On that day which—if he’d known it to be the last one—what could have been his loverly research? … Lovers are walked to the door with, in saltbox houses whose sitting room windows give directly upon the February dusk, at this time of year no thistledown blowing through them, but light, gloaming remarks float the room; time is mentioned, not Time but “time” only, and no glint of farewells, but suddenly she says it, bending down to a letter seen to have been slipped under the door, perhaps with the bell they had let ring unanswered earlier: “Jeepers!”—and how take seriously the elsewheres of a woman whose only oath was “Jeepers”?—“Jeepers, another letter from E = MC2, it’s about time she answered”; and he asks, laughing, perhaps blowing out a bit of thistledown he isn’t aware of: “Secret agent?” and she replies, on a laughing breath back to him: “That was his private nickname for her—Jamie’s first wife. We started a correspondence over the estate, and once in a while we still write.” Jamie had kept his vow never to marry another beaky intellectual; after that, as Linhouse must recall, there had been the Maori girl who died—“and then, me.” And he replies, “Nonsense!” puffing it into the ear he then kisses: “—that man never exactly built you up, did he!” and she shrug-smiles, with the look that can’t help being jampot, and he almost takes her in the back room again—oh witness, that he was no better about her than Jamie—but she, head downcast, the blue airmail letter still in her fist, says no. And “What’s the name mean—EC et cetera,” he asks, in the random of a man so refused, and she identifies it, not that she knows what it means—as Jamie had, to her.
And this is how he is now able to identify—not that he knows what it means either—the most famous equation in Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
On that note, as good as any other, he had left her. The next time they spoke, it was on that doorstep. But—no … But no. Just before he leaves, happening to glance at the familiar red-blue border of the same form his mother always writes on, he says, negligent of his own last words: “British, is she?” Last words, last words. And, indifferent to her own, she says them. Hers. “No, her husband is, they live there, sometimes. No. French.”
And now intuition creeps up from behind, up and onto the shoulder blades of a man who personally has never even been able to stand the modern way of referring to it, the way they like to beg the question by saying a person “intuits”; it hops up, and there, leg around his neck, it sits. The women. The women, the women, the women—lost and/or disappeared, the women. Somewhere he had missed the connection and somewhere he has got it, the Trojan women, the Trojan—It is four o’clock of a darkish afternoon in Hobbs Hall, not Hades, and we have been gathered here, tympani, tympani, and the doors are closed—tympani-tum. And the voice on the stage is still going on, elegantly furnishing credits and summaries; is boredom the potion we’re being given? Mille basia, Lesbia, oh, give me a thousand kisses and all that—or phrase it more simply—hop! Two thousand years of it since ever they can remember, and all very nice too—they accept the universe. And issuing from them meanwhile, all the little Galileos, sons husbands brothers fathers and uncles—all the only ones getting to look into the lens. Est. But what if a too sudden century or so unbinds not only the feet of the mothers, the girdles, but their pencils—their brains?
Oh, Catullus. Is this blue-airform informed, bluestocking voice, from wherever she now is, or was—Janice? Who wanted a physicist. Oh Catullus, is this Lesbia now?
“—and in conclusion,” said the voice …
And what does she want of us?
“—If it shall appear that I have said anything worthy—”
Trust the women not to take over the world without a great deal of preliminary conversation.
“—do not attribute any such wisdoms to me, please—”
Or was that still a male idea—taking over? … Say please, Johnnie dear.
“—but credit my teacher.”
Who was in all probability Jamison. And this archaic, Indo-European utterance, with its overlay of Philadelphia or perhaps a touch of Merton, was merely some Uncas he had picked up and educated, his final chef d’oeuvre, excavated from the customary Gold Bug spot on the usual archipelago between the two significant rocks.
Then why does intuition … sit?
“—and should we not credit all of them from our earliest days, those mistresses of the infinite detail—”
And what does the witch-bitch want of me, leg-necking me here?
He glared out at the hall, singling out, along the rows, various harmless wives, lab assistants, amanuenses, Lila, Miss Apple Pie. When one wanted to get the mind off Woman, it was often useful to take a look at women. Those down there were as solidly glazed forward toward the talking book as if it were a Four-Speed Wash-Dri one of them was shortly to be winning; these were not the wailing Trojan elite he had in mind.
“—to all those unknown but constant signalers, devotees of knowledge, here and elsewhere—”
He summoned his acquired knowledge of women: Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Tess, Lysistrata, Madame de Maupin, Fanny Hill, Moll Flanders—Fool!—all created by men. His mother, then: who had done as she chose, and let his father interpret her from the other side of the water. Other recalcitrant, but finally passive ladies. Old Margaret-I-accept-the-universe-Fuller, put down with a “Gad, she better!”, the final male answer, by old Carlyle, rumored impotent, but a man. Acceptance implies a choice however—what had been lurking, still lurked, in the tundra-dark of all the Margarets? He summoned all his own knowledge of the stubborner ones, his former wife, his last lover: what do the women do, these days, when they want, when they don’t want—? At the base of his spine, something plucked a guitar string and then was silent. They leave.
“—your language. I shall never have full control of it, of complications which, forgive me, I once regarded as unnecessary. But now it seems to me that if here long enough, one may grow the tongue for it—”
Yes, only some Ishi, hairy Ainu, last aborigine whom somebody has taught to prate square root; the complications are mine. Nothing that jukebox can say will ever approach the complex humanism of an empty stomach.
“—other apology. I had thought to find you—And instead, I find you—” A choke. A pause. “Now consider me that savage—the civilize’ being who think himself to be among savages.”
And Linhouse stood up again, ready to—shout? Smash? Run? Who could say. But he had the connection. “Yes,” said a voice in Holland Park. We are veree civilize’.”
“—with thanks to this Center for providing opportunity. And for the marvelous facilities of Professor Van Wert Anders, without—as they say—whom—And now, as you like to say here, I will cut the cackle.” The top leaf of the book, all this time infinitesimally moving in an arc leftward, gave a last tweedle and lay over, giving way to the next one, which infinitesimally rose in its turn. “Herewith, my journal. Herewith … oh I am so proud … I.”
In the loge, a voice said something inaudible; then Anders’s head wobbled up on its long stalk. “Cut the … cut the …!” it said scratchily. “Cackle indeed!” It was a voice common enough to the professions here, a growing boy’s voice, testy as an old man’s. Ordinarily its timbre, that of a good square heel steadily treading eggshells, would have gone unnoticed. Now all heads in the auditorium turned to it, perhaps not for the reason its owner thought. “Nothing to do with this,” he said, “… miles out of my field … primitive peoples … not my beckyar-r-d.” From behind him there was somewhere a girl’s giggle, quickly quenched. It was true though: except for the har-r-d uptstate “r’s,” his voice was exactly—like the box.
“Anders—” Naughton the provost’s thick white shock of hair was trimmed to fall forward like that of certain bluff American business types, over a big face of healthy indoor red. And like them, he was very used to dealing with a republic of children, on whom the power, the money, the credit might nevertheless so often depend. “A while back, didn’t Security report some funny stuff
down at your lab?”
“Oh, I’d forgotten that, sir. Why yes, looked as if somebody’d tried to run the works, and my notes were disturbed. No damage though. And I’ve no such apparatus as—as that.”
Another giggle, locus indiscernible. For some reason, he didn’t know why, Linhouse turned to look sharply at the secretary-doll, if only because this was what she looked like, a ventriloquist’s vis-a-vis, this one warm and breathing, but with the same little tucked-in, stationary smile which could be talked up into half a dozen different comic imbroglios. In any caste society, women notoriously were the first to step over the stile. But this little cipher, in her starched wimple, didn’t look the kind to; she certainly didn’t fit his image of those women who might after all exist only in his head—the elite. As he heard his own name pronounced, a little ear of caution unfolded, within it a gray, grayling echo. Neither had Janice.
“Yes, sir?” he said.
“I’m afraid perhaps this goes beyond the bounds, normal bounds of a memorial service.” Naughton looked about him, for seconding. Not a head turned. “Wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, sir.” I’ll take ten lashes, sir. Norms are norms.
“Could you perhaps enlighten us, beyond that letter you read us—”
“As to what, sir?”
“As to what that gizmo—as to, ah, er—where it came from.”
“’Fraid I can’t, sir.” It was never so hard to appear ingenuous as when one was. Try American. He turned up his palms. “Search me.” And then found himself patting pockets with real concern—had he dropped her letter at the loo? He found it. “All I have is the rest of the directions. They call for—” He checked it. “One interval, halfway through, where the large television screen is to be switched on.”
“These unsolicited—bequests.” The provost sighed. That he could clap his hands together now with prebendary firmness was one of the reasons he had his job. “Well, then—De mortals, of course. But I think I should say, without any disrespect, that our time has been sufficiently preempted, wouldn’t you say, eh. Let us disband.”
Someone spoke, from next to Anders. “But what if—what if it’s meant to tell us what happened to her? What if she’s still somewhere, and there’s a message?”
This voice, almost a wail, was Lila’s. Linhouse stood absently, paper in his hand. Lila’s as he had always known it, silly-motherly, borne along on the ever-ready gush of her “views.” And there she was; he could see her. But it was also quite definitely the voice—if one felined it a bit, rubbed its fur the wrong way, for a few sexual sparks—of the woman he had overheard this morning in the coffee shop. And Meyer, her husband, had a sociologist’s organ tone, real ruby-throated Wurlitzer. “Honey, honey,” she had said. But the man with her hadn’t been Meyer.
There was an interested murmur of assent, dissent.
“Well, then—let’s say that those who wish to leave are at liberty to—Or perhaps Mr. Linhouse would prefer a show of hands. All who feel that we ought to hear this out—”
All the women. Several of the men had not voted, but now two or three were getting up to leave, when Anders, still standing, spoke up again. “Naughton—”
“Yes, Tippy? Oh, if you’ve recalled some reason your name might have been injected here, or on that lab incident, perhaps you’d better come priv—”
“As to that lab thing—at the time, I had an idea that it coincided with certain arrivals here—but never mind that—” As Anders stopped short, Sir Harry opened his eyes as if from an alert sleep, and very quietly, quite without show or reference to anybody speaking, got up, walked down the aisle past the few rows intervening between him and the stage, his profile toward the object, his body negligently toward them all.
Anders’s great white booby head, flushed pale yellow by a light in the ceiling just above him, moved totally, as it always did, to observe him; none of his features ever seemed to make use of themselves separately; perhaps this helped give power to the brain. “It’s not my beckyar-r-d. But just where are the controls—on that hurdy-gurdy?”
“What do you mean, Anders?” The provost. “You don’t think—”
“Don’t think.” The head moved left, right, slowly. One wouldn’t have been surprised to see its fontanelle winking. “Notice.”
“Ah, yes, Tippy, I get you. Stop me if I’m wrong.” As always, Meyer’s richly psychological voice sounded as if it were demonstrating—or ratifying, from a constant pool of agreement—the omnipresence of social goodwill. “It’s ve-ry responsive, isn’t it. It waits.”
“For wha-at?” But Lila’s faintly gushed scream, now that Linhouse had heard that coffee shop change, seemed to him a pretended one—even if she herself didn’t know it. It encouraged him to step forward on the rostrum.
“Perhaps the literal directions given me might be of use,” he said. “I don’t know a rap about electronics of course, or even if that’s how—or even where this thing—but it’s occurred to me that it must work at least partly on temperature. This hall—perhaps I neglected to say that this hall was specified. As you know, it’s very delicately thermostated, among other things. And the room where I was asked to, er … pick up this thing, happens to be an air-conditioned one, very specially done for a private house. It’s the room where Jamison kept his artifacts.” Sad shards of a primal afternoon, afternoons. And a long couch, that still soars.
“Let me read you the directions,” he said. He read them. Keep it company … Once the mechanism is moved, it must be allowed to regain equilibrium overnight, or for at least five hours, at a temperature of 71°. An hour beforehand, raise the temperature in the hall to 74.6°. Please be exact about that. Afterwards, you have only to—et cetera. He even read to them with excerpts here—the part that specified a live secretary. Tape won’t do. Nothing electrical. “And it just occurred to me, I know I’m sticking my neck out, among all of you—but that it just might be keyed to—body temperature.” Fool that he was, he even glanced inadvertently at the secretary.
And in the very moment of performing his function, knew almost for certain, with the surest misery he’d had yet—what his function might be. To keep it light. Keep it light. Keep it light, and Jack’s the one to do it. For in the surf of snickers which were at once politely stifled, the hall’s acoustic, equally delicate, brought up to him a “Warm bodies?’ and a “The back room?”
She’d required a physicist, and maybe she’d got one, but for this end of it, a classicist was doing fine. Keep it light, that’s the way she would do it, the way they all would, with God knows what embroidery on the side. Keep it a frivol. Send Jack.
From the pit, no problem to a man of his height, Sir Harry stretched out an arm, not to anyone’s rescue, though Linhouse at first thought so. In the stage light, his long fingers, parched but strong, and heavily graced with a marriage ring, tested the aura of the—hurdy-gurdy—but did not touch its tawed leatherskin, or lift its sections. What a specimen he was, with his guardsman’s length of limb topped by that craggy Epstein head—a man to the nth of his powers and his age. He lowered toward the assembly, clearly seeking out Anders, and finding him—by Anders’s heavy, crystal “noticers.” “Yes,” he said. “Ye-es, it’s—” He stretched his jaw, as if for a joke. “Set for—people.”
“—kah!” With this gasp of disgust, Anders sat down.
The assembly sat heavy with embarrassment, remembering both who these two were, what heraldic listings followed their separate names in all the peerages of science—and perhaps who they themselves were. Looking out on the spelled hall, on faces sucked by its fluorescence, Linhouse, though he knew most of them, found them hard to distinguish one by one in any live, idiosyncratic character; they seemed momentarily more and more like rows of dummy claque, a house of cardboard personages ready to be skittered by some wind.
The gizmo suddenly gave a whirr, a small, comforting, anciently mechanical one—exactly the pre-chime snuffling made by the clock Linhouse’s mother perversely kept at odds wit
h the Chelsea statuary and japonerie in her drawing room—a cheap Hartford pendulum, farmhouse mantel clock, from home. What it said next was said so softly that only Sir Harry, head cocked both to it and the hall, like the impresario of a trained-animal act, might hear. He blinked, but said nothing.
“What did it say?” Linhouse whispered.
“A dedication.”
He was determined to count for something, here. “What?”
“You already know it. The simple formula for —the infinite ellipse, or elliptois.”
Linhouse shook his head. They were all like that, these men, even this one who still seemed—and took care to proclaim himself?—a nineteenth-century one. They were no longer expected to know Greek beyond a tag or two that might have slipped into their concerns sideways. But when it came to their formulae, they expected him—Ah. He suddenly did what he could do—put two and two together.
Behind them both, the machine now spoke softly but distinctly. “—ayM + n = bxM(a _ xN).” As far as Linhouse, with his mathematical lacks, could tell, it spoke excellent—French.
And now, on the crest of the great book, a second disc lay back, a new one arose. “Journal from Ellipsia,” it said, in English again. “On!”
The lights dimmed, theatrically. Old ruses, old stratagems, returned to him, from Xenophon? Farther, much farther. Who would know that he had not dimmed the lights? What separate authorities could not be gathered here?
Beside him now, Sir Harry called clearly into that lulling pink-dark. “What say, Anders?” The call stretched as if across an abyss. “What sa-ay? Are they going to be exactly like us?”
As Linhouse’s eyes accustomed themselves, the old man’s face emerged again beside him. It was, he thought, a finished face, in the triumphant sense of the word. Death could merely abstract from it, and nothing be added, not even a tear.
Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel Page 8
