Riddance

by Shelley Jackson

  All these characters, and in fact every person who appears onstage from now on, is closely shadowed by another in identical garb who imitates his or her every move. In the case of the speaking parts, the actor in front, whose mouth we see moving, is not the one speaking. The speaker, who is “dead,” is the person in back, who delivers his or her lines (to the detriment of their intelligibility) into a clear, flexible tube, the end of which is attached to the back of the other’s head.

  A teacher enters and claps her hands (it is, of course, her double whose clap we hear). She is wearing wire-frame glasses and long black robes. Her pinned-back hair is threaded with gray.

  From the subsequent dialogue it becomes clear that the students are rehearsing a musical. The students, among them Upshaw and Minks in a change of costume, begin singing with startling professionalism. During this number, a woman dressed in old-fashioned mourning clothes creeps across the classroom, watched uneasily by the students. She coughs a bright splash of blood onto a handkerchief, clamps this in an embroidery ring, studies it, then slides it into a pigeonhole in the wall.

  The actors, of course, play students and faculty at the Vocational School, each with his or her particular stutter; the dialogue is therefore jerky, but in a highly stylized way, for the hesitations and repetitions are all scripted and have been memorized. You may have heard that nearly all stutterers can sing fluently, without impediment. In fact, most of them can recite lines, as well, if the lines are treated as phrases of music, rising and falling in pitch, and with distinct rhythms. In this case, however, the lines they are reciting so fluently feature a scripted, stylized stuttering. You may say that I might as well have allowed their natural stutters to take effect, but Mr. Lenore would not have it.

  There was a little lesson in this for the students, and for any audience member who understood what he was witnessing: The stutter is not here an error or a limitation but the mark and epitome of Art, to which any style of speech at all may aspire, and not only that which we conventionally consider fluency; but I am done preaching.

  After a choral performance (in which virtually the entire student body takes the stage)—a veritable babel of syllabification—a different sound breaks through, and the auditorium resounds with the professional harmonies of a old-fashioned music hall group.

  The scene does not proceed without hitches. A slate carried by a walk-on shows the audience a crude figure daubed on its reverse; a door flies open to reveal a startled child in partial undress; in the midst of an affecting solo, a shout of laughter, hurriedly muffled, is heard from offstage, to the visible fury of those onstage, one of whom clenches his fist at someone out of sight in the wings. But on the whole it comes off very well and I mentally undertake to order extra pudding for the cast and crew.

  The music comes to a close as a rude mechanical rushes onstage to make an announcement; someone, it seems, is coming. “Will he like it? Will he like our play?” the students chorus, or something to that effect. I have the growing impression that the play is about putting on this very play, and for a moment I am disoriented, unsure of the reality of my surroundings. Am I caught in a trap, one of those whirlpools of iteration that make travel in the land of the dead so treacherous? But no, for it was not my idea to stage a play about putting on a play, it was the idea of Mr. Lenore, our drama and unvoice coach, who has been to New York and to Berlin and has some modern notions.

  My attention is recaptured as one girl (Charlotte Bindemittel), who is about twelve, steps forward from the chorus and, tying her own blindfold, takes a position at center stage, mouth open. The teacher stands beside her, touching her mouth with the end of a cane. The student recites a simple rhyme, considerably prolonged by a stutter. The teacher nods encouragingly throughout. Then the student begins to sing. She stops almost at once, and everyone around turns to look at her, frozen. Her throat and mouth work, and she gradually disgorges a strange waxy object. A thin man rushes into the room, robes flapping, and extends a butterfly net to catch it as it falls. Then everyone crowds around to examine it. The object is passed to another robed figure, who scribbles in a notebook, then back to the first, who sticks a label on it and rushes it to a pigeonhole in the wall. A small group of typists record their interpretations, their clacking keys providing a percussive accompaniment. Then the girl resumes the song, singing this time with great confidence and style (in a mature contralto) a music hall number from a bygone age.

  The curtains swing closed, and the light dims briefly, though the song continues through this change of scene. When the curtains open again we see:

  Scene Two: the same classroom, but strange. The personae are no longer accompanied by their doubles. The walls are gone. Instead, the blackboard and desks occupy the center of an irregularly shaped, reddish cave, and the anatomical models and jars of dissected newts are now heaped untidily on the floor. Many of the desks, blackboards, etc., look different somehow—they are made out of a different substance, or they lack an essential feature, or are partially fused with some neighboring object, as if they are not actual desks, blackboard, newts, but the imperfect memory of those things. The floor is not flat, but has swells and dips, making it visibly difficult for the actors to walk. To the right is a sort of chute, coming out of somewhere high up, in the wings.

  The only direct light comes from a high, oval opening in the distance, at the end of a ridged, tubular tunnel that we see foreshortened. The formations around it make it gradually evident that it is a mouth—seen, however, from the inside. Behind it is a changing scene—painted on a long strip of canvas on rollers—that depicts the classroom of the previous scene from the reverse perspective.

  The same voice is singing as at the end of the previous scene, but the person standing alone before the class (played by our instructor of Posture Arts, Mme. Once) is older. One might say that she “matches” her voice. We understand that we are in the land of the dead, and this is the voice that we earlier heard through the mouth of the student.

  There is a commotion from among the indistinct objects in the darkness to the right, and a gentleman enters, a distraught student scrambling to precede her into the classroom. The newcomer is formally dressed but covered with some kind of slime at which he is distractedly wiping.

  Tragedy and Comedy reenter from the wings. “The Intermission!” they announce in unison, and the curtain closes.

  At this interval in the Theatrical Spectacle, and serving at its centerpiece, was meant to be the release of our great balloon, or Sky Lung (as I planned to call it), but circumstances deprived our visitors of this wonder.

  When the journalist returns from outside, where I suspect him of smoking a cigarette, Tragedy and Comedy take the stage again for their Dialogue Between Tragedy and Comedy. This time they do not sing, but deliver their lines straight, or as straight as they can, for both are now afflicted, if that is the word, by a stutter.

  Study Question: While performing a play about stuttering students, the stuttering actors are possessed by the voices of other (deceased) actors, who have now themselves begun to stutter. What is likely to happen next?

  Correct. The dead actors will themselves be possessed, by other ghosts.

  And if, improbably, these ghosts should stutter in turn?

  And if then . . .

  I believe the audience glimpses the danger before even I do. Do you imagine it was my intention to open a veritable “black hole” before the very eyes of a reporter, a prospective donor, and a trustee? I am not so careless with my reputation as that.

  I happen to be watching the reporter. The next word from Tragedy’s mouth is, as I well know, for I wrote his lines, Scheherazade (a word I personally would not undertake without a spotter). But it never comes. The voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant fricative or “Sh” comes out forcefully, but is succeeded after a crotchet rest by a second “Sh” of equal force, and after an even briefer rest, another, until what sounded briefly like an extended shushing becomes an unnaturally
rapid and mechanical chir.

  At the first jerk—yank—tug—the reporter half rises. I follow his gaze back to the stage, and see the mouth of Tragedy contracting like a pupil, not because Minks is closing his mouth, conscious of danger (though I believe he does try), but because the world is contracting around it, pressing inward, urging itself toward the hole he has made in it (in the world, I mean) like water in a bathtub toward the drain.

  I myself am more fascinated than alarmed; I have conceived the possibility of an infinite regress but never witnessed one. To see its effect on the fabric of being is an awesome privilege, and indeed I turn back to the reporter with, I imagine, my soul shining in my eyes, wishing to share my wonder at this phenomenon with someone who might appreciate its rarity. I do not quite understand the expression that I behold, which is certainly not one of wondering delight, but I think no more about it, turning back to the event happening onstage. The boy, I now see, is shrinking and wrinkling, being sucked up into his own mouth. Belatedly I realize how such an event—ordinary enough in itself—must appear to someone not accustomed to it, and hasten to try and remediate the situation. But before I have made it halfway down the aisle, the inevitable has happened: Tragedy has fallen through himself, Comedy has fallen through him as well (her oral guest, departing from the script, incongruously declaiming “The Lady with the Long Red Snood”), the scenery has all begun to shuffle downstage, and the lights to dim. Through the hullaballoo one can still hear how the dead call up the dead who call up the dead, each new voice the merest chirrup, but monitory, like the click of a cocked hammer.

  Someone seizes my arm. “Do something, madam!” cries the trustee. “You have lost two students already!”

  “What do you propose I do?” I inquire quite calmly. His face reddens and I endeavor to explain, conscious that the reporter is taking down my every word. “My business and my skill is in affording the dead the means to speak, not shutting them up. If Minks will not close his mouth, and he is not now in any position to do so, being dead, we have no recourse but to wait and hope, either that the impulse to speech fades, or that the number of deceased orators with speech impediments is finite. Do you think we have heard from Demosthenes yet? Indeed, if it is not finite (but of course it is), we shall all find ourself dead very shortly.”

  “But—but that is outrageous! I demand that you take action!” He advances a foot toward the stage, then withdraws it. Indeed, there is nothing he can do there but plunge into the vortex himself.

  “We can try applauding,” I say mildly. “Perhaps it will persuade the dead that the act is over, and they will stop to gather up the bouquets and billets doux.” He looks at me with outrage, as if imagining that I am poking fun at him, but when I begin to clap, he follows suit, and the prospective donor after him. A moment later the reporter sets his notebook on one knee and joins us. We applaud, as the stage furniture crumples and slides, as the lashings holding up the painted backdrop part and it folds itself into the hole in the world. Behind the backdrop I see a child with arms and legs wrapped around a girder, braids streaming out sideways. The vaccuum sucks open the door of the auditorium, and a quantity of leaves fly past; one of them plasters itself on the back of the trustee’s neck, then peels itself up and flies on, to be swallowed by the mouth onstage. My hair thrashes, scattering hairpins that zip like darts toward the stage. The world is sifting through itself like sand through an hourglass. I am not above gloating a little: I am putting on the stage show of the millennium, and a reporter is here to bear witness!

  Then the voices stop. The sliding and the crumbling stop. My hair sags against my neck and with practiced fingers I begin fastening it up with what pins remain. The trustee hesitates, then rushes toward the stage, followed by the others. I almost laugh to see them examining the floor, the remaining props, the drops, the child (now unstuck from the girder): Do they imagine that I falsified the phenomenon with scrim and lighting effects? My hair made respectable, I go after them.

  “The children?” says Dr. Beede.

  “Dead,” I say, “for the moment. It remains to be seen whether that condition will be temporary or permanent. I shall have to send someone after them.”

  The trustee stares, his face rubiate. “Temporary or—do you not think that you yourself should go, and at once?”

  “There is no great rush. In the land of the dead, time does not pass.”

  “There is no great rush? Perhaps not, for the children, especially if, as you so casually remark, they are dead, but for my feelings there most certainly is, and if you have an ounce of humanity in you, then for yours as well! How can you not be anxious about their well-being, and hasten to bring them back to those who love them?”

  “I do not suppose that haste and emotional extremity will aid our cause,” I say. The reporter is again scribbling away. “I remain calm because I am most effective calm. You would not like, I am sure, to see me demonstrate my humanity at the cost of two young lives. I would ask you to remain quiet as I prepare myself per mortem iter.”

  It takes me several tries to funnel myself down through myself. Once I do so, however, I see to my satisfaction that the unlucky pair is huddled together just inside that swirling orifice we call the throat, frozen with terror and stuck to (really, interpenetrating with) the scenery. I yank them out without ceremony and return before the journalist’s shout of surprise has fallen silent—quite the quickest trip I have ever taken to the land beyond the Veil.

  “Let us proceed to the expedition room,” I begin, only to see that the children, mewling a little, have been closed in the arms of the doctor, who is stooped over them protectively. I am abruptly annoyed. “Children, I believe you have Interrogatory Silence practice? Be off.” They tear themselves out of the arms of the doctor and, bowing and touching their mouths as I taught them, though still sniffling, they depart.

  The trustee, however, is frowning and shaking his head. “I think I have seen enough. If we may repair to your office, I shall collect my hat and take my leave.”

  “So soon? I’m surprised you don’t want to review our equipment, the very latest design! Or see the Chapel of the Word Church, which Mme. Hume mentioned so kindly in her recent remarks to the British Academy of the Thanatogical Arts. The Analphabetical Choir has been practicing . . . But I see you are not to be convinced . . . I confess I will not be sorry to have the afternoon free for pedagogical matters!”

  He hurries off. I had hoped to speak to the prospective donor about our most pressing needs, but he is hard on the heels of the other.

  “Do you suppose we scared them a little?” I ask the reporter playfully. “You, sir, are made of stronger stuff, I gather. Can I show you anything else?”

  “I’m—frankly—well! This has certainly been—remarkable. Do you suppose that I could interview the children? After they’ve had a chance to catch their breath?”

  Naturally I say no. “But I would be happy to explain the principles of necrophysics involved, for the benefit of uninformed readers.”

  “Well, that would be just marvelous,” he says. “You’ll have to tell me all about it sometime. I must run and—” He wiggles his fingers uncouthly. It takes me a moment to see that he is miming typing. “Just one thing more: Can you describe your feelings when you saw your charges sucked into the void?”

  “Feelings?” I stared at him for a moment. The very fabric of the universe develops a puncture, and he wants to talk about my feelings?

  He has the grace to look away. “Well, never mind, I think I have all that I need at the moment.”

  “The article—when do you think—?”

  “I’ll send you a copy,” he promises. And is gone.

  I am—we are—launched! I feel like a debutante.

  Optimistically yours,

  Headmistress Joines

  16. The Final Dispatch, contd.

  I flew like a phoenix out of the fire, and like a phoenix I was reborn.

  I did not disco
ver this right away.

  I was not much acquainted with other children or indeed with anyone outside my immediate relations. It had been impressed upon me that the local boys and girls were my inferiors. I had no trouble believing it, despite the low status I possessed in my own house. It was only when tradition imposed upon my father the responsibility of hosting a holiday party for his employees that I was allowed to associate decorously with their children. I recall leading a small troop of them, sullen and strange in shirts and pinafores made stiff as kites with starch, to gaze silently at one of my father’s new devices, and delectating in my unaccustomed power.

  It was a different matter when these same children ventured boldly into our backyard in all the splendor of their dirt and challenged me to games no one had taught me. Knowing that I could not win I sealed my solitude by a subterfuge. Having read, in some of the journals to which my father subscribed, of the operations of Spirit Mediums, I rolled up my eyes and lowered my voice and pretended to be possessed by the dead. After that I sometimes saw the other children staring at me from the bushes, but they came no closer.

  It was only after my father died that, after hasty consultations among the local authorities and the executors of my father’s estate, I was sent, for the first time, to school. Pushed out the door of the neighbor’s house (in which I had been installed without reference to my own wishes) to walk for the first time down the hard-packed path that followed the river’s curves to the schoolhouse, I arrived dusty and a celebrity. Not only was I a new student but I had lost both parents in extraordinarily gruesome ways; my own life had been, they understood, threatened; furthermore, I was a stutterer. When the neighbor who had undertaken to deliver me there unhitched my hand from her sleeve and took her leave, the children gathered around me, shoving and staring. On the other side of the yard, the teacher hovered, waiting, as it seemed, to read the mood of the class.