes like a snake, or maybe a little like a snake, or the snake—it’s as if a frog-prince (snake-prince) has been kissed and becomes a man—a different sort of man from her dead one—leaps up beside her as she gasps and tries to hold herself together, sheds skins (or he does) sloughs off layers of old scars. Dizzy, sinking slowly down, loop after loop of her new self coiled on the doorstep. The snake-man, if such he is (he’s wearing his diamondback sweater), has he appeared at just the right moment from down the trail? Or is this the snake, here, with a snake-bite kit? He knows what to do. Sucks at her ankle. She’s not sure what happens next or when, except she has somehow slithered back inside and he’s there, too, watching her with yellow, steady-on, snake eyes.

  It’s to him she must have said, “I love you,” but why have picked such a dried-out, sinewy, narrow-shouldered little man with scraggly beard? Most likely it was the diamondback sweater that had made her say it, or the argyle socks that she had gotten such a good view of when she’d coiled herself down on the doorstep. And then he had sucked—intimately sucked on her ankle.

  He sits quietly, he, also, worthy of contemplation like any other silent wild thing. Amazing that something as wild as he would have come so close—would have held her elbow and helped her back inside!

  But what will happen now that she’s told this creature that she loves him even though she hadn’t really meant to? Can you take a think like that back? Already this other creature has hung his hat on top of the dead’s hat. Is that his mug or the dead’s?

  Always milk was placed out for snakes in olden times. Now she sees he’s making them both a hot milk. Sprinkling in herbs from his pocket. He must know secrets. Might as well drink it. Maybe keep on changing, or, better yet, maybe stop thinking. Little half-smile on snakeman’s lips even though nothing’s funny. Or everything’s is. Or he has decided to face the world with that little smile instead of some other expression. She could decide to do that, too. But maybe later. Right now she wants to feel sad.

  When the creature speaks, it’s just a whisper. She’s not even sure she’s heard it, but she obeys what she thinks she heard. “Sleep,” she thought he’d said.

  He’s gone when she wakes, and she’s lying curled up on the orange-red tiles of the kitchen floor. She’s thinking he could still be in the house somewhere. There’s plenty of room for him to be living here and she’d not know it, lots of creatures do. Perhaps he has retreated to the ruins of the south wing. She can, or thinks she can, sense him there. Not a smell, but a silence. Nothing else dares to move (even she, hardly daring). Everything waits for him to make the first move. No need, anymore, to call out, “Are you there?”

  In that ruined part of the house there’s a library. She’d not dared to touch the books, they are so powdery and eaten away. Now it seems to her that he’s a library kind of creature.

  Still dizzy, though no longer in much pain… (she has lived with pain. The dead’s pain—at first as if she was in pain herself. It had exhausted her, but then, without wanting to, she had withdrawn from it. She had saved herself)… still dizzy, she slithers along the tiles and then on down the hall. (Nothing left of the carpet but the tack and a few threads.) Then down another hall towards (she hopes) some kind of love. Down three steps. Door to library too broken to be closed all the way, is a snake’s width open. All she (or he) needs.

  He’s there as she thought he’d be. Easy to see he’s an aristocrat. Sits in hard chair at little aristocratic desk. Seems to be reading from one of the disintegrating books. Flakes of the pages fall at his feet, dust motes in the slanting sun’s rays. Everything luminous and hazy. Hard to realize that this, also, going on right now, will be a permanent memory.

  She can only see part of the title of the book he holds: The Art of… something. She sees it as if it were the book she’d like to be reading: The Art of Being Alive.

  “I need your help,” she says, because she thinks she has to have a reason for disturbing him, though not at that moment knowing what she needs help for. But then suddenly she knows it’s time—time to pack a knapsack with the dead’s ashes and dead’s climbing boots. “I can’t do it alone.”

  He breaths a long breath out. It’s not a sigh, more a snake kind of warning.

  What they will eat will be rodents and lizards. Little Bear berries. On long snaky legs (she also) they will leave the zigzagging trails and head straight up. The pica’s warning shrieks ahead of them as they go.

  How delicately he holds the flaking book, his silvery hair haloed by the slanting rays. Surely here is a species rarely seen by humans. “Oh, Mr. “Silver, why did you build on this spot? Was it because of the fear of dying someplace other than right here?”

  She waits. Then says, “Silence is the cruelest?”

  He gets up, pockets The Art of something book with an old man’s careful grace. She’s thinking: Please, no more memories. It’s all these memories that make me feel so old.

  This climb that she will do, it’s not the dead’s wish, it’s her wish and her need—need to do something difficult and frightening—one last duty for the sake of the dead. They say you feel more alive when in danger.

  Ah, but he has pocketed the book for some other purpose than to lead her off into the mountains as she’d hoped. He has crossed the room and is lighting the fire in the fireplace, and she sees it’s growing dark outside. That it’s not dawn after all. The bearskin rug, bear’s head that she’d already tripped over and that she trips over again as she turns to watch him… that rug is a good place to lie in front of the fire and make love to some odd, old creature wearing an earth-colored sweater.

  She’s surprised the fireplace still works. Surprised the bearskin rug is not chewed up by some starving wintertime creature. She coils herself down on it, thinking not, His ashes to mountain top, but ashes to ashes to ashes. Besides, night is the wrong time, early spring the wrong season to be climbing up into the cold, though she and the dead had done it. High up, there, against the whiteness of the snow, they had seen the sky looking black in broad daylight. They had kissed.

  Now, moonlight already shining in through broken panes…. Good she hasn’t a telephone, otherwise she’d be dialing their old number, saying, as she’d often said before: “It’s such a beautiful night here I just had to call you up.”

  She will have to decide, and right away, whether she will let him soak up some of her warmth, which is the reason cold old men or cold-blooded snakes come into people’s sleeping bags and beds.

  Except then, and right in the middle of it, the rattling starts—a rattlesnake kind of rattling so at first she thinks the snake has done it—by himself or in concert with other snakes—hundreds of other snakes. Then she thinks it’s rain on the roof, and then she think hail, but the sky is clear, the moon still bright. Then she knows. “This is the way they always said the rest of the house would go, told her to watch out for it. And now she might go out of the world as naked as came into it…. Except she won’t go without the company of his ashes.

  It’s over by the time she has lur
ched back along the jolting halls (the land, in those moments, having become more alive than her dead), all her heirlooms swept down already, and the precious box with the fine black powder… finer than she’d ever thought it would be or could be (she’d expected bits of bone and teeth. Where were the teeth?)—the box burst and the powder puffed away except for a smudged spot on the red tiles where there’s a streak of black that might be a tiny bit of him—enough black for her to rub her hand over it, and to lick from her fingers all that is left of her lover.

  Century, no.3, September-October 1995

  The Project

  FOR GENERATIONS our wives have said, “What? What! Why are you men always adoing and adoing, such that you are hither and thither all the time while we harvest and chop, set the traps, make the ropes for the bridges and the ropes for the slings and nets—we even make the ropes for the Project?”

  I always answer, “Men are adoing.”

  This is the second project. The first failed. The remnants of it lie in the canyons. Only our grandfathers remember. Our boys think the grandfathers failed because they didn’t know as much as we know now, but I think they had tricks and theories. Easy to see they were as smart as we are. I’ve seen their shattered boulders. Some are even larger than our largest, or were before they fell. We no longer attempt to raise boulders of that size.