Bring the Jubilee

by Ward Moore

  It was not entirely easy to adjust to the new Catty, the busy, efficient, selfreliant creature. Her expressive voice could be enchanting even when she was speaking nonsense—and Catty rarely spoke nonsense. I don’t mean she was priggish or solemn, quite the contrary; her spontaneous laughter was quick and frequent. But she was essentially not frivolous; she felt deeply, her loyalties were strong and enduring.

  I missed her former all too open devotion to me. It had caused embarrassment, impatience, annoyance; now it was withdrawn I felt deprived and even pettish at its lack. Not that I had anything to offer in return or considered that any emotion was called for from me. Though I didnt express it to myself so openly at the time, what I regretted was the sensually valuable docility of a beautiful woman. Of course there was a confusion here: I was regretting what had never been, for Catty and the nameless dumb girl were different individuals. Even her always undeniable beauty was changed and heightened; what I really wanted was for the Catty of now to act like the Catty of then. And without any reciprocal gesture from me.

  The new Catty no more than the old was disingenuous or coquettish. She was simply mature, dignified, selfcontained and just a trifle amusedly aloof. Also she was very busy. She did not pretend to any interest in other men; at the same time she had clearly outgrown her childish dependence on me. She refused any competition with Barbara. When I sought her out she was there, but she made no attempt to call me to her.

  I was not so unversed that I didnt occasionally suspect this might be a calculated tactic. But when I recalled the utter innocence of her look I reflected I would have to have a very nice conceit of myself indeed to believe the two most attractive women at Haggershaven were contending for me.

  I don’t know precisely when I began to see Catty with a predatory male eye. Doubtless it was during one of those times when Barbara and I had quarrelled, and when she had called attention to Catty by accusing me of dallying with her. I was essentially as polygamous as Barbara was polyandrous or Catty monogamous; once the idea had formed I made no attempt to reject it.

  Nor, for a very long time, did I accept it in any way except academically. There are sensual values also in tantalizing, and if these values are perverse I can only say I was still immature in many ways. Additionally there must have been an element of fear of Catty, the same fear which maintained a reserve against Barbara. For the time being at least it seemed much pleasanter to talk lightly and inconsequentially with her; to laugh and boast of my progress, to discuss Haggershaven and the world, than to face our elementary relationship.

  My fourth winter at the haven had been an unusually mild one; spring was early and wet. Kimi Agati who, with her children, annually gathered quantities of mushrooms from the woodlots and pastures, claimed this year’s supply was so large that she needed help, and conscripted Catty and me. Catty protested she didnt know a mushroom from a toadstool; Kimi immediately gave her a brief but thorough course in thallophytology. “And Hodge will help you; he’s a country boy.”

  “All right,” I said. “I make no guarantees though; I havent been a country boy for a long time.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Kimi thoughtfully. “You two take the small southeast woodlot; Fumio can have the big pasture, Eiko the small one; Yoshi and I will pick in the west woodlot.”

  We carried a picnic lunch and nests of large baskets which were to be put by the edge of the woodlots when full; late in the afternoon a cart would pick them up and bring them in for drying. The air was warm even under the leafless branches; the damp ground steamed cosily.

  “Kimi was certainly right,” I commented. “Theyre thick as can be.”

  “I don’t see …” She stooped gracefully; “Oh, is this one?”

  “Yes,” I said, “And there, and there. Not that white thing over there though.”

  We filled our first baskets without moving more than a few yards. “At this rate we’ll have them all full by noon.”

  “And go back for more?”

  “I suppose. Or just wander around.”

  “Oh … Look, Hodge—what’s this?”

  “What?”

  “This.” She showed me the puffball in her hands, looking inquiringly up.

  I looked down casually; suddenly there was nothing casual between us any more, nor ever would be again. I looked down at a woman I wanted desperately, feverishly, immediately. The shock of desire was a weight on my chest, expelling the air from my lungs.

  “Goodness—is it some rare specimen or something?”

  “Puffball,” I managed to say. “No good.”

  I hardly spoke, I could hardly speak, as we filled our second baskets. I was sure the pounding of my heart must show through my shirt, and several times I thought I saw her looking curiously at me. “Let’s eat now,” I suggested hoarsely.

  I found a pine with low-hanging boughs and tore down enough to make a dry, soft place to sit while Catty unpacked our picnic. “Here’s an egg,” she said; “I’m starved.”

  We ate; that is, she ate and I pretended to. I was half dazed, half terrified. I watched her swift motions, the turn of her head, the clean, sharp way she bit into the food, and averted my eyes every time her glance crossed mine.

  “Well,” she murmured at last; “I suppose we mustnt sit idle any longer. Come on, lazy; back to work.”

  “Catty,” I whispered. “Catty.”

  “What is it, Hodge?”

  “Wait.”

  Obediently she paused. I reached over and took her in my arms. She looked at me, not startled, but questioning. Just as my mouth reached hers she moved slightly so that I kissed her cheek instead of her lips. She did not struggle but lay passively, with the same questioning expression.

  I held her, pressing her against the pine boughs, and found her mouth. I kissed her eyes and throat and mouth again. Her eyes stayed open and she did not respond. I undid the top of her dress and pressed my face between her breasts.

  “Hodge.”

  I paid no attention.

  “Hodge, wait. Listen to me. If this is what you want you know I will not try to stop you. But Hodge, be sure. Be very sure.”

  “I want you, Catty.”

  “Do you? Really want me, I mean.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I want you.”

  But it was already too late; I had made the fatal error of pausing to listen. Angrily I moved away, picked up my basket and sullenly began to search for mushrooms again. My hands still trembled and there was a quiver in my legs. To complement my mood a cloud drifted across the sun and the warm woods become chilly.

  “Hodge.”

  “Yes?”

  “Please don’t be angry. Or ashamed. If you are I shall be sorry.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She laughed. “Oh my dear Hodge. Isnt that what men always say to women? And isnt it always true?”

  Suddenly the day was no longer spoiled. The tension melted and we went on picking mushrooms with a new and fresh innocence.

  After this I could no longer keep all thoughts of Catty out of the intimacy with Barbara; now for the first time her jealousy had grounds. I felt guilty toward both, not because I desired both, but because I didnt totally desire either.

  Now, years later, I condemn myself for the lost rapturous moments; at the time I procrastinated and hesitated as though I had eternity in which to make decisions. I was, as Tyss had said, the spectator type, waiting to be acted upon, waiting for events to push me where they would.

  16. OF VARIED SUBJECTS

  “I can’t think of anything more futile,” said Kimi, “than to be an architect at this time in the United States.”

  Her husband grinned. “You forgot to add, ‘of Oriental extraction.’”

  Catty said, “Ive never understood. Of course I don’t remember too well, but it seems to me Spanish people don’t have the same racial fanaticism. Certainly the Portuguese, French and Dutch don’t. Even the English are not quite so certain of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Only t
he Americans, in the United States and the Confederate States too, judge everything by color.”

  “The case of the Confederacy is reasonably simple,” I said. “There are about fifty million Confederate citizens and two hundred and fifty million subjects. If white supremacy wasnt the cornerstone of Southron policy a visitor couldnt tell the ruling class at a glance. Even as it is he sometimes has a hard time, what with sunburn. It’s more complicated here. Remember, we lost a war, the most important war in our history, which was not unconnected with skin color.”

  “In Japan,” said Hiro, “the lighter colored people, the Ainu, used to be looked down on. Just as the Christians were once driven underground at exactly the same time they themselves drove the Jews underground in Spain and Portugal.”

  “The Jews,” murmured Catty vaguely; “are there still Jews?”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “Several millions in Uganda-Eretz which the British made a self-governing dominion back in 1933 under the first Labour cabinet. And numbers most everywhere else, except in the German Union since the massacres of 1905–1913.”

  “Which were much more thorough than the anti-Oriental massacres in the United States,” supplied Hiro.

  “Much more thorough,” I agreed. “After all, scattered handfuls of Asians were left alive here.”

  “My parents and Kimi’s grandparents among them. How lucky were to be American Japanese instead of European Jews.”

  “There are Jews in the United States,” announced Kimi. “I met one once. She was a theosophist and told me I ought to learn the wisdom of the East.”

  “Very few of them. There were about two hundred thousand at the close of the War of Southron Independence on both sides of the border. After the election of 1872, General Grant’s Order Number Ten, expelling all Jews from the Department of the Missouri, which had been rescinded immediately by President Lincoln, was retroactively reenacted by President Butler, in spite of the fact that the United States no longer controlled that territory. Henceforth Jews were treated like all other colored peoples, Negroes, Orientals, Indians and South Sea Islanders: as undesirables to be bribed to leave or to be driven out of the country.”

  “This is very dull stuff,” said Hiro. “Let me tell you about a hydrogen reaction—”

  “No, please,” begged Catty. “Let me listen to Hodge.”

  “Good heavens,” exclaimed Kimi, “when do you ever do anything else? I’d think you’d be tired by now.”

  “She will marry him one of these days,” predicted Hiro; “then the poor fellow will never be allowed to disguise a lecture as a conversation again.”

  Catty blushed, a deep red blush. I laughed to cover some constraint. Kimi said, “Go-betweens are out of fashion; youre a century behind times, Hiro. I suppose you think a woman ought to walk two paces respectfully behind her husband. Actually, it’s only in the United States women can’t vote or serve on juries.”

  “Except in the state of Deseret,” I reminded her.

  “That’s just bait; the Mormons gave us equality because they were running short of women.”

  “Not the way I heard it. The Latter Day Saints have been the nearest thing to a prosperous group in the country. Women have been moving there for years, it’s so easy to get married. All the grumbling about polygamy has come from men who can’t stand the competition.”

  Catty glanced at me, then looked away.

  Had she, I wondered afterward, been thinking how Barbara would have rejected my observation furiously? Or about that day in the spring? Or about Hiro’s earlier comment? I thought about it, briefly, myself.

  I also thought of how easily Catty fitted in with the Agatis and contrasted it with the tension everyone would have felt if Barbara had been there. One could love Barbara, or hate her or dislike her or even, I supposed, be indifferent to her; the one thing impossible was to be comfortable with her.

  The final choice (was it final? I don’t know. I shall never know now) hardened when I had been nearly six years at Haggershaven. It had been “on” between Barbara and me for the longest stretch I could recall and I had even begun to wonder if some paradoxical equilibrium had not been established which would allow me to be her lover without vexation and at the same time innocently enjoy a bond with Catty.

  As always when the hostility between us slackened, Barbara spoke of her work. In spite of such occasional confidences it was still not her habit to talk of it with me. That intimacy was obviously reserved for Ace, and I didnt begrudge him it, for after all he understood what it was all about and I didnt. This time she was so full of the subject she could not hold back, even from one who could hardly distinguish between thermodynamics and kinesthetics.

  “Hodge,” she said, gray eyes greenish with excitement, “I’m not going to write a book.”

  “That’s nice,” I answered idly. “New, too. Saves time, paper, ink. Sets a different standard; from now on scholars will be known as ‘Jones, who didnt write The Theory of Tidal Waves’, ‘Smith, unauthor of Gas and Its Properties,’ or ‘Backmaker, non-recorder of Gettysburg And After.’”

  “Silly. I only meant it’s become customary to spend a lifetime formulating principles; then someone else comes along and puts your principles into practice. It seems more sensible for me to demonstrate my own conclusions instead of writing about them.”

  “Yes, sure. Youre going to demonstrate … uh …?”

  “Cosmic entity, of course. What do you think Ive been talking about?”

  I tried to remember what she had said about cosmic entity. “You mean youre going to try to turn matter into space or something like that?”

  “Something like that. I intend to translate matter-energy into terms of space-time.”

  “Oh,” I said, “equations and symbols and all that.”

  “I just said I wasnt going to write a book.”

  “But how—” I started up as the impact struck me. “Youre going to …” I groped for words. “Youre going to build a … an engine which will move through time?”

  “Putting it crudely. But close enough for a layman.”

  “You once told me your work was theoretical. That you were no vulgar mechanic.”

  “I’ll become one.”

  “Barbara, youre crazy! As a philosophical abstraction this theory of yours is interesting—”

  “Thank you. It’s always nice to know one has amused the yokelry.”

  “Barbara, listen to me. Midbin—”

  “I havent the faintest interest in Oliver’s stodgy fantasies.”

  “He has in yours though, and so have I. Don’t you see, this determination of yours is based on the fantasy of going back through time to—uh—injure your mother—”

  “Oliver Midbin is a coarse, stupid, insensate lout. He has taught the dumb to speak, but he’s too much of a fool to understand anyone of normal intelligence. He has a set of idiotic theories about diseased emotions and he fits all facts into them even if it means chopping them up to do it or inventing new ones to piece them out. Injure my mother indeed! I have no more interest in her than she ever had in me.”

  “Ah, Barbara—”

  “‘Ah Barbara,’” she mimicked. “Run along to your pompous windbag of a Midbin or your oh-so-willing cow-eyed Spanish doxy—”

  “Barbara, I’m talking as a friend. Leave Midbin and Catty and personalities out of it and just look at it this way. Don’t you see the difference between promulgating a theory and trying a practical demonstration which will certainly appear to the world as going over the borderline into charlatanism? Like a spiritualist medium or—”

  “That’s enough! ‘Charlatan’! You unspeakable guttersnipe. What do you know of anything beyond the seduction of cretins? Go back to your trade, you errand boy!”

  I seemed to remember that once before an incident had ended precisely this way. “Barbara—”

  Her hand caught me across my mouth. Then she strode away.

  The fellows of Haggershaven were not enthusiastic for her project. Even
as she outlined it to them in more sober language than she had to me it still sounded outlandish, like the recurrent idea of a telegraph without wires or a rocket to the moon. Besides, 1950 was a bad year. The war was coming closer; at the least, what was left of the independence of the United States was likely to be extinguished. Our energies had to be directed toward survival rather than new and expensive ventures. Still, Barbara Haggerwells was a famous figure commanding great respect, and she had cost them little so far, beyond paper and pencils. Reluctantly the fellows voted an appropriation.

  An old barn, not utilized for years, but still sound, was turned over to Barbara, and Kimi was delighted to plan, design and supervise the necessary changes. Ace and a group of the fellows attacked the job vigorously, sawing and hammering, bolting iron beams together, piping in gas for reflecting lights to enable them to work at night as well.

  I believe I took no more interest than was inescapable as a fellow of Haggershaven. I had no doubt that the money and labor were being wasted, and I foresaw a terrible disappointment for Barbara when she realized the impossibility of her project. For myself I did not think she would play any further part of importance in my life.

  We had not spoken since the quarrel, nor was there inclination on either side toward coming together again. I could not guess at Barbara’s feelings; mine were those of relief, unmixed with regret. I would not have erased all there had been between us, but I was satisfied to have it in the past. The raging desire vanished, gradually replaced by an affection of sorts; I wanted no more of that tempestuous passion, instead I felt aloofly protective and understanding.