The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  Krashaw, train riding, contemplates the modern idea, reads a book of poetry he wants to like, wonders: Are my instincts still true? (remembering that he used to know the right word) and: Dare I throwaway anything I’ve learned?

  Looks like a man’s house inside. Maps. She likes men. Maybe even Krashaw with split in his mouth? salami sandwiches? feet? (“How beautiful are the feet?” my tongue between her toes?) Three hours later Krashaw almost misses his stop.

  Uphill, he gets this far with his eyes shut. Cirrus clouds. Leans on sidewalk, limping. Limp. Limp. Listening to birds. It isn’t really out in the country.

  Suppose Krashaw goes out there after all? Sea charts. Aerial views. Brigantine and barquentine along the wall. Out there after all she watches, watching for him through monoculars, standing like a cowboy-captain of the ship, sees him on the grass in the park, having gotten that far with his eyes shut and thinking that words are better than ideas, the same ways butterflies are more objects than thoughts. He watches passing feet, tap, tap. He tries to pick a flower but the stem is too tough. Pulls it out by the roots so how can he put it in his button hole?

  Even through the right end of a monocular he is still small down in the park, so that she has remembered when he was twelve he peed on her pink party dress and rolled it into a ball at the back of his closet where it was found and they knew what had happened by the stain and the smell, but he has remembered, rather, that when he was fifteen he paddled down a wild Canadian river, but he also has remembered (vaguely) singing in the choir and taking his first opportunities watching feet go quietly.

  Parmentier, Parmentier, you have taken this opportunity to leave me. You have taken this opportunity. You have spent the day looking at the younger men. You have taken all your opportunities. They have led to success. They have led to excess. But now Krashaw Hill have a chance to reconsider his sister, reconsider brotherhood with his head in her lap, his hand inside her unzipped slacks. He has even forgotten if she is really older than Parmentier, but remembers the time he and Parmentier, looking so much like his sister at the head of the stairs, her marching legs, her Shinto love of red, first met. Once they all three had hair as black as Parmentier’s is, going, but two by two in those days, in matching Shinto red vests and Parmentier blushing at the sight of Krashaw, who woke up sober (still sober) someone caressing him. He hasn’t seen his sister for fourteen years.

  Eyes shut. Cirrus clouds. Makes his way uphill by heart. How much of his life has he spent with his head in his hands? He thinks: A mirror is a philosophical instrument along with magnets, lightbulbs, keyholes, push buttons, needles, thumbtacks, postage stamps, magnifying glasses. Deductions are to be made from them. Perhaps art is made out of them, but in a much more objective way. He thinks: Krashaw isn’t sure, but what if one is always to objectify? Cat boats racing in the sound. Vivaldi is of our time, he thinks. Brahms, not. Thinks: Shores, sea, distant sails, brigantine over the mantel, himself, oh sweet voiced boy in choir robes at fifty cents a month, brigantining up the aisles.

  Once he lay on that very beach fully dressed, his old brown suit, in the hot sun watching everybody else in bathing suits. Sweat in his eyes. Sand in his ears.

  Once he locked his mother in the basement. Sunny-bright day like this one he locked her in the dark. Certainly his sister remembers it all. Certainly his sister remembers wet beds and forbidden friendships. She hears his footsteps on the porch. Hangs the monocular on a nail in the wall. It’s her house now. Father’s house, my sister’s. Same old front door.

  The game of the living room still has the same rules, three steps forward, two to the right, raise hand. Releasing gesture. Three words, one from him, two from her. Three more words. He thinks, off and on, that there should have been some sort of plan. Or maybe less plan and more poetry.

  Suppose he goes out there to his father’s house, men’s things on the walls, and she kicks him where it hurts the most? “Tip of your nose,” she says and tries on his stained undershorts which he should have borrowed from Parmentier along with the tie because Parmentier is always careful to buy four new undershorts every six months. But it’s all right because as he tries on her bra he sees that the straps are not white. No sooner have we something white, he thinks, than it begins to gray down. Dust and stain, the natural state of being. Even the coffee cups probably not really white, and does the eye see white anyway? An illusion of shadows? White, a purely romantic notion? Krashaw has decided to do brown things for the sake of the truth.

  His lips are dry. He checks the angle of his cap on the way uphill and doesn’t open his eyes till his hand is on the doorknob. The game of the living room still has the same rules. If only he remembers the right word.

  She’s still my sister. Nose tip measured by length of earlobe. My cheekbones. Am I the reason you never married and vice versa?

  He thinks: Hands are sometimes so beautiful they should be covered up like breasts and feet. I can’t bear to see hands sometimes, hands finer than Parmentier’s. Does she wonder if she will bite her nails when she’s seventy? But it doesn’t matter how old she gets, she always puts one foot up on a chair seat, while Krashaw feels himself too old for the beach, wearing his same old suit. Hot. Am I too old for the sea and too old for sex. Foot on chair, she has more virility than I do.

  He has begun to sweat.

  “You’re sweating,” she says, pinching her breast.

  She knows about the party dress he peed on and probably other things he has forgotten. (Was she the one who unlocked Mother?) She has remembered him before he remembered himself. Knew him before he knew himself. I was a baby in her arms. She diapered me. Unsettling vision. A dream of disaster. Cheek on scrotum.

  He has a sudden twitching of the left eyelid. Thinks: And yet one still sees catboats from here in spite of everything.

  A new dog that looks like the old one sniffs his crotch. Male. Black and white and pigish. A new dog, old already. Must be twelve. It won’t be pushed away. Makes him think: Krashaw, spotted, sniffing. He blows his nose to keep cool and flutters his initialed handkerchief.

  And if we should both run to the beach? Downhill all the way? The cars crawl up where we used to sled in those days. But there is no past except as excuses for present failures. Her face, a projection of ancestors. Her hand holding the ball of her breast.

  “You’re sweating,” she says.

  Even as I lie sweating on the beach in my old suit, or as I sit watching all the others dance, quasers rush from me in every direction at unthinkable speeds. From me and my planet. The body central of the universe is sweating, his hand over his penis, he eyes on the ceiling, while younger ones toss balls on the beach. Oh “some are born to sweet delight…”

  Certainly by now she has taken off her shoe, and he sits with her heel in his hands. How cold her feet are.

  Thinks: Nothing I do is perfect anymore, but there really never has been any other way available.

  He has spent all his last money and even borrowed from Parmentier so there’s no returning now. Not till he finds a ten or a five folder in some book she likes.

  His hand moves upwards slowly enough so that she can say she never noticed anything. So can he. Today Father and Mother might as well be alive as not. Mouth dry. Eye wet. Fingers fat and fatter. Lace underwear underneath all that other black severity. Limp. Limp. Limp away, too old for any other kind of love even if he should put his cheek against her instep. Thinks: Oh well. And later sees boats from upstairs window.

  He has still not thought of just the right word for the sake of whatever real truth he is capable of.

  Her eye, from the adjoining room, watching through peep holes while he pauses over a glass of water or whiskey. Or he feels it’s her eye. Or someone’s. She always did want to see my body. Playing Indian in nothing but head feathers.

  But now they will sleep like brother and sister.

  He takes off his old brown suit jacket and Parmentier’s tie. Weeps with his head on the night table. Keeps his eyes shut u
ntil his hand is on the doorknob. Got this far. Hand on doorknob but not to enter here. Same old door. Doorway. Enters limping. Wonders: Could I live here without vices?

  He will stand up and take her by the hand. Firmly. Palm to palm. Warmth. No limp. Same old doorway. Enters limping. Wondering could I live here without vices? With his head in her lap he has longed to be utterly sincere so that they could reach some kind of truth between them in spite of everything. And in spite of memories in common, his left hand over her arches, her shoes, like Parmentier’s, scattered like children’s shoes under the chair, one on its side, one upside down. He will stand up and take her by the hand. Firmly. Palm to palm. Warmth. No limp. Only a slight hesitation, eyes on the window, but feet firm. Still there are things she must not say. Like Mother in the dark in the basement. Sunny day like today. Cirrus clouds. Same old uphill way they used to sled down. Dog. Boats.

  A City Sampler, July 1967

  Lib

  JACK is fed up.

  Good-bye, Jack.

  Wave to him.

  Out he goes. Old black sweater off into the twilight and that’s all there is of Jack.

  Lib, in molded rubber shoes with air holes in them, thinks: Gregory, Gerard, Harold, Hilary, Ralph. She waves from an upstairs window with an orange Kleenex. “Bye-bye.”

  “Jack is fed up,” she says. “Maybe he is going to San Francisco.”

  Maybe not.

  And so she has gone down to a place on the corner of Avenue A or B, gone down where they sing at night to think about a poem. She has gone down in Jack’s plastic raincoat with rain down the back of her neck and taking big steps like Jack does to sit rocking back and forth and the music aggravates an already too vivid emotionality with bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. She would like to dance and swing her arms around. She is thinking: Gregory, Gerard, Harold, Hilary, Ralph. She is drinking a daiquiri when someone puts a chair leg on the middle toes of her left foot and sits down.

  Oh, sometimes it’s daylight till after nine and people walk holding hands not going anywhere. That’s what Lib remembers about last summer, holding hands, not going anywhere and seeing yellow flowers. Seeing yellow flowers, she is reminded of her mother. Sometimes she remembers her in some characteristic pose. Sometimes she remembers a characteristic saying.

  Mr. Perlou, though not much taller than Lib, weighs a hundred and eighty-two pounds and not all fat but some muscle. It’s likely he would have asked her to dance eventually but now she thinks one or two toes must be broken. She thinks how she lives on the top floor, which means five flights to climb. Thinks how she waved to Jack from the top-floor window with an orange Kleenex. Thinks: I have left a child up there alone. Mr. Perlou, hovering, nothing but a dark suit and a face to her. He isn’t Gregory. He’s a different man with the same name, one who wears a little dotted bow tie and gets up quickly and spills his beer on her skirt and down her ankles and down inside her molded rubber shoes and later on says, “I’m Gregory Perlou.”

  Oh, sometimes it’s daylight till after nine and nobody’s going anywhere. Everybody’s small-town this time of year, nobody going anywhere, and Lib putting her hand over her mouth and squinting, having had too much to drink for the pain, leaning against Mr. Perlou’s dark suit and smiling at the sky where, even though it’s raining, it’s not dark yet.

  They have just passed a shop with yellow flowers. Everyone is looking at them. Lib, looked at by a man selling yellow flowers and by two other men and by a lady across the street and by four young men and another lady. Going down the next block, right foot, right foot, right foot getting tired now. Sometimes he carries her over the puddles or lifts her over the curb. The clouds are pink, all the neon signs turned on by now, and Mr. Perlou, only stumbling a little and giggling, has become, already, more than a dark suit and a round face, though he wears a dark suit and has a round face.

  Right footing, right footing, Lib thinks this is an experience to be remembered but has forgotten the number of her new apartment, tries her key in doors along the way. She is wondering what he is giggling about unless, she thinks, he has had too much to drink as she has. Then I understand him very well and, with heartbeat in toe or toes, there is this wonderful rhythm to everything we do and a faint smell of beer. No wonder he’s gay, and, in spite of what Mother says, does anyone still care where home is, does anyone care when it’s almost always twilight and Jack has gone and there is this child waiting upstairs? Still, try the key in the door and it finally fits. Stairs look steeper than usual. Mr. Perlou wipes his forehead with a blue-rimmed handkerchief and then blows his nose on it. Now they must go up. “In a wife I would desire what in whores is always found,” he quotes. She wonders, is he laughing at her?

  Now they must go up, and she thinking: Is he laughing at me? Wondering: Does he know more than just this much so far? Has it been, perhaps, on purpose from the start? Chair on her toe? Rain? Man selling yellow flowers? Or is she the one who is guilty of it? Guilty of having Jack go and guilty enough to have put her foot under his chair? And would do it again in order to reach, at last, this state of one sort of almost perfection, going upstairs, dizzy, in Mr. Perlou’s arms, head hanging back and down? Toe up? Pain? Beat of blood and smell of beer, and perhaps the neighbors looking down on her from their landings or peeking out from their doors?

  And now they must go up. First he holds her under her arm and one hand at her waist. Standing under the light, she thinks: I, the one-legged acrobat of the stairway, holding my skirt down with my left hand and grabbing Mr. Perlou by the lapel with my right hand, the light shining on the guilty and I may have done it all on purpose. Instead of another drink, I could have said, “Excuse me.” But I, too, must be smiling. It’s the first eight steps up and now the hand at my waist has moved to just under my breast and we step on step nine and I think how often I used to take them two or even three at a time, loping upstairs, loping downstairs, so step nine, the beginning of my new view of the world, thinking: toe, toe or toes, and I have had an insight into the relationship of pain to life and pain to forward movement. I will remember this in my sleep sometimes, head hanging down, toes up, and when we have gone on farther, I will remember that on the first flight of stairs he had his hand at my waist.

  Oh, even though it’s daylight till after nine, the lights are on in the hall and not a single light bulb is burned out all the way upstairs. The wallpaper has yellow stripes and Lib looks out between the balusters from nine steps up, thinking: Gregory, Gerard, Harold, Hilary, Ralph, but Mr. Perlou isn’t Gregory and has only put his fingers down the neck of her dress once so far. The wallpaper, reminding her of her mother, also reminds her of this very night. Lib remembering that she will remember this night and lights and Mr. Perlou, Lou, Lou. If you touch me, Lou, I will be the nipple under your finger, I, the leg against your knee, I, the tongue in your ear, thinking: As parrot to carrot, as motion to ocean, as position to fruition, so Lib to Mr. Perlou, Lib to Lou.

  In the space between our faces one can put two fingers or one linger, but not three.

  She thinks: I will say, “I was happy that day that Jack left and a chair crushed my middle toe or toes, and that morning I tried to write a poem,” hoping for an insight, and now she has an insight hut no poem or perhaps a poem, but all one can hope for is one insight a day. She is thinking: But art is not long. History is long. Art is as short as life and for our time. She is thinking: What if Lib and Lou lived together on the top floor? Looking out the window? Waving to each other? Upstairs? Downstairs? Raincoats in the hallways? And now, going upstairs almost as though it could have some meaning other than going upstairs, but not quite, and thinking: toe, toe or toes.

  Now he lifts her by one breast and one knee. What if she were wearing an orange dress and a hat like a basket of flowers instead of these old things belonging to Jack? Sometimes unimportant things are important and already, from one or two toes, she has come to understand pain and its place in life, life like an earach
e as parrot to carrot, toes to heroes, as Lib to Lou and Lou to kangaroo.

  They have passed a forest of balusters, a hundred yellow stripes and over forty steps, Lib not daring to take off her shoe, not till the top, people looking out and down at them and some people looking up at them now, at Lib, the guilty acrobat of the stairway under the lights like daylight or brighter and not a single bulb burned out all the way to the top and his hand is on her breast. “On your way up, are you?” “Yes.” “Bad weather lately.” “What will the weather be tomorrow, I wonder?”

  Now the hand on her knee has moved to her thigh.

  “Tell me all your secrets, Mr. Perlou,” and, as see to secret, she tells him something intimate. “My mother was a very beautiful woman, wearing an orange dress and a hat that I could never wear, and so I have this sweat shirt that once belonged to a man named Jack, the little god of this staircase.” “Listen, Mr. Perlou,” she says, “this is my secret,” and she blows into his ear. “You have quoted: ‘In a wife I would desire what in whores is always found: Well, I’ve tried, but no one has loved me and I’m still guilty of it. Not even… ” thinks: Gregory, Gerard, Harold, Hilary, Ralph.

  And if we should go down instead of up? Down the banister, head back, rain hat flying off, the pain in toe or toes maybe forgotten for a moment? And forgetting that a child waits upstairs? (Has it been left alone too long?)

  At the fourth flight he lifts her by her breast and her crotch. Someone is practicing the flute on this floor and the flute player has the door open and watches them over his music stand while he plays unaccompanied Baroque. Actually they have heard the music since her key turned in the door. From the first step they have gone up in time to his toe-tapping.