Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel

by Hortense Calisher

  Looking round the garage, he reconvinced himself of the ultimate fantasticality of right-where-one-is. Carefully, for himself, he rehearsed the small fantasies of the route home: first the guilty twilight of Harlem—a dream of which had sometimes stopped him in his tracks in Paddington, then the all-purpose plaid handkerchief of suburbia, and finally the dark, polite verdure—nowhere near so savage as Scotland, of his adopted hills. When the attendant came with the car, he tipped him. Sinking but resigned, he refitted himself into the car. The man leaned on the window to give him a friendly warning. Be sure to avoid midtown traffic; the latest astronaut was being welcomed home there, with confetti.

  She was in the back room. When he entered her house, several nights later, letter in hand, he was almost convinced of it. To be haunted it is necessary only to feel oneself the ghost. He had come in from that doorstep at last. Inside the little downstairs with its steps going straight up, the two sitting rooms, bowing at each other from opposing mirrors, were as neat as a “restoration” from some Williamsburg of memory. The curtains were impossibly clean—he heard her word for them, “priscilla,” rustle again in her mouth, and saw how she looked at them with a touch of the farmgirl’s satisfaction in having what one is supposed to have. Once (the day he’d suggested a drive to Pennsylvania) she’d told him about the severe house-habits of the “Dutch”—what kind of housewifery had been going on here, in this sealed house? And once, going on into the back room, he’d at first thought himself alone with all that welter of stuff, then caught sight of her, asleep he thought, on that long New Guinea couch, but when he bent over her there’d been a sudden gleam in the lashes and she’d murmured a bit of Dutch talk at him. “Wann dich ime busch ferlore hoscht, guk ame bam nuf.” He’d made her write it down for him afterwards, meaning to have it engraved on a Christmas bangle. “When lost in the woods, look up a tree.”

  It was all he had of her, except for the letter he was holding. Carrying this, he tiptoed toward the back with stilted step, unable to keep out of his gait a dream that princes were still needed here. And with his hand on the light switch, he’d made his discovery—rather early for a philosopher, circumstantially sad for a man. He knew what it was for which he did care.

  Still in the dark, he pondered it, as if he hadn’t a world of time to do it in, or, since he was surely going to find her asleep there, he had to get it straight before he turned on the light. Was it in her difference from other women—that in the dark all cats weren’t gray? Perhaps, a little. But he’d known women who were far more different—novelties against whose planes, mental or physical, a man was hard put to it to recline. Was it only sexual choice then, merely sex, that ess-shaped giggle of the cosmos, which held him here to hope against hope that when the lamp glowed she would be standing between the cherubs, a median, white-budded plant just enough different, at the small fork of her, for him? Perhaps—a little. Or more than either, that man even in his psyche was only a part-time Narcissus? Was it that he loved—as men had learned to call it—because in one final way, and a number of frivolous ones, she was different from him?

  The answer he got was the worst: that he was still speaking of her to himself in the present. At the flip of a switch he would see straight ahead through a window, out where a light made a coastline of trees. If, by a similar projection, he could be his last winter’s self walking by, it could know who was inside here. In a way he could. For he understood what he cared for. And he knew who was here. The pain of being thus double was ugly. There, in the dark, his own memorial service was long.

  When he snapped on the light, it was no longer needed; dawn was growing, entering the room with its gray usurper’s stride. The room seemed unchanged, holding the same host of immoderate objects still covered by the same moderate dust—as if in this most miniature time lapse, each had been awarded its exact pinch of the dust of time. Nearest him, a poggamoggan—War Club of the Plains Indians, Authentic—lay crossed with a small archeological steal, Gold Armband, Sutton Hoo—fake. Carefully his glance edged toward the corner where lay all New Guinea. Alone there, the long couch still sailed. He turned his head slightly to the right, toward the mantel wall. The cherubs still flew. She wasn’t standing between them. Even if he hadn’t had the directions in her letter, or had been a newcomer to all the wild wrack that floated this room like a Sargasso, he couldn’t have missed what was.

  It stood there under the glassy shape which was so clearly only its covering, and it had only the one quality. Everything else here strained or pleaded under a confusion of so many, the smallest shard in some way beating upon the world, on with it. If the total medley here could have been heard, it would have been an irregular one of all kinds of human loops and eddies stretching to be heard above and outside the concentric itself of sound.

  This object stood imperturbable, above and outside them. The quality it seemed to have most was a self-containment, of a creation not necessarily—though he’d never seen anything like it—unique. If, for instance, all the snowflakes in the world, instead of being so crazily versatile, had been shaped to a compassionately single design, then any one of them would have what this had—the poise of the One. In the far corner of himself that loved one-ness—or perhaps machinery—he restrained an impulse to kneel.

  Instead, he got a move on—his normal response to that impulse. Else he might have been mooning there yet in his solitary longing, instead of being so healthfully exposed here to act it out before what now appeared to be an audience close to the hundred he’d invited. One might almost think that he indeed had been observed on the way here—what right had she to expect that he’d be some sort of Godiva for whom the town would draw its blinds? A thrill nevertheless went through him at all she’d expected of him, for which, in the range of conceivability, he might yet be rewarded. It was the thrill of which heroes were made, as he well knew. He couldn’t help it. Getting that thing here, as her letter had predicted, hadn’t been all that strenuous. She’d merely failed to warn him that it might be ludicrous. For, anyone chancing to see the complementary rhythms between him and his charge as they made their way here together, might well be excused for assuming that it had been getting the move on him.

  Suddenly the Muzak went off, leaving him on, to manage as best he could by himself the stealthy current of time. Had he been asleep? What in God’s name was he doing here? Out front, the audience held up to him that massed sunflower face which all lecturers know—but his was not the simple platform fear. He had been born to this one, he thought as suddenly. He’d been born to this, to the right-here and the now, sent forth with eyes, ears, balls and ever-valiant tongue to function along his voyage of discovery, all to suffer pains or joys still unknown, including the adventure of the death that would be the end of him and them—and in all of this he was an amateur. To the end of this mélange that both frightened and beguiled, he would be one.

  He covered his eyes with his hands, wishing that all his organs had complementary sets of hands to cover them, or at least some more generally anonymous skin. If, at best, there were only some repository—of professionalism—to which he might apply. He understood quite well that this was merely the Fascist fear, possibly the God-making one also—and that only his flesh was feeling it. Hard lines that only his flesh was also understanding it. For meanwhile, he knew quite as well that in eighteen or so minutes by his watch he would be getting to his feet on performance of business which might be less daily than most, but had at its heart the same fear that was dormant in any, and might attack a man when he was merely staring at his own cuticle—the ordinary citizen’s stage fright and inner self-amaze. He wasn’t having any revelations, by God. Any clam-digger might have this sudden sense of fear, or any Linhouse—or any Anders—and probably not when Anders was belting the universe either, maybe when he was in the middle of a shave. It might come upon one on top of a mountain or a woman, on errand or in urinal, in the movie houses of crowd, or at the weekend sandbeaches of alone. No doubt everybody knew this par
ticular sensation as well as Jack Linhouse. It might be called the oracle of the cuticle. It was the moment when the Muzak stopped, and more clearly than in any foreign land, one stood knee-deep in the utter fantasticality of right-where-one-was. The cure for it was obscure as any of his mother’s for heartburn or hiccups. Since he hadn’t a lump of sugar or a glass of water, he held his breath, then breathed deeply. And had his revelation. This was why one traveled. To get rid of just that.

  Just then, a knocking came, apparently at one of the upper doors. But, these doors, like those in any supermarket, were opened in the modern way, by crossing a beam of light with one’s body—the kind of door at which, when set up for entry, it was almost physically impossible to knock. Maybe it was the younger generation knocking, as in that line of Ibsen he’d always despised for its patness. Go away, he said to it silently—I am the younger generation. Or was, up to last week. Sure enough, this not being the theater, it went away. Besides, he said after it, we have enough people, all she wanted. Every seat he could see was filled.

  He checked his watch again—twelve minutes now—took from his wallet the engraved program with its carefully worded note of explanation, slipped under it the part of her letter she’d asked to have read, put the letter’s other sheet in his hip pocket, and stood up, remembering that at the near end of the basement passage which debouched backstage, there was a toilet. Just as he stood up—bless action for being the cure one always forgot about—a hand was placed on his shoulder. A bear or a ghost, which will you have it, he thought as he whirled. You know which.

  The old man seemed taller than he remembered him, unlike most old men. Since last seen, his skin had become the swart color that aged men come to by way of sun or liver. From his dress—the white tennis flannels and dark jacket of any number of first acts marked Summer: 1914—it was hopefully the former. Which must mean that Sir Harry had been to Berkeley for his conference.

  “Why—!” Linhouse kept his greeting hushed, but held out his hand. It took him a long moment to realize that his hand was being refused.

  The old man lowered down at him, using his height so that Linhouse’s head was forced back on his neck, his eyes at close range to that handsomely troughed upper lip, to the cleft, like the finish of an interrupted penstroke, in the chin.

  “What have you done with her?” said Sir Harry.

  “What … have … I?” With each word, a different hazard came to Linhouse’s mind. Were they thinking—they couldn’t think—that he himself had somehow effected her disappearance, disposed of her like a Landru, cut her up and washed her down a drain? Or they had thought—and Sir Harry, here en route home and known to be his friend, had been sent—how else would he have found the back way to the podium?—to forestall the scandal of a ceremony. Or—No, it couldn’t be. Old as Jamison had been for her (fifty-four to eighteen)—eighty to thirty-four? Could it be? A magnificent man to look at, tellingly lively with his own wife. And an astronomer. Why couldn’t it be? Coming back and forth here, always for the most internationally apposite reasons. And all along, he could have been the new one.

  “You were the last one she showed any interest in.” Sir Harry’s voice was hoarse but polite, like a judge who had been up all night over the transgression of a junior. “When I came back, she was gone. Leaving me a letter. All but saying she was here with you.”

  She. She. She.

  “You too!” said Linhouse. “And I didn’t even know you knew her!” In the eyes above his, he saw at last how it looked to others, that small pigtail flame of obsession. “But as for my—”

  “You must be out of your mind!”

  “—you must be out of your mind.”

  They said it simultaneously. But mid-chorus, Linhouse had already seen it—what the resemblance was. “Sir Harry—” He spoke gently. “May I see your letter?”

  It was handed him, the fingers shaking now. He read little more than the few lines above the signature. When you know the circumstances you will not blame, even though it is the second time for you. My last words are loving. There is a long chance … (here some indecipherable figures) that we shall meet again. Go to America. And below the signature, a small postscript. He didn’t really need to read either. The letter was in French.

  When he handed Sir Harry his own letter, it seemed almost, if not quite, an even exchange.

  Finally each raised his head, but each averted sideways, like two cuckolds.

  Sir Harry spoke first. “Ah, I see. Your ceremony, then.”

  “Mmm.” There was a pause. “Perhaps—might we meet afterwards?” And perhaps, like two cuckolds, they would enjoy it.

  He looked down at Sir Harry’s letter before returning it. You may guess, the postscript said. From the signatures, one wouldn’t have thought the two women had much in common. The signature on his own letter had been round and not very characterful—the farmgirl, the jampot. This scrawl was black and taut, the footprint of an eaglet. Rachel.

  “I’ll go the way I came,” said Sir Harry after a bit. It was his apology.

  “Mind the stairs. A bit tricky.”

  “Ah yes, thanks—doors up above on the blink, it seems. Stuck tight.”

  “Ah, that was you then. Knocking. Sure you can find the way now?” It was a toss-up as to which voice was the more perfunctory. Neither one of them had moved.

  “Oh yes indeed, I was taken round the whole show here very thoroughly last time … One setup rather like mine in Bucks, several million pounds worth more powerful of course … Nothing like it even at Berkeley; Anders gets pretty much what he wants.” At last he moved. “No, don’t trouble, always find my way, old Army habit. Sorry if I’ve delayed—and … well … carry on, eh?”

  Then, at last, they let themselves look at one another. No, they were not out of their minds. But how extraordinary that they weren’t.

  “But—” Linhouse faltered. For there must be some connection. Anders? He tested it. “Anders!”

  Sir Harry caught his meaning at once, as neatly as any sibling. But shook his head. “No, no. Oh no, my dear fellow. Not him. At least—not Rachel … That is to say—nothing against your young woman.” He flushed—the clean neo-Socialist pink of those who still find the need to apply standards to people. “What I mean to say—ah what a tangle!—not where anyone could think it was you.” He said it with a bow.

  Pure Pinero, thought Linhouse. Those flannel pants. Somehow, balk as we may at the ordinary fantastic of our century, there are always these honest little diversions into real unbelievability, to keep us going. Those pants. Father had some just like. And if I’m to last, I ought to have had more to eat than that bun. And I ought to take a leak.

  “Sorry not to have been more of a connection!” he said, with a gulp. “But there must be one, you know. Really now. Unless it’s your experience that women just take off like this regularly!”

  In immediate horror, he recalled that this had been Sir Harry’s experience—twice. It was unconscious malice on his own part, at having been kept from that leak. As always after these slips, he yearned to say to his opposite: For the sake of humanity, let us love one another—I love you. And how I hate Freud.

  But Sir Harry seemed not to have heard. For one thing, the Muzak had begun again, as if insisting that it was now a quarter past three. Also, with the ease of six-feet-four over five-feet-nine, he was looking straight past Linhouse. He had seen the object.

  Linhouse waited for the old man to speak—“Hul-lo” perhaps, then—“Hul-lo!” But the old man said nothing.

  Linhouse waited to be asked what it was, so that he might reassure himself with his own answer: “It’s the record of a journey—you saw her letter.” Then, with a shrug, “I’m to let it play, for the crowd.” Or perhaps, owing to their linked circumstance, he need merely give a flick to the letter, remaining dumb. And Sir Harry, mum-dumb also—so related were the co-deserted!—might pass over it with merely a nod.

  In which case, what would he himself feel then? He had that
terrible premonitory sense of being on the edge of identifying in himself a feeling he would be unable to bear—that sense of half of him plodding away from himself with steps nightmare slow and these fated only to find themselves returning, indrawn again to the monster at his own center—the cephalopod that floated on its own arms and wasn’t going anywhere. He waited for his good kind friend, the astronomer scientia, scientia—to recognize it—the object? the feeling? and tell him what it was, in a voice not too far from the one in which nursemaids dealt with natural miracles: “Thunder is the clouds knockin’ together. Days is longer in summer, because. Coo, love, hands away from the fire. It burns.”

  But the old man, head lifted, did none of these things. He did what all the others out there hadn’t done. Stood rapt.

  Finally, his hand fell on Linhouse’s shoulder, and gripped there.

  By its transference, Linhouse recognized his own feeling. He didn’t want to know—what he wanted to know about her. Or to get to know, by any extension of hers, her Elsewhere. On the small unknowns larger ones always rested, eagles taking off from the linnet’s wing. If there was a Great Pyramid shape to knowledge, then it must balance on point, upside down.