What Entropy Means to Me

by George Alec Effinger

  "Why? It sounded great to me." Dore was beginning to lose hope. They were still walking down into the mountain, but their path curved around on itself many times, and every now and then side paths cut into theirs. Dore was pretty well lost. He began to smell the concentrated aroma of cattle from up ahead.

  "Maybe. But it was theirs, don't you see. I wanted my own place. So first I created this universe. It's modeled after the old in a lot of ways, don't you see. Then, loo, I created this world to be my home, which is what I named it. Then I made myself into a regular person, don't you see, keeping of course my superior appearance and mentality, loo, so I could watch you and decide if you're worth saving. I have to be thinking of someone to take my place someday, don't you see, and I haven't found him yet."

  The broad hint wasn't lost on Dore, but he didn't really put much faith in the story. There were several implausible points.

  "Why didn't you make a more luxurious capital somewhere?" asked Dore. "I mean, as the Supreme Being of all the universe, this cave can't be the best you could do."

  "Well, loo," said the giant, yawning, his baroquely rotting teeth shining in the firelight like ancient, yellowed scrimshaw, "when I allowed myself to incorporate on the human level, don't you see, here on the mundane plane, loo, I forgot to maintain those supernatural powers that went with my former self. This avatar is, you might say, voluntarily without my godlike attributes, don't you see. So I'm more or less here for the duration, if you take my meaning. But," he said, his tone becoming slightly more threatening, "that doesn't mean that I am without my own senses-shattering personal strength, don't you see, and my all-encompassing power."

  "I see. But tell me more."

  Ah, this giant, this hider-under-bushels. How like the type of impotent magnitude he is. He is the American Dream, as amusingly portrayed in Albee's The American Dream, the ball-less, witless whore who has nothing but his smile and beauty; he is the essence of Genet's The Balcony, where people pretend to be and, thus, become the symbol and actuality of authority. This silly giant. And who is to say that his story is all delusion? It is Dore who must refute him. And as long as that great crab-tree cudgel swings at the monster's side, well, kyrie eleison.

  And so they came, man and myth, to the subterranean enclosures that the giant had built for his animals. There was one large pen in an immense natural cavern, and beyond that another and smaller fold fenced with rough, unstripped hardwood boughs. Both pens were empty now, during the day when the animals were pasturing on the hill. Dore thought of the clean air without and the freshness of the forest, and wished for the same simple luck of the animals.

  "Well, loo, the big one keeps the cows, don't you see, and the other is for the goats. Now, tonight they will have a guest, loo, and I hope you don't mind their rough manners. Country hospitality, don't you see. You have come here to your fashioner under the usual burden of guilt and sin, but how am I to know if your repenting is sincere? Loo, yes, a problem: Do I take your word? Ah, the weak point of the theology. So. Tonight you sleep with the cows. Tomorrow night you sleep with the goats. The evening after, loo, you pass with the pigs further on. And if your desire is such that you do not give up, don't you see, if you swallow your profane pride and weather this ordeal, loo, you win. I suggest you pass the time praying. Takes your mind off the troubles, don't you see."

  The giant scooped Dore up in one huge hand, hoisting him up above his head. Dore balanced there for only a moment, until the giant lobbed him in a gentle arc into the largest corral. The thought of the eloquent skeletons of his infidel predecessors was little consolation for the filth in which he landed, heavily, on his back. The giant laughed some yards away, and as Dore turned to say something the monster lifted his torch and headed back toward the daylight, leaving Dore in total darkness, pain, and corruption.

  Chapter Six

  A Perilous Scheme

  Our Mother would have been scandalized. She had a very negative attitude toward filth, an outlook that she was careful to impress on those of us who would listen. We could always tell when it was going to be one of the "dirt days," as we laughingly called them. The sky remained dark, even as the sun rose higher and higher into the heavens' spacy vault. The normally white roof of clouds hung dark and low, unmoving in the morning's windless quiet. Grudgingly we'd rise and dress, knowing that the day would be spent listening to the cleanliness lecture again. Our Mother was waiting, and someone kept attendance reports. (All right, it was Tere. Not to put Tere in a worse light, you understand, but Tere always seemed to have more sharp pencils than anyone else.)

  The air would always be chilly when we left the house. We'd walk in groups of three or four as slowly as we could among the chairs on the lawn, clucking our tongues, staring sullenly at the clumps of needle grass. At last we'd get to Our Mother's throne, despite all our efforts to get lost on the way. The usual early devotions were said, though with less enthusiasm than on ordinary days. Our Mother noted no difference, however, as beaded with dew on her stone seat as the throne itself. She stared out over our heads, blinking rapidly and nodding as regularly as a metronome. Only Tere noticed that our prayers were rushed with impatience; Our Mother just gurgled her holiness, but Tere came around afterward to our rooms. "Let's try to understand her," he'd say. "She's having a hard time now that Dad" (Dad?) "went off. The least we can do is be tolerant, okay?" Then he'd punch each of us on the shoulder, smile winningly, and mince away.

  On dirt days he'd help her out. He'd stand next to her in front of one of the pillars, where he could watch each of us. Our Mother would do nothing for a long time, letting us soak up the unpleasantness for as long as an hour. A great idea for a play, eh, Lalichë? The audience is seated all at once, and while they are coming in the curtain is slowly falling, hiding some imaginative and interesting scene. After two and a half hours they are permitted to go home. Naja, then Tere would hand Our Mother her sword. She looked very silly with it. The broadsword would get heavy as the afternoon went on, and, instead of holding it before her symbolically, she took to resting it on the arm of the throne, or letting it waver dangerously close to Tere's inadequate breast. It did not take long for the sword to lose whatever metaphorical significance it might have had.

  We were watching other things, anyway. How fascinating became the embroidered hanging behind the throne! It filled with the first afternoon breezes, bellied out and emptied, and slapped back against the pillars. Our Mother's voice droned on, accompanied by Tere's distracted "to be sure"s. After several more hours Our Mother wept to her conclusion. The sun would be too low for us to work in the fields; someone would shout, "Let us then cleanse ourselves in the healing holy waters of the River," which was just an excuse to go swimming. Those of us who believed in that sort of thing left in a group, and the rest of us headed back to the house for some table tennis or shuffleboard in the rec room before supper.

  Once, though, after Dore left, we had a special dirt day. In the first place, it was the only one since our eldest brother's departure. This was the longest respite we had ever enjoyed. "Perhaps," we had thought timidly, "perhaps she'll never do it again. Because of Dore." But it was not to be. We sat about her, arms folded around our knees, boys and girls tickling each other with blades of grass. The morning passed as usual, and we started to get caught up in the rhythmic fwap! thub of the tapestry after the noontime winds began. But we slowly noticed that the sky was doing odd things. The heavy, threatening clouds lightened to their accustomed grayish-white, then began to thin in the middle so that they collected in bunches at the horizon. The sky above was bright blue, the only time it had been clear within my memory. Everyone fell silent except Our Mother, who spoke on from behind her tears. Tere slipped away, not unnoticed by anyone. We watched him loose a bird from a cage behind the micha tree. At first sight I believed it to be Dore's tarishawk, but as it circled closer I saw that it was a redskip, a small swiftlike bird officially known as Dodham's racer. No one is sure who or where Dodham is.

  Tere
tried to return to his position next to Our Mother without attracting attention, but we all made a great show of smiling to him and waving. He stood in front of the pillar and stared at the ground. We refused to acknowledge either the clear sky or the bird. We were unsure how Tere had managed the cloud thing, but we were united in wanting to deprive him of his silly triumph. The dirt day went on from there as usual, but it had given us material for speculation.

  As Dore lay imprisoned in that filth, he must have given thought to Our Mother's teachings. She had never made a distinction between involuntary dirt and dirt of one's own free will. Surely Dore could not be held responsible for whatever uncleanness he suffered in the giant's lair. But he must have felt a few moments' guilt nevertheless. Could we dare to interpret the physical soiling of Dore's person as a symbol for the disorder of his intellectual self? Tere the messianist would be happy with this slightest of slaps at Dore's new stature. Ateichál the fundamentalist, now, might with reason be upset. I must therefore decline to voice an editorial preference.

  That intellectual disorder might best be described in Dore's own terms, in the words of his motto: Creative equilibrium. This is the principle of having one's cake and eating it, too. Or closing one's eyes and letting it all go away. It happened generally that by the time Dore had thought things out, events had progressed to the point that his choice had been narrowed to one mandatory response. We can all appreciate how that has its good and bad points.

  Dore thought in the muck. He traced plans in the slime on the floor, invisible in the absolute darkness.

  "We don't have time for that," whispered someone behind him.

  Dore was startled. "Who is it?" he said.

  "It is I," said the voice. "Glorian."

  "Ah, fine. What do you look like now?"

  "What does it matter?" said the mysterious stranger. "I have fair hair and a ruddy complexion. My back and spine are my best parts."

  "Then you wear a ruby?"

  Glorian laughed. "You are learning quickly," he said. "Yes, I have a yellow ruby on my forehead. It leaves me vulnerable to ailments in my joints, so let us get out of here soonest."

  "How? The situation looks hopeless to me."

  "They all do," said Glorian. "But faith works wonders."

  "It is well that faith does, because I can't," said Dore.

  "Right this very minute there is an angelic Person waiting outside the mouth of the cave for you. If we can manage your escape within the hour, that Person will be in a position to cut a great deal of time from your trial."

  Sabt, the fourth-eldest male, has cleverly caught my lapsus linguae there. No doubt Glorian himself would never slip so, to reveal to Dore that the journey was indeed some sort of initiation. I can remedy the error easily enough, by simply making our brother ignore its significance. But do I now have to explicate the whole myth structure to you? No, I believe it best to go on, to let you piece the picture together on your own.

  This doesn't satisfy my brother Sabt. The trouble with writing this in plain view is that everyone feels qualified to criticize each development. I suppose I am the only one of us who knows what I plan to do, but all the brothers and sisters in the house have suddenly become experts. It's my project, and my symbols are my own.

  "Since when?" asks Sabt. "Dore was much more my brother than yours. You have a responsibility to us as well as to him. You seem to think you're writing this for your own self-aggrandizement. I'm sure Ateichál would find that an unwholesome attitude."

  "What sort of . . . Person?" asked Dore, ignoring Glorian's slip.

  "Oh, a sexless ethereal sort. Girded round with flowered garlands. Visible yellow aura. Smells of anise."

  "Do you have a plan?"

  "Yes," said Glorian. "Here's my plan. . . ."

  Well, that got rid of Sabt. No one seems to be at all interested in the ingenious ways I find to extricate Dore from the diabolical situations in which I place him. All attention is focused on the merest modifiers, on the minutest descriptions that I drop more as filler than anything else. If I say that Dore finds a chain of red roses in the pen, and binds it about his waist to symbolize the union of carnal and spiritual desires, I do not intend my dear brothers and sisters to interpret this in a negative light. Compromise is a fine, true thing, although the word appears to have adopted a pejorative sense lately. Dore hesitates, which in itself implies action at some time. This is well-known; I am shocked that some of us are becoming outraged at my innocent observations. Dore may be holy nowadays, but when I knew him as the Will Incarnate he messed around a lot.

  I was embarrassed by Sabt's return. He read what I had written after his departure, growing redder and redder through the last paragraph. He made a few notes, saying nothing, and left once more. The days of the liberal atmosphere seem to be numbered. With Sabt was my younger sister Shesarine, who is still with me. She would like to know what the Person mentioned by Glorian represents. I thought originally that the Person was to combine masculine and feminine elements, as the River combines the strength and fructification of the male and the fluidity and receptivity of the female. This hybrid Person would then be an external projection of the forces currently at work within Dore himself. The Person would remind Dore that all work and no play, etc.; part of compromise in this situation would be, necessarily, to allow a certain standard of pleasure. But this pleasure must be tempered and accepted in the proper spirit; the Person would explain to Dore that the red roses were essentially the same as the red robe so often seen adorning the Virgin Mary: the red of Eros, transformed from base animal drives into a pure and holy Love. Shesarine thought that this was dumb. All right. Never mind, then. It'll take longer than an hour for Dore to escape and the Person will be gone. Okay?

  "We must wait for nightfall," said Glorian.

  "Fine," said Dore. "How will we be able to tell when it gets dark?"

  "Easy. We'll just wait until the giant returns with the cattle. You can sit here where he can see you, putting on a grand show of enjoying the whole thing. Then we'll just stealthily follow him back through the tunnels to the front entrance and slip away."

  "What about the huge rock he uses as a gate?"

  Glorian winked at me. I nodded gravely. "Don't worry," he said to our brother, "I have a feeling everything will be ready for us."

  Very soon the two men saw the flickering of the giant's torch. It shone redly, a tiny point of light in the universe of darkness. It seemed to hover motionlessly for hours, as the giant drew nearer down the long tunnel. In a while they could hear the lowing of the cattle. Dore looked around for Glorian, but of course he could not see him. "Glorian?" he whispered. There was no answer. "Glorian, where are you?" he said, louder. The man had disappeared again.

  There were a few thumps and bangings, evidently the giant opening the gate to the pen. Dore stood and pressed himself against the wooden timbers so that he might not be crushed or trampled by the herd of cows. The animals filled up the pen, milling about noisily. The torch, which had been placed in a holder, began to float again as the giant prepared to leave.

  "Well, loo," said the giant, "how's it going so far?"

  "All right, I guess," said Dore.

  "Good." They were both silent for a moment. The torch waved as the giant gestured broadly. "All this, this, is real life, eh?"

  "Yeah. Strange."

  "Real life, don't you know." The giant laughed sadly. "We do such silly things. Loo, but it's still great. Being an individual, don't you know."

  "I suppose so. I've never been one."

  Our Father was the individual, and so it is difficult to accept Dore's statement without looking deeper into our brother's often torpid thought processes. From early childhood, word reaches me, Dore knew that eventually he would be the one to have to go out in search of Our Father. He lived for years with the responsibility constantly coloring his relationships in the house. He could not avoid distancing himself from us, although he was by nature the warmest of friends; he was aware that w
e could not fail to demand that he do this thing. He was sorry for our guilt long before we ever felt its subtle pains.

  I have to come up with some answer to Shesarine's charge that I am cheapening Dore's sacrifice by turning him into "just another Christ-figure." What can I say? By sitting outside the framework of the story, much like the levels of audiences in Kyd's admirable Spanish Tragedy (a play I have often suggested to Vaelluin's Lawn Theatre summer stock group. They insist that Neil Simon draws better), I can obtain a degree of, well, not objectivity, I suppose, but at least a studied carelessness that enables me to present Dore in all of his two or three aspects. Christ? Well, there are parallels, but aren't there always? You can hardly fault me for showing touches of the greatest of all influences. I am very fond of Christ; but Dore's character is more complex than that, and his story is much more resonant with allusion than simply a Christ/Prometheus thing.

  Dore's journey was an historically imperative event. But even so we all feel responsible for whatever fate befell him. We regret our ever listening to Tere, although none of us would go so far as to wish to change places with Dore. But where Our Father was the very essence of leadership (the story goes), Dore gave himself over to vacillation. In him indecision masqueraded as "reason," and our leaderless family suffered unknowingly. Our Father's crown, which is still on display from nine in the morning until five-thirty in the evening in the West Foyer, is a massive gold affair. Dore made himself a simple circlet of metal, but Our Father wore a heavy helmet, ribbed and studded with bloodstones and Spanish topazes. We need someone to assume that emblem of strength and sureness, but no one quite that capable seems to be coming up through the ranks.

  Dore felt a moment of panic as he noticed the bobbing of the torch. The giant was preparing to abandon him once more in the strange and foul cell.

  "Glorian," whispered our brother, never taking his eyes from the slowly diminishing light. "You there? What are we going to do?" There was no answer but the soft murmurings of the cows and the squishings of their hooves in the mud. Dore was confused and frightened. He was usually pretty good when he had a choice of actions; somehow or other he always came through, late or not. But the situation was so unpromising that he couldn't see anything else for it but to do as the giant wished.