Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel

by Hortense Calisher

  I felt myself to be against the windowpane, blushing in my blind darkness for all words ending with that syllable. Whoever were the Boys, they had let me go. Then, to my surprise, the larger voice said, “Do b’lieve she’s right, and is it ever lovely!”

  These words, said so tenderly, warm-cooled me to a tremble. Whatever I was to them here, I was approved. I felt an internal moisture. The pores of my dark began to reopen. “Just with your pinkie now, love,” the voice continued. “You boys stand back and give ’er a try. Ever so gently now, ducks. Turn it around, do, and we’ll have a look at what it’s selling.”

  As yet, I hadn’t met up with your concept of sell-buy, our basic precept being: A One is a Has, or translated: I Have what I Am. But now, trembling, I felt for the first time a soft meeting of flesh and flesh, a meeting fully half of which is the shivering toward it. One stroke barely grazed me, the next tapped. And when I did not move, the next—pushed. Indescribable. As it left me and I sensed it returning, all I meant to do was to lean toward it. All within me, of past and future history, did that. And being familiar with the former, you’ll have guessed what was bound to happen.

  I overshot. Next stop, St. Ives.

  And found myself, as was proper I suppose, in a bramble. I lay there prone again, and badly scratched too, curiously enough, this sensation was not as indescribable as the other. As I lay there, I found myself describing things in general here to an imaginary audience of Ones—posture was breeding again.

  Wherever there is difference, I was saying to them, there is a morality which keeps correcting people back to the mean. This is not a moral instruction but a fuzzical process, best described by telling you that wherever there is touching, there appear also to be brambles. I put them onto the nature of the latter quite graphically—as who could do better at the moment?—but left out the other joy, finding indeed that all realistic memory of it had vanished. And I was careful to flatter my audience—all those Ones back There who were awaiting my message—by assuring them that although you on Here were constantly tailoring yourselves toward our Serene by every kind of cutthroat, cut-purse adjustment, you seemed unlikely ever to make it.

  This was pure guesswork on my part, frankly devised to frighten off any large train of followers until I had personally done the discovering—any pioneer would feel the same. But how interesting to note that to ward them off, I chose what actually would have attracted them, just as it had me! Judgment—which though called so at home, was really Law—was after all unknown to me, and from now on I was to wander ever deeper the sharded shores of its split infinitudes. No need to describe that to you. I was merely becoming more qualitative all the time.

  Gradually, as the night wore on, sight was restored to me, though again localized at the end of me which seemed to wish to remain upright. Perhaps, I reflected, this was providential, so that if my form did develop according to whatever the native outline was here, it was intended that I be saved from the daily shock of seeing myself totally.

  As I stood up, this time somewhat painfully, I saw by a tracking moon that I was on a hillock overlooking your sea. There is ever a comfort in scenery which has a kinship with home, and I stood for some time ravishing it. Though in mind no longer so serenely elliptical, I hoped to hang on to some of the old optimism. Even a cosmonaut may be excused if, in the midst of his adventure, while standing on the very brink of the Two-ness he has come for, he hankers suddenly after the non-pangs of a One. But I shall spare you the poem I mooned there. Books on Ours were not only mummified by now, but even during their brief apogee had been severely limited, compared to yours. In our progress, we’d had all the picture things first, you see, the moving ones first of all. What with having had universal picturacy for so long, books could only be a backward surprise. My poem was an antiquarian one, very full of “O’s” as all Ours are, and much pasted with the photos that, not daring to feel itself above them, it could only hope to imitate. At home I should merely have dropped it into one of the poem-cans that are provided on all main avenues in front of every camera. But here, looking on your sea, I made bold to declaim it, moved by that sentiment which on Here must be almost the commonest—“It isn’t a much, but it’s I.”

  Then I fell silent, but remained there looking at that immensity on which the night could but clamber and roll. The sight of the night sea is too urgent for the traveler who has just arrived. (I see I have given you my poem after all.) In truth, after a while I became so dizzied by the need to look away that I didn’t know what to do; a thought even came to me, from realms far deeper than posture, that I might even have to leave Here altogether. A One, whose vision is evenly distributed on a form cylindrically perfect, is of course a perpetual looker-on whose attention to the non-varying never ceases—and never thinks of itself as captive. But on a variegated planet, the discomfort of such a constant attention would be intolerable. Even with my vision retreated to the upper half of me, this was so. I don’t know what I’d have done, hadn’t it suddenly occurred to me—“I’ll turn my back on it.” And strangely enough this concept, to me of the purest novelty, did ease me sufficiently, though as yet I couldn’t quite make use of it. For it must be plain to you that a One has neither front nor back.

  Meanwhile, I solved the immediate dilemma by thinking up a project; I would hunt for a less thorny spot on which to lie down. On Ours, all already is projected—but by now I was getting used to these little pushes out of Nowhere which came to me as if from the collective identity of creatures I hadn’t even met yet. What else is mutation? Turning round and round, as we tend to do, but at the andante pace which had been taught me, I observed that the hillock I was on was actually not far from a house which must have learned to withstand that view better than I could. The inanimate can—this is what they are. Between the house and my promontory, a gentler plateau grassied itself toward a grove of dark forms I took to be trees, pollarded like those to be seen from my window in Bucks—like those around the pergola. From the pang that this gave me, I had no wish to investigate further. The moon had gone in, anyway. I laid myself down, too tired to care that I was now this kind of animal. That grass didn’t burn me was no longer a marvel. I had had all that I could bear. And in this extremity, which We never reach, there came to me the possibility that the beings on Here, short of leaving it, must somehow of their own will close their pores and briefly have done with it. In the darkness, I cultivated my own nadir. And for the first time in history, a One of us fell asleep.

  And in the dawn that woke me, I saw what I took to be Your totems. They appeared to cradle me, looking down. At home, great, perfected ellipses stand about everywhere, and smaller versions are not frowned on. All our statuary is of that public sort, by which means we replenish space with the idea of ourselves. You, however, who are always noodling so on the private, seem intent on replenishing yourselves with space. Such holes, such corners! I was in fact in a sculptor’s garden.

  I gazed from image to image, long and long, around a ring of figures of which some were blackish, some gray, all of them torturously curve-straight and empty-whole—all of them in a constant state of between. It seemed to me that the more I knew about you, from this extraordinary world which seemed to be strewn with your handiwork but for hours and acres empty of you yourselves, the less idea I had of how you really were. At home, a One is always Omnipresent, for reference. And yet it also seemed to me that once I had met You I would recognize you at once, as that image—retreat into variation though you might—which I had always known. You were, after all, my Ideal.

  Just as we must be yours. Otherwise, how would I be here? And you, Some of you, perhaps very soon, or even already, over There. Once more I humbly went the round of the images, again seeing many marvelous assaults on the geometric, but search as I might, I saw none to bow down to, and this was the odder, since by very nature we haven’t got such a concept—being unable. Meanwhile, at home, there might soon be rows of Yours, standing rapt in the public gardens, trying not to.
These are the true interstellar thoughts. All the rest is machinery.

  For, as I went, I passed from the outer awes of our mutual adventure to the inner ones. From some mental height far above any I had realistically traversed, I looked down on both our shuttlings and yours, and was afflicted with a tenderness for us both. This is called the cosmic emotion. We have it within Us always, really. If You had it too, which as yet I did not know, it would be the greatest cognate of all.

  Unfortunately, in order for Us to go on living—as Ours are early instructed—the personal vision, alas, must take precedence. But this is smiled on, since, luckily for the general good, all our personal visions are of course the same. Now however, I was in one of your gardens, so mine had naturally more of me in it. And so did the vow I swore.

  For a minute’s vision, I saw our two worlds in the curve I was used to. Satellites from us are sent out on regular mission; I myself had once been one of those intently roving lanterns; at some time every a One must so serve. Meanwhile, astronauts from your side were fizzing everywhere among the orbital gardens. The present mission between you and us was somewhat different; only a small band of dissidents on either side had ever thought of it—but these had thought long. To the mutation of species, which takes so long here, we would apply our instantaneity, you meanwhile discarding that two-ness which we, never having known any species but One, so crave. In the face of eternity, neither of us would be going either backward or forward. Change is progress; regress is change. Both of us wanted it.

  And what I saw in my vision was that each of us, until it met the other, had thought its passion to change was new to the universes; We to Us were the Highest; You to yourselves were the First. And standing for the moment between, I foresaw that once an exchange had been made, both would forget how things had been: Elsewhere. How could it be otherwise? For once we touched foreign atmosphere, adjustments would begin, gradually blurring our clear Outlines. So I swore to be such a cosmic messenger as must never have been before. I vowed to remember—and to record, for as long as nature allowed me—the journey between.

  Mine would be no visitor’s travelogue. Nor did I intend to be a social informer; those at home would get no satiric tour of your institutions from me. Mine would be a far more basic journal, in fact such an act of personal commitment as could be managed only by a One of no previous personal background whatever. I would make of my self-adventure such a book as had never been made before, so far as one knew.

  For, in the history of how a One of Us tried to become an I of You, would not all the biologies reunite with all the philosophies, forevermore? The history of mutation is blind—but I would keep my eye-pores open; it is so slow that for eons it may seem to stand still—but I am constitutionally so quick that I appear to do the same! Had there ever been such a pilgrim before? For I, a conscious mutant, member of perhaps the first two species to attempt to perform such a feat under control—would record the ontological journey of myself. And since we record without your resort to popular mechanics, I would of course do this from within. In Our sense I would be the book, just as you, in your memories, are the books of yourselves. I would be—Oh arrogance eternal—what had never been anywhere. Mine would be the diary of a bio-naut.

  And such were the muscular effects of my ecstasy, that this time I shot straight up. Ambition levitates, as you your-selves well know, and I was still enough of a One to feel the play of such forces literally. Oh how I soared and skylarked, careless of what dangerously premature legends I might be creating down below. All those weeks of incarceration, plus the recent trials by element, had stiffened me—or could it be that I was already developing that characteristic which, abounce on even the fleeciest cloud, would cause difficulty—skeletal bone? A moment’s check, however, convinced me that I really was merely suffering from want of calisthenic. In that brief moment of doubt, however, I had lost altitude. And this was mighty convenient. I began truly to understand now how weightfulness was handled here, and that if I were careful to alternate between frictional doubts and positive uplifts, meanwhile keeping the sharpest lookout, I might yet get myself back to Bucks again. For a while I practiced, keeping myself well out to sea, but as the sun began to show itself, sped inland, in a few seconds caravanseraied all of Britain—at a height to observe only that in all that rousing farmland and cities there seemed to be no creatures of the dinosauric proportions I secretly still hoped for—and then at last saw what I was looking for. In broad sun, a glass house of that dimension makes quite an outcry.

  I was now so fine on my points that I was able to hover over the pergola, which I saw now was roofed and enclosed at the center of its circular porch, and much larger than I had thought it. Dear ones, dear friends, I said to myself, then—in proper mixture: oh dear. And with scarcely a rude bump, I landed.

  5. Up the Garden Path

  NO ONE WAS ABOUT NOW. Everyone on Here seemed either to crowd together in a mash or hunt for his absolute own of wasteland, our simple formula never having occurred to them; from the moment a One of us emerges from the crater, an exact field of space, mathematically tailored to his mass, is his for life. I turned away, in some depletion, intending to go back to my furnished room to wait for whatever reprimand must certainly be due me. It even crossed my mind that they might leave me there forever, in permanent discard—and this notion was again one of those mortalities which were crowding in from every direction to guide me—for at home we do not have a system of waste people, either.

  Just then, I heard sound coming from the pergola. At first, all I could hear was buzz indiscriminate; then it labeled itself: Voices. I was afraid to move lest I should once more overshoot myself, motion-emotion being so intense here. By a powerful exertion of my calm centers, I managed to incline only, if at an angle dangerously forward. They were two voices. And they were—yes! They were Marie, and my mentor … Another equally strong intimation sent me almost horizontal. They were … They. The two voices belonged to the two figures whom I had so barely missed yesterday, at the start of my hectic truancy. Those two figures, then—a One of Us and a one of You—were my two mentors. My mentors were a One of Us, and a one of You. I began almost to have a notion of the balances here. In an access of wonder I crept nearer also. That much. Mark it for the narrative: a One, forwarding slowly from his accustomary flash-billions—crept.

  “Security report a One sighted over Cornwall per’aps forty minute ago. Then they lose track.”

  She!

  “Security! Indeed!”

  This was Marie all right, in her usual state of—state.

  “Reported managing always to keep one jump ahead, they say.”

  I stretched a bit. I thought I guessed whom She was talking about.

  “A jump ahead, mind you. And security, indeed. One can’t wait to get back There. You have no idea.”

  “Hélas, that is all I do have. The idea.”

  “My dear girl. Just a manner of speaking. And One does feel for you.” I had no trouble believing Marie spoke via some strings and a box. “That is, in so far as I can still feel.” Indeed, her voice had changed for the worse, I thought.

  “Oui, madame. But I think per’aps you mean to stay—‘as far as One can still feel.’”

  That was a spark of my old lessons! But what was She after? What kind of lesson was this?

  “Touchay,” said Marie. “As yew’d say. One can’t expect to be letter-perfect, so early on. But One was told Elsewhere that One was getting on swimmingly. When One was There.”

  A silence issued. Then there came such a sigh as I had never heard from Her before. “Elsewhere.”

  Her voice, no matter what it says, is still music.

  “Dear me, my dear girl, dear me. You’re having no luck at all, then?”

  I did not at all take to Marie’s use of this “dear.”

  “Far as One can see, you haven’t changed a bit,” she went on. “Not that One could, you’ve got yourself so wrapped up. Of course, One doesn’t want to pry.”


  “Nothing—major. Sometime, I imagine I ’ave a certain sensation—such a delicatesse as I ’ave not—but it is not after all too different from what can be experience, de temps en temps, on ’ere.”

  “If you ask One, perhaps yew’ve had all too much of that sort of dellycatesse in your life. One wouldn’t be surprised if those of us who do best in the end are the kind who never had too much taste for that sort of thing. Like Oneself.”

  There was a silence. Then my mentor spoke up in full voice, the richly round one. “So I ’ave ’eard.”

  There was a silence again. But this time it seemed to belong to Marie.

  After a while, she did speak. “And how is—Harry?”

  “According to the rules, madame, I ’ave not communicate.” This came out so rapidly, it might have been in her other language.

  “Sorry. One did have to ask. You must know Harry’s been trying to get in touch with you here.”

  Again a pause. “I supposed—’e would try. But you and I are agree before ’and, no, that it cannot be ’elp if my disappearance from ’ere pattern itself on your. Or if ’e ’appen to ’ave two wives so advance? As the movement gain, it bound to ’appen, de plus en plus everywhere.”

  I was listening so hard that it seemed almost as if I were there in the room with them, though obviously here, outside it. Was this front-and backness?

  “Agreed. But who’d have dreamed you’d experience so much trouble that you’d have to turn back as you did, and hide here!”

  “You ’ide ’ere for years, Marie. And I ’elp you.”

  “For which One prayed for you daily. And remember, One was on One’s way up. One was an apprentice; indeed, it is alleged—the first. Those were the old days. And you are not an apprentice.”