by John Barth
How about Scheherazade? says Fred: I see us as Scheherazade, telling stories for a thousand nights and a night.
Mimi grins. A baby storyteller! She sighs, then smiles briskly. Let’s think about it awhile.
Fred nods: There’s certainly no need to decide right now. The danger’s past. We’ve had a bite to eat. He stands, still holding her hand. Want to take a little swim before bedtime?
Mimi’s astonished: A swim! Fred laughs, draws her up. Not out in the Night-Sea. He gestures toward the sheltered water on the other side of the sandspit. I mean in our private little cove here, that we’ve hardly even looked at. The air’s balmy now; I’ll bet that water’s delicious to float around in.
Mimi gently resists his drawing her there. Maybe in a while, Fred. I’m worn out from the trip down. And I keep remembering poor May, and all those drowned Swimmers. . . . She looks sadly back toward the beach where the handsome Third Interloper came ashore, and clutches herself as if for warmth.
Fred understands; says Some of them especially, I guess. Mimi takes his hand again, her eyes still averted.
Fred brightens determinedly: So, he says: Then let’s just watch the moon sail by. We’ll eat some more fruit if we get hungry; we’ll talk when we feel like talking.
Mimi nods. They sit as before, but this time on the point dividing the Mainstream from the cove, where willow withes arch from the bank behind and droop toward the moonlit water. From the silence now comes suddenly the late summer sound of crickets. A whippoorwill calls out; a blue heron squawks. For some while the two listen, enthralled and pensive. Presently they resume their dialogue, speaking huskily, somnolently.
Mimi says It should have your hair, Fred.
What? Oh. No: I like your hair better.
Your brown eyes, though.
Your breasts.
Surprised, Mimi cups and inspects them candidly, comparing her chest to his. Well, she says: If applicable.
Fred nods: If applicable.
The same goes for your particular parts. Mimi gestures toward his lap. Your tail . . .
If applicable, Fred agrees. Anyhow, your cheerfulness, your bravery—it should have those. Your spirit.
Impulsively, Mimi kisses his hand: Our spirit.
Fred nods. Pauses. What a moon, Mimi!
The camera moves to where the moon now gleams through the willow-limbs, its track glittering across the calm Mainstream and the distant breakwater with its winking beacon. There is a far-off sound of migrating geese. The voices of Fred and Mimi continue, off camera.
Can those be geese I hear? asks Fred.
Geese, definitely, Mimi says: Canada geese. Flying south to Chesapeake Bay for the winter, I’ll bet.
Our first Canada geese! Fred pauses. A while ago . . . you mentioned storytelling, Mimi.
One of us did. The Thousand and One Nights. Scheherazade.
Well. Suppose we were to Combine . . . and suppose that what we turned into really did turn into a storyteller instead of into a snow leopard or an oyster tonger. . . .
A little drowsily, Mimi asks What’s an oyster tonger, Fred?
You know: chap who tongs for oysters?
Oh, right: oyster tonger. Boyoboy, I’d love some half-shell oysters, right this minute! Wouldn’t you?
We’ll hunt for some in the morning.
With champagne! says Mimi. Extra dry, to celebrate our first Canada geese.
Katherine Sherritt can’t help saying This is some womb, all right. Womb service, even. Excuse me, hon.
That’s what Mimi says, too, says Peter Sagamore: Excuse me, she says to Fred: You were talking about storytelling. And Fred says What? Oh.
It what we turn into turns into a storyteller, Mimi reminds him, instead of into a clarinetist or a Freedom Fighter . . .
Right. Mind, Mimi: I’m not against clarinetists and Freedom Fighters. But I’m thinking about us now: our story.
What story? Mimi wants to know. Fred says Well, I mean, a good schoolteacher, say, or a good biologist—he or she might do something in the world besides just make more Floaters and Swimmers. But what I’m wondering is this: Would a good first violinist, for example, or a sea porpoise—I mean even a really smart sea porpoise—would it remember all this, and what we’ve been through together? Would it remember us?
Ah, says Mimi: Shooting the Tube. (They did that in Act One, Chipper.) Meeting May up there at the Confluence and learning that I can actually swim! And your learning that you can float, sort of . . .
And meeting you, Fred says. Mimi giggles at the memory. That was no joke, Mimi! And May: amazing May . . .
Katherine squeezes her hand; Peter’s too. The headband’s perched atop our posterity. May says nothing, but squeezes back. Mimi, after a pause, says And us: how we swam and floated. And this cove, that I love. She calls out You’d better remember this cove, storyteller!
Sure, says Fred. But any rockfish, any Canada goose might remember this cove. I want our whole story remembered, Mimi: beginning, middle, and end.
Sighs Katherine Right right right; so do I. Right is right, agrees Lee Talbott. Mimi says Mm: But we don’t know the end yet.
Then let’s try to imagine it, Fred says to her: What do you suppose would happen if you and I were to concentrate on our story; concentrate very hard on it together, the whole time we were Combining. . . .
Oh, Fred, Mimi sighs: Do you believe it might remember us then? Our friendship?
Maybe it would, says Fred, if we concentrated together. You know: “Once upon a time” and the rest.
Hm, says Mimi. And then, seriously, after a pause: I guess I doubt that, Fred.
So do I doubt it! But if it’s even possible . . .
Mimi shakes her head. Whatever we turn into will have to die too, she says.
Well . . . sure.
Well I hate that idea! Mimi cries. This is our baby we’re talking about! It’s us What can it leave behind, besides more of us to die?
Fred considers: Maybe that’s not so bad: a little Mimi, a little Fred. Hundreds of Mimis! Billions of Freds!
Mimi’s not amused: All to die. So much dying! And then that’s that: The End.
Hold on, says Fred: You’re forgetting about the story, Mimi.
No I’m not. Stories die too, Fred. I just now realized that.
Fred just then realizes it, too. Wow, he says, very soberly: You’re right. Oh, Mimi. All of them, do you think?
Mimi nods. Some a little sooner, some a little later. I suppose the odds against a story’s surviving must be about the same as the odds against our surviving, and meeting, and reaching this cove together.
Fred whistles out his breath: Pretty grim, huh. But then it occurs to him to say Yet here we are.
Here we are, Mimi sighs. And the terrible Night-Sea’s like a warm bath now: a quiet anchorage on an Indian-summer evening. She yawns. Excuse me, Fred. Let’s listen to the geese till we fall asleep, okay?
Sure, says Fred: Maybe take a little skinny-dip in the morning, when we hunt for oysters and champagne.
Drowsily again, Mimi asks What’s a skinny-dip, Fred?
And now, friends, we come to the close of this floating opera: Fred says You know: swimming and floating without our wet-suits and envelopes, just for the pleasure of it. Bare-assed. Mother-naked. . . .
Hey, says Mimi mildly: We are naked!
Says Fred I just now noticed.
Well!
Fred chuckles: Must have been something we ate.
Mimi pauses. It feels okay, to me.
It feels terrific, Mimi.
Another pause. Mm, says Mimi.
And another, after which we hear Fred’s voice say Oh, my, my, my.
Then all we hear are the crickets, the tree frogs. Our camera remains unswervingly upon the moon. Geese we hear, too, in the background, and see their silhouettes now and then as they cross the moon.
Very quietly, Mimi’s voice says Wait. She pauses. Softly,
she whispers: Don’t wake the baby. . . . Now.
There, says Fred. Together, says Mimi. And together, ever more softly, their voices repeat as the scene dissolves:
Once upon a time . . .
Once upon a time . . .
Once upon a time.
SUMMER AFTERNOON CELLARDOOR THEOPHANY B♭
As Katherine Sherritt will tell it next fall, when we’re home in Baltimore and she’s back at work (part-time) as Consultant in Folklore and Oral History to the Enoch Pratt Free Library, upon that triple incantation of her husband’s (by oval Mimi, spermatozoic Fred), the starter-locks on all the Talemobiles and Storycycles of the library’s Narrative Extension Service unlocked as one, and those dramatic vehicles ran unsputteringly thereafter to their inevitable denouements. Seven several dwarves at least (will swear awed Peter Sagamore to his College Park apprentices) slid singly from his narrative shoulders into the empty signal canister, like a troop of djinns back into their bottle. Vug! Crump! Fougasse! Dingle! Coomb! Cubby! Coign! He nodded respectfully to each (Fougasse and Vug, in particular, flashed him a look that said You’ve not seen the last of us)—then quickly clapped atop them the manuscript in hand. As if left hand to his right, K stuffed with one sure motion the paisley scarf atop that script; right to her left, P capped that canister. Way to go, team! cheered Left and Right.
No hocus-pocus, reader, removes such malign forces from the world or even long contains them; but for their mere remission, Muse be thanked.
That orange container itself—lead-heavy now with the thing contained, as P’s fancy is helium-light—we do not chuck into our waters for some hapless future voyager to take aboard. The burden’s ours. But we’ll stow it, ballastlike, low in Story’s bilge, where such weighty matters stabilize instead of merely cumbering. Just now we merely cap it, and Peter says to Franklin Key Talbott So much for that. Now you go home and write your next thing, and I’ll go home and write ours.
Do Homer, Scheherazade, Cervantes, and Mark Twain then and there embrace our P as their peer? Not yet, and no matter: They’re stars he steers by, not his destination. Anyhow, he has work to do: Once upon a time is only the beginning. Leah Allan Silver Talbott, however, crosses the cockpit of Reprise to kiss him solidly upon both cheeks. Her pensive but now firmly boina’d husband says I have something for you downstairs, friend, and goes to get it. May Jump, her left arm around Katherine’s shoulders, nods yes to the script’s conclusion and shakes P’s hand. Kath herself leans over Fred and Mimi to kiss their father full upon the mouth. Who needs the committee of immortals?
Frank calls up to Lee Where’d Mims put Wydiwyd, hon? saying the acronym as a word. It belongs to Peter Sagamore.
Kath’s still kissing. Lee Talbott begins to say Maybe that last “Once upon a time” sent it back to its original owner? But at the word “time,” a magnificent B♭ sounds from next door, and Katherine feels a movement in her belly so distinctly different from what she’s used to (like twin cel-lardoors, she’ll say, opening up and out) that she goes Oof into her husband’s mouth and stands right up.
The sound’s just Chip, paying his tribute to the tale on Story’s conch and announcing, at his mother’s bidding, lunch. Hey! calls Simon Silver from Katydid: Let me! Frank Talbott comes up grinning with a different T-shirt in hand in payment for his hat, saying Marian must’ve taken old Wydiwyd with her and left this one behind. Or else we’ve had company.
He shakes it out; holds it up. It’s man-sized, long, crew-necked, plain white, unmottoed, clean combed cotton—except for a palm-sized, amoeboid inkblot over the heart. If it fits, declares Frank to Peter, it must be yours.
As we laugh, the conch resounds: Sy this time, his copper bracelet glinting in the sun, a high-volume triumph on his maiden try. Now? asks Blam; says Blooey Now, and Katherine Sherritt’s amnion bursts at last.
ANCHORS AWEIGH!
Twice upon a time, at the time we tell of, twin thunderstorms struck Chesapeake Bay at the same hour two weeks apart and fanfared our delivery like harbor cannon. Where went this summer afternoon, 29 June ‘80? Down time’s tubes, like its eventful spring counterpart two Sundays past; like our storied fortnight since; like K’s birth-fluid now through Reprise’s cockpit scuppers: into the Sassafras, the Chesapeake, the mingling waters of the world.
She stands before her seated spouse, laughing, leaking, her hands upon his dwarfless shoulders. Uh-oh, says May; says Lee Ai yi. Peter calls calmly Doctor Jack? Jack Bass responds from K IV’s afterdeck, where he and Hank are tethering the Windsurfer for their lunch break: Yo!?
Lunchtime, everybody! Irma sings up from her galley. Carla B Silver, who, bringing up a full bowl of fresh fruit salad from that same galley, turned toward us at the second conch-blast and in one unsurprised glance assessed the situation, corrects her: Launch time, Bubeleh. Your grandchildren have smashed the champagne already and started down the ways.
Says May I’ve got something to deliver, too; excuse me. She pats K’s tush and goes below.
Frank Talbott puts a tentative arm around Katherine’s shoulders. You all right? Her hands still on Peter (who is steadying her by the hips), she smiles and touches her forehead briefly to Frank’s chest. Joan Bass and Irma Sherritt have surfaced from Katydid’s downstairs; Chip and Sy stand awed upon Story’s cabin top; Jack Bass and Henry Sherritt are already making their way across the rafted boats. Kath’s forehead’s pressing Peter’s now; our four eyes are closed; we’re back-and-forthing as if in joyful prayer.
Here you go, guys, says May Jump: little labor-saving device. She lifts K’s right hand off P’s left shoulder and slides onto that wrist a finely worked gold bracelet with three several stones. Have a safe one, Kiss.
Oh, May! Hugs, busses. Katie? wonders Irma. Katydid? calls Hank: You okay, hon?
Peter Sagamore, standing now, grinning, assures them: We are okay. But our time has come.
Patient reader! So!
Hank and Peter busily wonder now, of Jack Bass: Scrub up? Put water on to boil? Crank up CBs, VHFs? Helicopters! Ambulances! Move and shake! Chip Sherritt announces, on his and Sy’s behalf, We’ll stow the Windsurfer! It is the best he can come up with, and not bad.
Tut tut tut tut tut tut tut, says our unexcited obstetrician, patting Kath’s head (she’s still standing there) and verifying with one plump forefinger along her left calf that she has not in fact simply peed with anticipation. Easy does it, mates. Grandpa, he says to Henry, I want you to chop me a cord of firewood while Dad runs forty laps and Grandma rigs a gantline to the bosun’s chair. But first let’s all sit down and have a nice lunch.
He is serious! It is not the rule, he tells us, for amnionic/chorionic sacs to break before even preliminary labor commences; but it isn’t all that extraordinary, either. Chances are, he tells us, we’ll go spontaneously into labor . . . within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
Where’s Ma Nontroppo? Kathy frets. Where’s Walter Cronkite?
And that’s only latent-phase labor, Doctor Jack reminds us. Things don’t get serious till the grunts get regular, and we haven’t started our irregular contractions yet.
Declares wide-eyed Katherine, squeezing his elbow, Whoops: Yes we have.
Time for lunch then, prescribes Jack Bass. After you wash that champagne off. Then we’ll mosey up the river and down the road. Once she really gets started, he reminds her further, she’s got eight or ten hours’ work to do, and his guess is she won’t really get started before happy hour.
Lunch, then! A happy hour in truth aboard Katydid TV, under the big blue and white awning, where last night’s long stories got told. We narrators are too dizzy to register what we’re eating; we bet it’s good. Real Mumm now: just a sip for us and our physician. Katherine turns and turns Scheherazade’s charmed bracelet upon her wrist; she smiles, shakes her head, sniffles over the—yes, it is ambrosia, fresh coconut and all. She leans her head upon her mother’s shoulder (Irm’s calmly delirious); tries to change the subject; cannot.
There’s another contraction! Neither Joan Bass nor lima Sherritt nor Carla B Silver wants to be a birth-bore, but how can they be expected not to recollect and compare their own first and subsequent deliveries? Chip Sherritt asks earnestly It’s really eight to ten hours of second-phase labor? That’s a lot of hard work. Eight to twelve, Doctor Jack assures him, on the average, the first time out. Later ones are shorter, on the average.
This one, Carla prophesies, will be shorter; but there’s no hurry. Jack Bass raises his benign black eyebrows and regards her over his half-glasses. Here’s to it, toasts May Jump. Henry Sherritt instructs his wife Don’t let me forget to call Willy and cancel. We’ve got more important things to take delivery of than that granary.
We toast that granary; also Breadbasket Inc. Even Willy: Here’s to Willy, proposes Katherine. Here’s to Poonie, even. God bless us every one.
Says Franklin Key Talbott, his arm around his wife, And here’s to Fred and Mimi.
A and P, chimes Chip, who got left out of last night’s go-round; Sol y Sombra, Hollywood and Vine. He grins: Over the River and Through the Woods? Til Eul and Spiegel? Winks his father Wheel and Deal.
We’re not drinking, reader, just lifting our champagne flutes in toast after toast. To Truth and Consequences, says Lee Talbott. Even Simon, new to our game, tentatively comes up with Night and Day? Night and Da-a-a-ay! May Jump sings to him—but Chip thinks we’ve used that one already. Fly Now and Pay Later, chirps Joan Bass. Her husband proposes Benedictine and Brandy. Peace and Plenty, predicts Carla B Silver. Uh, says Peter, Shem and Costello?
Katherine leans back against his new T-shirt; closes her eyes—another contraction! Says Come and Get It.
Time to go: Such a lovely lunch, so high-spirited an interlude, the afternoon’s advanced before we’re done. Good-bye to Reprise. She’ll follow us upriver toward Georgetown to top up water tanks and icebox at the first marina we pass, then get going Bayward and homeward. Frank Talbott promises Peter, aside, to keep us posted, minidumpwise; we owe it to the Great Mother to nail Willy & Company, and Frank shall do his level utmost in that line. But the Talbott-Sagamore connection, and this weekend especially, has him feeling corner-turned: He’s getting novel ideas almost as fast as he can log them. Lee bids us warmly Have a good life, you all. Chip and Simon have stowed the Windsurfer very securely along K IV’s portside bow lifelines. They shake hands; then Sy surprisingly goes the rounds of Katydid and Story, manfully shaking hands with each of us, thanking Irma for lunch, expressing polite gratification at having met Mr. Sherritt, Dr. and Mrs. Jack (nobody smiles at this little slip), us. May Jump and Carla B Silver exchange a Would You Look at That look.
