Was

by Geoff Ryman

  “I nearly died!” his mother might say, laughing and shaking her head. “Three years without saying a word, and suddenly he asks for a glass of water! After that his nose was never out of a book!” The implication for listeners was that Jonathan’s extraordinary verbal skills were somehow brewing in that silence.

  Throughout Jonathan’s later career as a good little boy, his teachers expressed satisfaction with his ability to write, to speak, to act in schoolroom plays. In the tests they gave to measure potential, Jonathan scored, frankly, at near-genius level on verbal reasoning. On the strength of his verbal reasoning alone, Jonathan kept skipping grades until his skills matched the work load and he fell forever behind in mathematics.

  The bad little boy’s talents had not been verbal, but lay in the realm of color and shape. He layered strokes of Crayola crayon, fifty-two colors, as if each stroke was the plucking of musical strings. He had masses of plasticine, a nondrying clay, which he would mold and remold, making dinosaurs or Indian tepees that seemed to have been carved out of stone.

  Jonathan could remember modeling a head in clay. He was playing at the back of the house, where his father was building a patio. His father was laying large slabs of stone, chipping the edges to make them fit in a patchwork-quilt pattern. For some reason, Jonathan had been given clay, real clay instead of plasticine. Jonathan’s father had artistic ambitions as well, which the clay had been meant to fulfill.

  And Jonathan was suddenly seized by the idea of clay. Out of it, from nowhere, he worked the head of a caveman. Jonathan loved cavemen, loved the idea of living in rock chambers, wearing hides and talked in grunts.

  Jonathan the adult could still remember the caveman’s face, his apelike brows, his monkey nose, his hedgehog ears and, above all, his expression. The flesh around his eyes was crinkled, ready to blink in dismay at the modern world into which he had strayed. The lips were half-open, as if the caveman were making up his mind to speak.

  The tough little boy had even been sociable, in his own way. Hovering around the edges of the memory was another little boy called Robby Polk, who lived across the field. Jonathan’s relationship with Robby was uneasy. Both of them liked to win, but Robby was better at it.

  Robby looked at the caveman head and said, “That’s lousy.”

  Jonathan was pleased. He felt he had caught Robby, trapped him into being petty. Jonathan’s father had no kiln in which to bake the head. When the caveman finally dried, he split down the middle, Jonathan knew what Robby would say.

  “Good,” said Robby, and Jonathan knew he had made him look small. He smiled and looked away and pretended Robby was not there.

  His mother looked at the caveman head and stroked Jonathan’s disordered hair and said, “There are always compensations.”

  The bad little boy hated most books. He tore up the ones he didn’t like. They were written by adults for children. Jonathan knew that not because anyone told him, but because he sensed it in the books themselves. They were not written for children at all. He tore up a library book called Anatole. It was about a French mouse and it told cheese jokes about Camembert and Roquefort. That was a joke for adults. What child would know anything about French cheese? Why write books for children if you knew nothing about them, if you were really writing for adults?

  There were honorable exceptions. He loved a book about a monkey, called Curious George. George kept getting into trouble, breaking things. Jonathan also loved a book called Space Cat. It was rather long-winded, and Jonathan would torment himself by forcing his way through the languorous opening. It was about a cat and a space pilot who became friends. They went to the moon and Space Cat had his own spacesuit, with a sausage-shaped piece for his tail. On the moon, there were floating silver globes, full of light, that were alive.

  And, Jonathan loved The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

  He did not have the real book. His parents did not know that he could read. They read aloud to him and thought he just looked at the pictures. They had bought him a slim, picture-book version. There was a pretty, blond Dorothy and a smiling Scarecrow. The Wizard was shown as several different things, a beautiful woman and a monster. There was only one page that showed a witch, but she soon melted away like all bad dreams.

  Jonathan loved a few books and hated the rest. He hated mechanical toys and model cars. Most of all, he loathed television.

  In the first place, it was full of murder. Dale Evans would be tied to a chair—horrible violation—and even though he knew Roy Rogers would arrive in time, riding Trigger, it was still terrible. Why, he thought, why watch anything that you hated, telling yourself that it would be all right in the end because it was a TV show? If the only comfort was knowing it was not real, why watch it at all?

  He also hated the thing itself. His parents’ television stood on four spindly legs. It was as if it could walk, with its one huge unblinking eye. Jonathan had dim memories of seeing a film on that one blind eye, a film in which an alien disguised himself as a television set. Jonathan could imagine, so clearly, the television suddenly lurching toward him, shooting electricity in lightning bolts from its blank screen.

  If his parents turned it on and there was a Western or a cartoon, things he was supposed to like, he would scream and run away or howl until it was turned off. His parents, still grateful that he had recently ceased to smear lipstick all over everything, would leap forward to turn it off.

  But worst of all, everything on television was in black-and-white. Jonathan loved color. He loved red. He wanted everything in the world to be full of color. So what, the adult Jonathan would often wonder, what had made him change?

  In November 1956, Jonathan saw the first broadcast of the film version of The Wizard of Oz. The movie started at 9:00 p.m. and would go on until eleven. Jonathan had never before been allowed to stay up so late. He wore his red-striped pajamas and his red bathrobe. He was covered by his Indian blanket and he leaned against his mother on the gray and itchy sofa. His father passed him a cup of hot chocolate in the brown highwayman mug. Jonathan felt very adult.

  His parents were obviously excited themselves. Television was still new. The idea of seeing such a great film for free seemed a wonderful advance. Jonathan understood that the film was something delightful that had happened to his parents when they were young. They talked about it at great length as the commercials unwound. They were a mine of misinformation about it.

  They told him that the story was a very old fairy tale that someone had updated and made modern. They told him that the little girl who played Dorothy had only been twelve when she played the part (though that seemed very old to Jonathan).

  Then the CBS eye, black and floating against clouds, came up, and a man said in a voice of portent, “CBS presents a Ford Star Jubilee.” There were advertisements for cars. Then the talking continued. “…a masterpiece of literature,” said the announcer, “which has fascinated children and adults for years, ranks with the great works of all times.” An old man talked to a little girl about how her mother had starred in the movie. It went on and on. What TV Guide had not said was that the film itself was only 101 minutes long—but the slot was two hours. Even Jonathan’s parents began to shift uneasily.

  Jonathan was in a kind of panic. He knew that he would fall asleep soon. Why couldn’t they have all the talking after the movie?

  A picture of a record sleeve came up. It showed a girl, and—there they were!—the Scarecrow and the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion? Jonathan squealed and kicked his legs under the blanket.

  His parents beamed with pleasure. It was rare to get a reaction from Jonathan that was easily understood. The voice was asking people to write away for a special record album of songs from the film.

  “I know a little boy who would like that,” his mother said, smiling. And Jonathan went quiet with longing. He didn’t dare say yes. Years later, he still regretted that they never got the record.

  Then suddenly it began. There were more clouds, like the CBS eye, and a cho
rus of voices rising up like a great wind.

  Dorothy came running over a hill. She wasn’t like Dorothy in his pretty little book. She was large and had dark hair, but as soon as she started to speak, there was something in her voice that soothed Jonathan as he worried. He was worried that it was so different from his book.

  Her Aunty Em said a lot more things, and the farm was full of people. There was going to be more story. This was a delight to him, but he also felt betrayed. How could so many things have been left out of his book?

  Jonathan remembered liking Dorothy swinging back and forth holding on to a huge barnyard wheel. It seemed like something fun to do. He was excited by her visit with Professor Marvel, who was brand-new and nothing to do with the story he knew at all. Then he grew suspicious. What if the movie was completely different and Dorothy didn’t go to Oz at all?

  He did not perceive Miss Gulch at all, nor was he badly affected by the threatened death of Toto. Jonathan had never had a pet to love. He had not learned to care for little animals. In fact, to him the eyes of animals seemed cold and alien. They chilled, rather than warmed him. Perhaps also he didn’t understand the line about taking the dog to the Sheriff to have him destroyed.

  The major disappointment was the cyclone. Jonathan was looking forward to seeing the cyclone almost as much as Oz itself. A few months before, there had been a cyclone warning, a great rarity for Ontario, and everyone had gone out and picked up loose branches and closed the shutters over windows. Jonathan had had to be dragged sullenly back inside the house. He had wanted to stay outside and see it.

  But now the cyclone was lost for him amid the black-and-white blur of the television screen.

  “There it is,” his father said, pointing.

  “Where?” demanded Jonathan, becoming angry. He had imagined cyclones as great, solid, spinning things that came from nowhere out of a blue sky. He peered narrow-eyed at the television, seeing only swirling clouds. “I can’t see it!” he wailed. He saw Dorothy running, and behind her, beyond the porch of the house, he could just barely make out something moving in the sky. Was that the cyclone?

  He forgot his anger when Dorothy woke up inside it. He loved the idea of being warm and safe, cradled in the wind. He loved the chickens flying about inside the storm and the people in a boat, rowing their way through clouds as if through water.

  Then there was a lady on a bicycle. It had been a long time since Miss Gulch was on the screen; Jonathan had forgotten all about her. He didn’t recognize her. He did recognize what she turned into.

  Suddenly, clothes streaming behind her, there was a huge horrible witch riding a broomstick.

  He screamed and hid under the Indian blanket.

  “Jonathan!” laughed his mother, always taken aback by his susceptibilities.

  “Is it gone?” he demanded.

  “Yes, yes,” said his mother. Jonathan stayed under his blanket. He heard Dorothy screaming, and he screwed his eyes shut.

  There was a line in Jonathan’s shortened book: “The cyclone set the house down very gently for a cyclone.” He had liked that. He knew what it meant. There would be quite a big bump, but not so big that Dorothy would be hurt. He wanted to see the house land so he forced himself to watch. He looked out from under his blanket in time to see the room and the house come to a stop with a tremendous bump. Oh, said Dorothy. Perfect! They had done it perfectly!

  Dorothy was in Oz. Jonathan wanted to see the Munchkins and he wanted to see the Good Witch. Most of all he wanted to see her give Dorothy the magic kiss that meant no harm could come to her. Jonathan loved the idea that no harm would come.

  Dorothy went toward the door. Jonathan was so excited, he almost had to pee.

  “Look,” said his father. “This is the part that turns into color. She steps out and everything is in color.”

  The commentary was an unwarranted distraction. Jonathan knew perfectly well that the television couldn’t show color. He was gripped by both joy and edgy suspense. Dorothy peered out through the door. Then she stepped out onto the porch, but he still couldn’t see Oz.

  “There, that’s when it turns into color!” exclaimed his father.

  Oz was black-and-white. It didn’t matter. Dorothy’s eyes were wide and round, and she wandered through a strange gray place full of television mist and giant leaves. Jonathan went breathless and still. And then, there was a floating, silvery globe.

  “That’s like Space Cat!” cried Jonathan, overjoyed.

  The bubble turned into Glinda, the Witch of the North. The magic kiss was to come.

  Glinda asked, so very politely, if Dorothy were a good witch or a bad witch. Jonathan loved the idea of good witches. He loved the way Oz people spoke, very polite and slightly addled. When Glinda asked if Toto was the Witch, Jonathan shrieked with laughter and kicked his feet.

  “Sssh, Jonathan,” said his mother, worried about the way he could get overexcited.

  Jonathan loved it that Dorothy had killed the Wicked Witch. It was good that she had not meant to do it, and it was so strange to see the Witch’s striped-stocking feet sticking out from under the house, strange in the way that being tickled is strange, slightly fearful and gigglesome at the same time.

  “She’ll be all squashed and flat,” said Jonathan gleefully.

  The Good Witch was beautiful, and the Munchkins laughed in high-pitched voices, and Dorothy was a National Heroine because she had saved them. Out came the Munchkins to celebrate. In Jonathan’s book they all wore what looked like witch hats, only cockeyed and crumpled and amusing, and they all wore blue and played fiddles. These Munchkins looked different from that—but oh! they were all happy and sang aloud and Jonathan could not tell if they were adults or children. They looked like both. It was a new world, in which adults stayed children and children could be adults.

  And they sang. They sang that the Witch was dead, and that they were free of her. No more bad witches, only good and smiling ones, like Glinda.

  Then, when everything seemed nicest and happiest, and everyone was singing, there was a boom and a bash and everything was ruined. The Witch was back. The Munchkins ran.

  Jonathan emitted a piercing shriek and hid under the blanket again. He screwed his eyes shut and plugged his ears.

  This had not been his pretty little book. Glinda explained: this was the sister of the witch who was dead. This was the Witch of the West. Were all witches, even Glinda, sisters?

  “Who killed my sister?” the Witch demanded. Jonathan didn’t want to hear; he couldn’t bear it. “Was it you?” the Witch roared at Dorothy, terrible with hatred, and Jonathan, under his blanket, wailed again. It was wrong to kill, even if it wasn’t your fault. How would Dorothy explain?

  “No, no, it was an accident, I didn’t mean to kill anybody!” said Dorothy.

  Why had they put the Witch there? He felt his mother’s hand on his shoulder. He peeked out over the edge of the blanket again, and she was still there, swirling with hatred. He screamed again and hid again.

  “Jonathan,” said his mother, “if you keep this up, I’ll have to turn it off.”

  Jonathan forced himself to come out. He watched, wincing.

  The Witch promised death. She promised she would get Dorothy and her dog.

  She screamed and cackled and then there was a great booming sound. The Witch exploded and went away, in front of horrified eyes. Jonathan did not learn until years later that in that flash of fire the actress who played the Witch was severely burned.

  He stared numbly, bestilled by horror, taking comfort from Glinda’s motherly voice. Quietly and gently, she was telling Dorothy about the great and wonderful Wizard of Oz. And then, and then, she kissed Dorothy on the forehead.

  He waited for the kiss to stay there, glowing on her forehead. But nothing happened. Gradually Jonathan realized that in the movie, the kiss was not a spell. The kiss would not protect Dorothy. She could be hurt.

  It was television, frightening him again.

  “It’s
all right,” said Jonathan’s mother. “Look, she’s off to see the Wizard.” But her voice was solemn. Jonathan looked around and his mother’s face was pinched and hurt.

  Things began to get hazy. Jonathan wasn’t rocking himself, but watching Oz was rather like being rocked. When he rocked himself to sleep, Jonathan saw things like Oz, wonderful things, colors and magic.

  Half-asleep, he met the Scarecrow. Jonathan loved the Scarecrow the best, like he loved Indians. Nothing would shake his loyalty. He loved the floppiness, the weak ankles, the loud cries, the gentleness. In comparison, the Tin Man looked greasy to him and nasty, and besides he was a machine and machines had no magic for Jonathan. He almost disliked the Tin Man, even though he kept crying out of kindness.

  The Witch came back, skulking in a corner, appearing on a roof. Terror jerked Jonathan awake.

  She called to the Scarecrow like she wanted to play a game. Then, most dreadful of all, the Witch threw a ball of fire at the Scarecrow, fire to burn him alive. Jonathan’s shriek was the most piercing yet. Someone, somewhere, had decided to terrify him. That was what frightened Jonathan most: that it was deliberate. They could have made a movie without a witch at all.

  He glimpsed poppies. They were about sleep and he could feel his own limbs go still and heavy. The movie turned into color and he seemed to sink down into it. He sank down and settled very gently, his feet touching solid ground and seeming to spark with life. He ran, into Oz.

  He could hear his own running feet, and he could feel cobbles underfoot through the soles of his shoes. The bricks were bright yellow, so bright that it hurt his eyes.

  “Wait for me!” he called. And they all turned, Judy Garland and the Scarecrow and the Lion. He caught up with them.

  “Can I come too? Can I come too?” he asked them, panting. The fields were bright red, and the sky was full of a white smiling face, and it was snowing too, flowers and snow together, and there was music, grand and happy at the same time.