Carmen Dog

by Carol Emshwiller

  But no. He shuts the window. Going out into the park on a night such as this would be sheer folly.

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  Chapter 12: A Disturbing Phone Call

  My spirit no longer wants to walk on worn soles.

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  As soon as Pooch became aware that the baby's cries had begun to sound like her own howls at the moon, she stopped instantly. How dreadful that the poor little thing has no one to imitate but herself; and who knows to what depths she might sink and already has.

  Now she ties the sleeping baby to the branch and herself also, with bits of her paint-rag skirt, and settles down to rest as best she can, back against the tree trunk. She can't get out of her mind what she almost did, and she wonders if she is now descending the evolutionary scale rather than ascending. She begins to examine herself in the moonlight to see if she can tell. First her hands. How graceful they are and what wonderful things to have, these manipulating hands as graceful as wings! Perhaps even more so. She peers at them closely, wondering if hers are turning back into paws. They still have a slightly dappled look, particularly the left. Even in the moonlight Pooch can see that, but can't tell if it is less or more.

  Now she strokes her face. (How sensitive those wonderful fingertips!) She finds there are still three or four stiff whiskers on her cheeks but one falls off as she touches it, and she thinks that's a good sign. Back where her cheeks meet her neck she feels a slight fringe of deeper down than on her face and then a little more at the back of her neck, but is it less or more than before? She feels her hips, nicely rounded. Much more so, it seems to her, than before. She pulls up her shirt and sees her several lower nipples almost faded out altogether and the top two larger and nicely rounded. She looks lower. Pubic hair clearly three colors, the white and then the darker spots that she knows in daylight would be black flecks and tan. Nice long legs. Shapely. Pale in the moonlight. Nothing dappled there, but then there never had been.

  Ah, but is it not the mind that is the real grace of Homo sapiens? All the things to think about! All the things to read and appreciate! All the arts! All the things of the spirit! Well, no, she did have things of the spirit even before. She was as kind and loyal and honest as she could ever be, she's sure of that. But now she can express it in art. Maybe if she could compose a haiku right now, it would be proof that she's still as human as ever or, as she hopes, even more so. Of course to be Homo sapiens—knowledgeable man—is beyond her still, but it's certainly something to aim for, though she will need a lot more study and work to achieve that status. But the haiku. She will compose something about being humble and yet with hands, though how can one really be humble and have hands? After much thought, she finally comes to:

  —

  With thumb and forefinger

  I pluck an anemone! Oh,

  I pick up a small stone!

  —

  Is that several syllables too many? If so, change anemone to daffodil or even to rose. But she's too tired to count it again. Working on the poem has soothed her. She falls asleep yearning for somebody to call, my darling. Almost anybody will do. She actually says those words in her sleep twice, even though she hasn't spoken at all for several days. She is dreaming of sexy big black dogs with devilish markings on their faces but with kindly eyes. Thank goodness she forgets the dreams in the morning.

  * * * *

  Meanwhile the doctor has come back to his house, picked up his mail, and found that one of the prizes he had hoped to win has gone to someone else before he could gather himself together to submit something. This is the coveted Motherhood prize and it involves a good deal of money even for second and third prize which, needless to say, the doctor also didn't win. The irony is that first prize went to a contraption not unlike the doctor's own shock cage. It's called the Responsive Early-Life Playpen and includes the cupcakes and chit dispenser, though not the shock plates on the floor. The prize winner has even included a recipe for carrot-nut cupcakes that contain all the important vitamins and minerals plus bran and protein so that the child need eat little else. Also the cage has two big, kindly, watchful eyes painted in the top right-hand corner. This is a real brainstorm, considering the recent discoveries on the importance of eye contact even to tiny newborn babies. This playpen can be adjusted for ages zero through three by simply inserting different electronic disks and different foodstuffs. Later on one can add a knob on the inside of the doorway plus a Jolly-Jump-Up that laughs at jokes and that will lead, by subtle reinforcement, to ever higher forms of humor, all the way up to irony. The pen also comes with a Mother's-Arms device from which to get lots of hugging. This is considered so important that it is stipulated that this addition not be optional, but that all pens must come equipped with it. The government considers the pen unacceptable without it.

  The doctor could have adapted his own device to a mothering function. He might even have done a better job than the winner, for he'd have added both physical and mental exercises: a trapeze, toys that teach volume and weight, and problems in (at the very least) Aristotelian logic, with little blocks shaped like—and—and—etc., so that the child could form its own little syllogisms. The importance of having a child of his own has only just now occurred to him. If only he and Rosemary could have had one. Perhaps it's not too late to adopt. That baby 107 had was really quite interesting, though unpredictable. Why had he not studied it more minutely while he had it at hand?

  * * * *

  Just after this blow, the doctor receives a disturbing phone call from the police asking him if he is aware that his wife had been seen that very afternoon standing on stage at some sort of feminist meeting, albeit looking frightened and humble. On the whole, the police tell him, it was quite a subversive, rowdy crowd, and he might be interested in looking into it.

  He goes to the kitchen to check up on what Rosemary is doing now and sees her just finishing up the dishes, but he catches a glimpse—or thinks he does—of another, smaller Rosemary ducking up the back stairs, and suddenly he remembers that on the way into the house he had seen a third Rosemary down on her knees in the garden. That Rosemary, hardly fifteen minutes ago, had been wearing an old green smock and baggy green work slacks, whereas the other two Rosemarys were wearing black housedresses with tiny yellow roses. He decides to go up and take a little nap. He's had such a hard two days—perhaps he's lost too much sleep.

  But on the way upstairs he gets a glimpse out the hall window of yet another Rosemary. This fourth one is quite tatterdemalion and is limping up the front steps with a baby in her arms. Can it be the baby? The very one he wants?

  He realizes now that there's nothing wrong with him, though something very wrong is going on right here in his own house.

  There is a coat closet by the front door and the doctor squeezes himself in with the galoshes and coats and leaves the door open about an inch, holding it so it won't close or open any farther. Now he can see out both sides: quite a bit toward the stairway and a little bit, through the hinged side of the door, toward the front vestibule. The bedraggled Rosemary—he had never seen her in such a state as this, so dirty and torn—opens the front door slowly and cautiously and peers inside. Just then the baby gives a big hiccup. The Rosemary jumps back out and shuts the door. There's a long wait. The doctor had just about decided to come out of his hiding place and run outside to see where she had got to when the door swings open again and the Rosemary creeps in, looking first into the living room on the left and then up the stairs. It's clear that this Rosemary has never been here before, or certainly not in this part of the house. The Rosemary hesitates, goes a few steps beyond the stairs, and then turns around and starts up them.

  When she turns at the landing, the doctor comes out of his hiding place and slowly creeps up after her. From the landing he can see her scratched and dirty sandaled feet, very un-Rosemarylike. He watches them as she goes from room to room peeking in. Before she gets to the attic door, it opens and the doctor can see two ot
her Rosemary feet in Rosemary brown oxfords come down the steps. The first Rosemary's sandals had retreated in haste, but now they come forward to meet the oxfords. There are whispered exclamations, then a little shriek of delight and another hiccup from the baby and then another. The hiccups don't stop. Quickly the brown oxfords follow the sandals up the steep attic stairs. By the time the doctor reaches the door, it is locked.

  There never used to be a lock on this door. Also it feels more solid than it ever was before, as though heavy wood or even metal had been added to reinforce the other side. The doctor pushes as hard as he can, but nothing to be done about it without tools and/or a noisy running start. This is probably not the right time for that. There's a good deal of thinking he must do before taking any irrevocable steps or blowing their cover. For instance, which is the real Rosemary—or is there a real Rosemary anymore? Have they done away with her, or are they keeping her prisoner so as to infiltrate his home, no doubt to find out more about his experiments and to study his data and methods to use for their own purposes. Perhaps they tortured his Rosemary into letting them use the attic. Well, the best plan may be to wait until all those Rosemarys that are still out around the house get back in the attic and then he will barricade the door and trap them all up there.

  * * * *

  It is clear that Pooch has decided to put on her Rosemary mask, straighten herself up as best she can, and return to the only place she knows to find help and where, she's quite sure, all the other Rosemarys must have come from. At least she knows one Rosemary is there. Also she does not like thinking of herself as a killer however it might have been justified to save the baby, and she wants to return to the scene of the crime to see if the doctor is really dead or just wounded and if there's anything she can do to help. She feels that, at the very least, she must apologize and somehow find a way to tell Rosemary that she never meant to cause her any pain.

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  Chapter 13: Trapped

  Never had my eyes beheld anything so dappled and motley.

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  What had caused that little shriek of delight the doctor had heard from the bottom of the stairs? It was the fact that the Rosemary (brown oxfords) coming to greet the Rosemary (worn dirty sandals) had been none other than Chloe. It was Chloe who had opened the attic door and realized from many clues who it must be behind the other Rosemary mask. She knew those sandals, too. Actually, from their experience of the night before last, she also knew quite well the knees and elbows and even other parts of the body that she could not see. She had tipped up the corner of her own mask far enough for Pooch to recognize her and it was then that Pooch had given the little shriek and the baby had gotten the hiccups. Chloe had hurried them both up the attic stairway, carefully locking the door behind her with the two huge bolts, one on the doorknob side and the other on the hinge side.

  Once upstairs, Pooch and Chloe hug each other so vigorously that the baby begins to cry. But it is soon quieted, for Chloe brings granola bars and milk, and for Pooch a cup of Earl Grey tea from the hot plate. The baby begins to eat right away, but Pooch first hugs Basenji and makes a gesture in admiration of her presence and dancing at the meeting when she was a guard to the “real” Rosemary. Pooch does this with a pretty little bow and silent clapping. And there's Mary Ann to greet. (Later Pooch will find out that she came to be in the attic instead of the basement because the doctor could no longer put up with her looks and her inanities and simply threw her out as not only useless to his work, but a hindrance to it. Of course one of the Rosemarys went after her before she got lost and brought her back.) She is now completely palmiped, though one still cannot tell for sure whether her feathers are those of a swan or of a domestic duck. There are others, whom she doesn't know, one quite green and with big teeth and mouth, and there's even a man—a strange, sad-looking, very thin and very tall man, introduced to her as John, a clown, though dressed now in a conservative brown suit.

  The attic room is large and cluttered. In the corner opposite the hot plate is a pile of rolled-up pallets, quilts, and pillows. Undoubtedly, Pooch thinks, what the Rosemarys sleep on. In the center, four antique trunks serve as a table, surrounded by folding chairs, stools, and old porch furniture. It is here that Pooch sits to sip her tea and milk, noticing as she does so the pictures tacked on the walls. There is a great clutter of them, some partly overlapping others and many slanting up into the eaves. All but one are of famous animals. Pooch recognizes many of them without having to look at the captions: Rosinante, Bucephalus, Flush, Checkers, Anubis (just as handsome and sexy looking as the big black-and-tan dog in the park; the picture makes her feel a prickle of awe and excitement), Sirius (also impressive, though Pooch feels no attraction to him—he's not her type), Washoe, Grendel (with his mother), a sacred cow, the god Ganesha, Pavlov's dog (pictured wired up and reminding Pooch of the experiences in the basement), Kashtanka (aka Auntie), Laika.... Ah, Laika! Pooch had thought of her often since first reading her story, and it always made her sad. She remembers a poem by Sec about her that ends “Man had never better friend.” She hopes also to be a friend to man—perhaps one particular man—in some similar way. But then there is Kashtanka, too. There is certainly a lesson in the fate of that poor mutt, but of course such a fate is not for her, for her master loves her so that she feels more a daughter to him than to her own mother, whom she can barely remember. Looking at them all, Pooch wonders if she might not one day have her own picture among such as these, dressed as Carmen, in red with a black mantilla; though without a voice—not even for speaking—that seems unlikely. Still, if not one way, maybe another. She must not despair.

  The one picture that is not of a well-known animal is a large color photograph of five clowns. Two are dwarfs, while one is very tall and very thin, and though he has a large, painted-on smile, Pooch is quite sure it is the same man as the one she has just met wearing the conservative brown suit.

  All the while that Pooch is sipping tea and examining the pictures, Chloe is explaining how she came to be there and how she became yet another Rosemary in a little candlelight ceremony at which she had made a solemn promise to uphold Rosemary standards and to work hard to make the world safer for females of whatever shape and size and in whatever state of change, regardless of whether heading upward or downward on the evolutionary scale. She had doubled back, she says, to the spcac meeting after helping to create a diversion so that Pooch could escape. The police had been searching everyone as they came out—or rather, trying to, but there was much too much confusion. Some of the creatures, though they can't actually fly, can almost fly, and these had fluttered about, and taken great leaps into the air with the help of their wings, or had sat, poised and unafraid, at the top of the ornamental lintel. Others crept about on all fours and then ran out between the policemen's legs.

  Chloe does not mention that she herself had gotten quite carried away and, not being able to hold herself back, had had a great deal to do with all this fluttering about. (Were she at all canine, she surely would look rather sheepish telling about it.) She had chased hither and yon and pounced and had quite a romp, though no real harm done to anyone except for the loss of a few feathers and the tip of one tail, not counting that Chloe herself had gotten a feather stuck in her throat for a while. Very unpleasant. At any rate, the police were thoroughly confused and Chloe had had fun until a creature not unlike herself, but much larger, began chasing her. She does not tell this part, but rumbles out her tale, smiling, half in a whisper, half self-satisfied purr. And actually she has already forgotten the episode of being chased up into a tree that was already filled with creatures she had but a moment before chased up there herself.

  "Then,” she says, “one of the Rosemarys brought me here and we had the ceremony, and after that a very good mackerel dinner to which I contributed my cream, butter, and smoked oysters from Valdoviccini's."

  While talking, Chloe has handed the baby to a rather shapeless, fat-cheeked yet s
harp-nosed creature with mixed white and orange hair swept back from her face. It is not long before she and Pooch recognize each other, for she is none other than Cucumber (Pickle for short), the very guinea pig who lived down the block back on Long Island. She is much changed, however, being now almost completely a young woman, though a bit dumpy and dull-eyed. Pooch remembers that reflex she used to have: the almost overpowering desire to chase, catch, grab Cucumber by the back of the neck, and shake. Now, thank goodness, that desire seems gone, either because Cucumber is much more a woman or because Pooch is. Or perhaps she's just too tired and grateful to Cucumber for relieving her of the baby for a moment. Pooch hopes that it is the womanliness, the humanity, that has changed her. That would be a good sign, indeed.

  They kiss and a tear comes to Pooch's eye, for seeing her brings back memories of happier days with the master and mistress and of the scratchy mat by the door. Difficult as the work had been, she had had several chances to listen to the Saturday afternoon opera and once in a while she had seen Kenneth Clark's “Civilization.” A few times she had actually seen these through without interruption. Suddenly Pooch begins to cry in earnest. Actually, though tears have come before, many times and copiously, this is the first real “relaxed” crying she has done since all this began. Though this is not really “home” and her dear master is not here, she is safe and among friends and perhaps even about to be a part of some splendid and noble Rosemary movement.