Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel

by Hortense Calisher

  Then he heard a soft voice from behind, and turning, found himself face to … face? … with the tall form who for so long had been speaking. Runt it might be, among its own, but it loomed over him higher than Sir Harry, moving ever so slightly with a tituppy motion only self-delusion (did they have it too?) would call a glide—though of course he hadn’t yet seen it move up stairways or along ramparts in its presumably grander style. When it stood quiet, its nether end about four inches from the floor, though perfectly shaped, seemed unfinished, wanting pedestal—or feet, of course, the truth being that ballet slippers came to mind. Otherwise, in glow and shape it was a beautiful luminary, and altogether had the timid yet elegant forbearance of very large animals who are made pets of by small masters. At its side, the young secretary, still hypnotically adoring and perhaps to her regret not eaten, lent a royal touch of retinue.

  So, must he and it mutually stare? Was there a face to it, in the proper region for a face, or was it all in the eye of the beholder? If so—dare he, must he—address it? How does a lowly crab speak when, snorkeling the seas it was born to—it meets a man. He breathed heavily; the air in the hall seemed inestimably fresher; was this “carbonation”? He knew what it felt like to watch, as the war masks had once done—the downward flight of a Great Bird. He felt like—a native.

  Do I speak first? Do I name it? Eli. Must I worship this god descended?

  But he was spoken to. Initiative lost. Status clear.

  “Person,” the ellipse said.

  For a moment he did feel it, the dignity of his possessions. And over there of course—of want.

  All this time he had been looking only out of the corner of his eye, and now he could not even do that; blushing for his own madness, he could look nowhere but down. Across from him, he heard an intake, a sigh.

  “Friend.” A command. Yet … tentative?

  And again he felt that irradiation of being—his—and in the center of it, in the center of what was to some an enormous landscape, beating steady on, beating out both question and answer, Tom Thrum, Tom Thrum, the heart.

  And then, without warning, there came the revulsion—as if he had met with a shark while swimming and all his membranes floated backwards—as if the heart itself reversed, stroking backwards along the path of old heartbeats already suffered, and in so doing bore him raggedly but steadily away. When it came to details—the almost human details—he couldn’t. He could still believe in gods—of course he could, or some could—or he could meet with animals strangely cast up by nature’s ever-sportive sea. Or in planets swinging in their own carillons above it, or even on those—as long as far away—life’s familiar spores. But to believe in this other being here; no, his duty was to go mad first. He might believe it some day, or if he ever got out of here, but not now, and not that near. Not quite.

  Again he heard the sigh.

  He was dumbfounded to see, high up above the last tier of seats, one after the other of the encircling doors opening, open, opening, open—all along the line. Light flooded in as from clerestories, a light still violet or fluorescent, still with the tincture of Hobbs on it, and leading still to all the abracadabra of its facilities, but surely somewhere on, no matter how lost one got on the way, to the air—fetid or humid, soiled or fresh—of the unartificial day. No, it would be night now. He could already smell it coming in here; if thought was to be smelled, he hadn’t a thought but this. Night was here, bringing all the invasion he would ever wish for. He could see it out there ahead of him, in rain or sleet or calm, in cloud or blessedly uninterpreted stars—a real, down-to-earth night.

  “Well then—”

  From behind him, he heard a last comment.

  And at this last—in spite of everything—he was not surprised.

  Everybody ran for the doors with him. Or almost; a few, gazing markedly sidewise, walked. How would they speak of these phantasms—or in their so various ways not speak—outside? How would the newspapers speak of all this, when it got to them, as it would—used as they were to dreaming the heavens afloat only with satellites and missiles? How would the legend start—or stop? For as each couple reached a door and passed through it, one of the two pressed onward toward the familiar darks of its planetary persuasion, and the other form, as intangibly as it had come—vanished. But he himself, unaccompanied though he was, wasn’t one to speak too quickly of fantasy—never, or not yet. For it was fitting that, having been the abettor of this vision if not the begetter—he had been the last one to look back.

  And so he had caught the last installment of the vision—and has it yet. In the center of the darkened stage, the chair he had sat on all evening, no picture before it now, still faced inward toward one, its solid old leather back toward a vanished audience, its worn bucket seat facing a screen that now, unanimated, had the faded flush-brown of an after-image on an old retina. It was a comfortable chair, borrowed at some time or other from one of the offices or cubicles, hollowed out, once upon a time, by somebody’s heavy thinking—or bum. It still was.

  He was at liberty not to believe what he saw, if he wished, if he had the heart not to. Was this vision granted him, or imposed? For he could believe, if he so wished, that the small glow which had nimbused the chair as if from its center—and indeed had been the light by which he saw—had come from a solitary footlight which mechanical failure had left burning. Mechanism was so fallible. Center back of the chair, a high, pale-to-pink oval had protruded, as of a bald pate of indeterminate age, but certainly a gentleman’s. He was free to believe that this was the gloss, on leather, of a spotlight from the wings. Left of the chair, a tape recorder unquestionably had been revolving, but there was no need to disbelieve, in this night and age, the reality of its faintly hissing but persuasive voice. Mechanism was so trustworthy. The trouble was, had it been playing a voice, or recording it?

  He didn’t wait to believe, but ran onward, along corridors he was almost eager to get lost in, so that when with the last exertion of his strength he forced himself, by old Air Force training, to track his own maze, and at last heard his own steps ringing along the marble of the deserted lobby, and at last fronted with his forehead a Ramapo night as calm as any a man ever parachuted, he could almost have said to it, “It was all a nightmare. Not like this, you stars, you heavens of Prussian blue. An inner nightmare.” Almost. He hadn’t waited to believe, because he hadn’t had to.

  It was a voice that might have been anybody’s. On tape, or coming toward it from a chair, it was any a body’s voice, busy at the creation of its own legend, saying, “—And so—” It was the beginning of the legend that he hadn’t wanted to hear; to be present at a nativity was enough. And he had left his own print there. Like any savage, he felt it to be a piece of himself. If, at times afterwards, he often felt it to have been the better part of himself, this was no doubt the result of having been civilized, and in any case was an observation he made to himself only very quietly, on those nights of the soul which however dark, were real. But it wouldn’t have been humanly possible to go on with that sort of speculation, tolerantly divided man though he still was—if not as comfortably as of yore. For, as a human being, he still had certain expectations, exclusive of his larger social obligations. Certain of the latter, such as marriage and children, he hadn’t yet taken up, though still of the intention to, as soon as certain things measurably faded. For, he still expected to itch, to weep, hopefully to love, and regretfully to die. Dark evenings, when he despaired of humans, or wild, sweet ones, when the Ramapo breeze blew as if water had truly followed it, were merely (he grew to reassure himself) like those first times after the war, when he had first had to admit to himself that though young, trim, not even thirty, he had grown too heavy, too old and un-nimble—for the parachute.

  And he still meant to marry, as soon as—like any shell-shocked man—he got better used to certain tricks of shadow, noise and language which made him nervy, certain hopes of them which kept him continually waiting, even on the dullest social eve
nings, to see what came round a corner, a door. Though there was one common remark, one polite bit, which he would never get used to whether it came from a grizzled matron or curly damsel, or old codger—from anyone else in the world, instead of out. Faintly, someday he still expected to hear it at his side, in a voice he knew.

  For it might have been anybody’s voice, sitting by the tape recorder, busy at its legends—but it hadn’t been. He’d been amazingly moved when that voice had addressed him as a person, and rather overwhelmed—for the fallible moment—when it had hoped to count him as a friend. And very much surprised when (though he hadn’t actually heard it give it) a command had come, after all these shenanigans, to open the doors. But the voice’s last comment fitted so well with all he knew of it. And so, deep in his heart of hearts he hadn’t been at all surprised to hear it say—after that precociously heavy sigh for all that they both were still in for: “Well then—mind if I sit in your chair?”

  The Envoy

  AND SO—I WAS betrayed. Not that I hadn’t half expected it. No adventure of the soul is without betrayal; it is part of the stickiness which holds the soul in space. The small ones I had practiced on my own part, the mild lies I had scattered everywhere—birdseed for those left at home, chicken feed for those on ahead, and a little fruitening gardenseed for myself—would never have been enough. It took a betrayal in the highest, and by others, to make me admit that my adventure was of the soul as well as of the body. Though I meant to be human, not martyr. And though perhaps not as pioneer as I had fancied—and forced at present still to work at it—that hope is still high. All during the hours of my oration, I could hear privately—and with what astonishment, delight and giddy laughter!—my own gradual advances in that direction, but tone, or even the double consciousness, is not enough. When I heard, outside the doors I had in a way helped to seal, that long, thrilling whistle-cry from home, I had a moment’s falter—my allegiance went to them, and when they entered, all my pride. At the moment of perfection, when all down the aisles a One leaning with a one made such a cloister of couples as must each have a flame-glass window to itself in the legend—my allegiance was, I truly believe, to the world of worlds that shall come, among worlds. And when I saw the band of my colleagues, never, to be sure, of that close order here called “friends,” but nevertheless a band; when I saw them turn tail—ah, what a dollop of bitterness it takes to be human! When I saw the doors open, as no doubt everywhere there were opening what had taken so much secret labor to seal—I was already human enough to be surprised. And when they vanished through them, leaving me behind, the patsy, to take the rap, to be the fall guy—oh I knew all your names for those of you who are too heavy with innocence to fly with the angels—then my allegiance went over forever, to you. Where, with the exercise of an occasional ingenuity, it has remained.

  They do not trust you; there it is, in a nutshell likely never to be anything but a nutshell. They never have. Often and often it was argued me, even among my own cohorts, that we would do no better than the Christians had at bringing you to true ellipsis, whereas my part and theirs—to earn a permanent place here—would be the easiest of falls. “Let them emigrate,” they said, “but of course not as they are; let them be refugees to the nth.” How they had laughed to hear I had a name! “Always naming, they are!” a chorus of us said. “Always predicting new particles, too!” And “Oh marvelous!” sang the chorus on another groove. “Oh smashing! Let them come as particles or not at all.”

  It was only their bit of fun, I had thought at the time. I thought they already understood, as I had, that if it was We who had the distance, it was you who had the perspective, and that names of all sorts were only your vain effort to tick off the one little particle, not a pi-meson, not even an Omega minus, which made you human. And now I should never be able to tell them; or now perhaps, having seen you and leaned toward it, they were understandably frightened to smell what I already knew—that this one particle, which would never be named, came from the Beyond. It takes all kinds—your own sages are always hinting it.

  And so I watched them, my kind, running, and I watched yours, and considered where I was. Only minutes back, at the very point when all our maneuvers had seemed at perfection, I had called for a mouth, in a carnal loss of control that was jolly unrefined; I could have my own guilts and humiliations too therefore, if betrayal were not presently enough. Or could save these for later. I watched Jack running, after having heard from me as much as I could spare and then a little over—and was this human of me? How many times, in the years to come, I should have to ask that! And in the grace of providence, or effort, or in the doom of both—be able to. I shouldn’t expect to haunt him, Jack, unless I was very lonely—a word whose meaning I had learned by watching him. He had had all that he could bear, and if I could bear more, it must be because I wasn’t human yet.

  After him, the little secretary came peeping out from wherever in the wings she’d disappeared to, and tiptoed, wide-eyed and scared, to within a few paces of me, where she set down the tape recorder, then knelt so thoughtfully—but just out of reach—to start it going. Then she too ran. At the door, she blew me a kiss. At the door—though I had my back turned by now and didn’t see him—I wouldn’t have been surprised to see that at the door, he looked back. But I was confused now, and too tired to consider whether chivalry kept me at my post, or chargin—or tired muscles. Humanity never comes evenly. I would sit a bit. And there might be no more answer than this to much of human conduct. Some of us run; some stay.

  Then I turned, from the depths of his chair. “Shadows?” I called after him. He was gone. But I sat in wonder. This is our last scream, before the crater. Here, it was my first.

  And so, my long soliloquy was finished. But this had been the formal one, hero that I had been; now I had one for myself. Everybody here is a hero at least for a day—the day on which he is born; and then forever, in the long night, all are heroes there. I looked out upon you until you were gone, all of you soon to lie, with your shields, in your slumber. But before then, in the between of those two poles, you are ordinary people, of the commonest betrayals, and with your own heroisms to make. I meant to be ordinary, and I had a few thoughts for myself on this, as even the unheroic do.

  Now, meditating back there in the cottage in that summer lamasery of one member, as the violet passage of the hours was succeeded by the white, I had learned to watch all the equinoxes of the day. This is very important, though I do not mean to sound wise. And I do not know whether wisdom comes of it. But, when after my long sojourn, I was carried out of there, it was mysteries I was giddy with. I had never lived with mystery before. Your rooms were chock-full of them. So it was mysteries, not conclusions, that I presented myself with now.

  They know their own queerness, I thought—meaning you. They understand that, by the one thin particle, they are born into the beyond. I shall become one of them, as—slowly into their vortex—so do I. And in this adventure, perhaps the appendages of the body, which I have all this time been so fixed on, need not antedate those of the soul. By nature, I am a virtuoso of images; by these I will plod on, but this time in their same danger—that my shadows, unlike my body, will not last my time. But consider that this too must have a bearing on what—to one in want of it—is of all their possessions, the sum. For consider not their death, but the manner of it. Everybody who dies here is a person. Everybody who has ever died here, has been a person. Repeat it, repeat it—for they have a repetition, they have a beat here also, and this is what they mean here when they say “the people.” Everybody who dies here is a person. And nobody has ever known how it comes about.

  The tape flapped, somewhere along in my reveries, and after a while, the machine ran down. That stops the recording! I thought, meaning forever, though of course I was wrong. But it did bring practical considerations once more to mind. And my mind was—somehow to go underground, yet remain among you. At first, my thought was to stay there in the neighborhood, where I knew the
basements, and indeed there I did stay, until enough of the old pallor and intangibility overcame me, making me fit again to travel. Then, finding that I could travel safely in almost any weather except snow—when memory brought tints which were unsafe—I left the Ramapo, at least for many voyages to come. I had no wish to haunt the people there, who as it was—though they might no longer believe in what they had seen—would never again know for sure what object here might not have its images, or whether every object in their universe might not be a Trojan horse. Besides, there were not people enough, in just a valley and a mountain range, for my purposes. And what were, were too refined.

  Think of me then, as in many public places—under the George Washington Bridge perhaps, by dawnlight, counting the first cars. Or listening to the radio that whines on happily in Filipino, in a whisky-box squatter town. Or watching all the diseases of Asia, and the buboes of gladness too. I often look in mirrors. I watch the babies always, for hints. Think of me wherever protoplasm really carbuncles, or shrinks or swells, or even dies. And as in private places also, for sometimes I am a beast in chambers, groaning moonward, like yourselves. One day, on that day when the hands and the feet, and the sex and even the full face finally come upon me—then at that point, I shall no doubt remember the shadows of my old home as celestial ones. And at that point—I shall be human. Humanity never comes evenly. Until then, I am an envoy, which has so many meanings and all of them rightful—an ambassador and a deputy, a dedication, a poem. Until then, think of me as where the people are—as you think of yourselves.

  And say a blessing for all those in a state of between.

  One night, after many wanderings which do not cease, I found myself on a small footpath, a meander, which if I wished, I could count as a place where I had been born, though I have many such places now. I was used now to there being no line of demarcation between the happening and the brooding; wherever there is difference, such a two must meld. I could see, to the south, a view. The views of your planet are from all sides, really, but for simplicity’s sake let us say that it was only from the south. I saw what I now knew. I saw the great wallows of light between cities and their parks, between the park and the field and the desert, and on all, cherished as if within a wild sea, the closeness of the starved.