The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  And what if, having arrived at last ON that opposite shore, I might have sat around on high, dry ground and reminded people where I came from and how and delivered my messages of hope, safety, courage and ecology?

  As it is I’ve tried to phone my uncle who lives in Evanston but he has an unlisted number. I’ve called my mother in Peoria but she won’t tell me what it is. I have wanted to change people and most of all I wanted to change my mother and father. We all wanted to change our mothers and fathers. We haven’t changed them.

  Oh,well .

  I stop for a cup of tea and afterwards I feel a cautious optimism. Now I’m wondering, shall I go on as far as Minneapolis? Or shall I walk out to O’Hare and fly back from there?

  The Little Magazine, vol. 11, no. 2, summer 1977

  Expecting Sunshine and Getting It

  SUDDENLY I do not underestimate myself.

  I think I am probably the dark, brooding stranger, riding a wild horse that only I can control and followed by big, dangerous dogs. I think I am most likely the person returning from long voyages in strange lands, knowing many esoteric languages and customs and having left children (God knows where or who knows who their fathers are) in several of those countries. (Could I really do that?) I think that I am probably the romantic, eligible bachelor-woman; rich, of course, and waiting for the right man—the mousy man in brown who takes off his glasses—who’ll tame me. I shout at a raucous shout. I shout that he’s frightened my horse, etc. My first impression is of the kind of nondescript male who should keep out of my way. But I have surprised horses myself every now and then as they came out of the mist when I happened to be standing there yelling and waving my arms, and now I have surprised even myself, my cloak flying as I ride in storms, wet and not caring and regardless of the menopause. Thunder roars.

  I’m thinking that I must be the one who lives in the castle. Kafka (all in brown) watches from the village below, but I’m the one with the haunted eyes. I can’t help that. I probably have several secret sorrows, not the least of which is that I already have a husband locked up in the tower. Sometimes you can hear his crazy laughing, though what has he got to laugh about? (Kafka believes in one husband at a time, that’s clear, but I have my fantasies.)

  If I should ever yell “cunt” or “dildo” in one of my rages I can be pretty sure K never heard those words before. That’s one kind of high class I’m after, now that I can try for nothing but the best.

  I drive past him fast several times a day. I keep circling back. There’s danger probably reflected in my dark glasses and they flash back at him (along with my signals), a glimpse of his own mousy face. (He always said he hated the sight of it. I remember reading that someplace.) If he doesn’t catch on for himself soon, I will have to get somebody to tell him that I might be, or might not be, from the castle. I will have to have someone tell him that I might suddenly go off on another long journey. Time is short. How long can this mood last?

  Here are the facts: The storm came out of the North and I probably came with it. My rage was such that I forgot my sagging breasts, my aging face, my varicosities, arthritis, etc., etc. I didn’t scream, “I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy,” by then and it was probably no longer a question of just setting fire to the bedsheets. At that moment, risking everything (except, of course, the children), feeling I had the strength often (and I guess I did), I locked Mr. Rochester in the tower room and he’s the one who’s laughing out the window now, not me.

  I was his first love, remember that? For all anyone knows, I may have been an orphan, too, and not necessarily have had a happy childhood. We know I had a brother. Probably he was given all the education even though I might have been smarter. Anyway, I did all right up to a certain point in spite of everything, but so many good things hadn’t been invented yet and of course I never knew when he’d come home or whether he’d come home at all. He was that kind of man. (Had there been telephones, he wouldn’t have called.) Sexual techniques were primitive. It wasn’t even a question of clitoral or vaginal. By four o’clock every afternoon I was already yelling at the children and watching the clock for no good reason since what could happen? Maybe if we’d lived in the city instead of the suburbs. Maybe if we’d gone for professional help in time, but it’s too late for that now. Anyway, that’s all changed and sometimes after riding around all day trying to catch K’s eye, I climb the tower stairs and let Mr. Rochester groan and shake his Orson Wellesish head at me. I let him plead and bitch and squeeze out a few tears like I used to do, and if it looks OK, I open the bars like he used to do for me and we make crazy, mad, violent, psychopathic love. The best kind. And then I leave quickly before he gets the upper hand. (It’s nice, sometimes, to have a man all your own, one that you’re not trying to impress anymore,or influence or plead with.)

  He says it’s not fair, but fairness is my specialty and always has been. It’s what I’ve yearned for, though usually I’ve only asked for a little bit of equality: If he gets this, then (sometimes) I (might) get that. I never wanted the best of anything. Never hoped for it. (Perhaps that was my big mistake.) But I’ve changed now and there’s this sudden, clear view of everything. I’m remembering, too, that I knew somebody else once, both smart and rich, who had sagging breasts just like mine and it made a difference in her life. She confided this to me in a whisper, if you’re wondering how I know. She was wonderful even so, moving in masterly slow-motion sometimes, and such an elegant head! So poetic, too! What I think is that if her breasts hung down it can’t be all wrong.

  They are all treasures!

  My profile:

  The possibilities of poets are endless.

  Is the back of my head really elegant enough? It might be. I can’t tell. If it is, then maybe I’m trying too hard to be that kind of strong, silent, charismatic woman-of-the-world-with-secret-sorrows when I really don’t have to make such a big effort. I should keep reminding myself that women can be immense! That there are royal women, African queens, white (and black) goddesses. Many of them make lots of little mistakes and never even apologize at all. But I am small. I am, in fact, a small, dark, brooking stranger, having ridden a horse only once or twice and Mr. Rochester never notices the back of my head; so if I do relax and stop trying so hard, it’s up into the tower for me for at least some part of every day and certainly on weekends whether the children are home or not.

  Before continuing, I want K to know that (so far) I’ve never done anything reprehensible (especially not to the children or in front of them) and not even any crazy thing that caused irreparable damage, and if I did, it was a long time ago. I forgive myself and I forget it. Even my recent outbursts shouldn’t stand between me and real life. Would that be fair? And did anyone ever stop to think how hard Mr. Rochester is to live with sometimes?

  I am, by now, standing in the doorway of the castle, though only the back door. It’s the kind of small, unassuming door that might be for poets and musicians to come in and go out by without fanfare. Probably unlocked. I’m standing beside it, wanting a brand-new (old-fashioned) sweetness like a Beethoven slow movement and a real love story, the kind you can’t have anymore, with maybe no sex, but the glimpse of an ankle… a very, very beautiful ankle. Mine (both) have little blue veins and permanent black-and-blue marks. Mr. Rochester is also aging fast.

  Strange that when Kafka wants to have a picnic, he has it in the shadow of the castle wall right near this little artist’s back door instead of out under a tree. If he wants to be polite, correct and, above all, legal, what’s he doing here? He must know perfectly well that all the land around here belongs to whoever lives in the castle and might, for all he knows, be mine. I cheer up when I finally catch his eye and since I want to correct any impression he might have that I’m not from the castle, I lean possessively against the door. I know that if I’m not from the castle, he doesn’t want to waste his time with me. Or if he does, it won’t be “serious.” He wants to be in with the “in” crowd and he’s tired of feeling cockroach
y. Some significant gesture on my part is necessary and right now.

  “Well,” I say, “I guess I have to go home,” and I open the back door of the castle and walk in. I forgot that I may not be from the castle anymore than Kafka is, though in my present state of mind, that seems unlikely. Well, I’m glad I did it even though at that moment—that very moment of the meaningful gesture—I wasn’t thinking of myself as the dark, mysterious stranger—but more the other kind, the one everyone is always a little bit contemptuous of, as though I must be the wrong color or too tall for a woman or not properly dressed or somebody too old to bother with or it’s that my speech reveals where I come from (which might be Brooklyn).

  Kafka, I notice, doesn’t follow me in. He doesn’t dare. I was afraid of that. He’s always so legal and properly dressed!

  But let me say that I have always wanted to be left out in the woods by myself, starving, in order to have a vision like the Indians did. I have always wanted to go into the forest almost as empty-handed as I am right now, a little frightened, too: the sounds of rats or squirrels, and strange rustlings that cannot be accounted for. I’ve always looked forward to some scary place just about like this one, full of bats and swallows and their droppings, so I’m glad I’m here; but also, I’ve found out something K ought to know and I must tell him soon, though not right now. Something very important to him and interesting to me and that is that there is nobody in the castle. There is nobody in the castle!… at least as far as I can tell.

  Camped on the edge of a vast living room, probably on the site of past slights or little domestic altercations never forgotten, camped between hallway and great hall as though between man and wife or between any who used to be lovers, I have discarded, on principle, everything I might take comfort in: my wedding ring, for instance; my amber pendant given to me by Mr. Rochester; even my watch, by which I could tell the length of the night. There’s the tension of verbal battles in the air (I know it so well) and a sense of suffering, sometimes silently, in mismatched marriages. It feels like several generations of them. There’s the electricity of the hates of those who yearned for love. I wait, full of unspecified regrets, unspecified desires. It’s growing darker. Something flies by. I light two candles.

  I have read that in many countries only the men are allowed to have visions.

  And now my usual night pains and problems begin: sore neck, tingling hands and feet, skipped heart beats, backache, twitching legs, menopausal sweats. (Perfectly normal at my age.) I think of all the physical things that don’t bother me yet but could, and settle myself cross-legged, leaning against the central support of a small table, one of its carved lion paws on each side of me. (They are of no comfort and have no significance to a modern woman like myself.)

  Why should I be afraid of ghosts, I wonder? Why, at my age? Or of strange, dark forces of the night or of the cellar? I, who doesn’t believe in them, and who (suddenly) does not underestimate myself? Why, when I’m anticipating at least an average vision such as the awesome sight of horses and fire or a flock of flying swans in thunderheads or some other, Maybe more abstract vision: perhaps a view across the sky of unadulterated joy and brightness, myself in the middle as some kind of victorious woman, both arms raised up and shouting? (I’ve done that several times before, but not for any of these reasons.)

  If something should happen and I should die here, I want to die with a joke. I’ve always wanted that. I want to make one funny last remark. I hope I’ll be able to think of something at the final moment. It should be apropos,too, so it can’t be prepared ahead of time. Also it shouldn’t be too long. (I hope nobody interrupts me in the middle or misinterprets it. I won’t have time to go on or to clarify.)

  But I could be something up from the cellar myself and proud of it. Old crone from primordial ooze, hatched from blind desire… not necessarily from one great yearning, just several little ones, hatched even from wants that might fairly easily have been satisfied with, perhaps, a modicum of free time now and then. But she’s all blind force now, with the violence and fury to match Godzilla or King Kong, having bided her time (in the meantime having yelled out windows and waved her arms, having bided my time until it was too late). (How did such small desires, one might ask, lead to all this passion?)

  I didn’t understand it at the time, but those were moments of sanity when I raged against the bars and screamed out windows… moments of sanity when I would have burned the place down if I could, moments of sanity when I couldn’t catch my breath.

  “… to be Haunted-One need not be a House-.”

  —Emily Dickinson.

  I turn my head away to see more clearly in the dark, wishing for demons, knowing there won’t be any; but if I could call up some devil kind of thing to sell my soul to (if I believed in soul or devil), I’d ask to be five or six years younger than I am… tell everybody I’m forty-seven instead of fifty-four, for instance, or I’d even take just three years off. I’d settle for two. (I never ask for much, or didn’t used to, and anyway, I’m not sure I’d ever like to be thirty-five again.)

  I turn my head away to see more clearly in the dark. This is a test.

  But perhaps I should ask for more just to raise the stakes, as it were. Aim higher. This is a test and this is the test of it right here. I thought the object was to win through in spite of privation, weakness, fear and loneliness—but what’s to win? (I used to wonder that, even long ago, locked up in the tower. Where were the rewards for good behavior or hard work?) So what’s to win now? That’s the question and I think answering it is passing the test. So, a couple of thousand dollars would be nice. Or a whole new wardrobe. One perfect moment. (Everybody should have one, though it can be over before you realize it or you may forget you had it right after it happens and then you may think you never had one in your whole life up to now. Also there are always a few flaws… expecting sunshine and getting it, but too much wind.) So what’s to win now? Nothing that I know of. I can feel my vision coming. I hear the thunder of it and I already, now and then, raise my arms up, feel an urgent need to shout. But what if by the time I have my vision I’m too weak from hunger to make it out the door? That’s another question. Mr. Rochester is locked up and K could never, never bring himself to enter the castle to save me and he’s the only one who knows I’m in here. I might die here. I’ll have to save myself as I did once before, get out while I still can, as I got out then. Also I’ve already made the big changes in my life, the ones that having visions are supposed to make. Also K will never learn that there’s nobody in the castle unless I come out and tell him.

  Out then, into the night air-now while I still have the strength to do it—and on, for all I know, to larger castles with even larger living rooms. I am not harmless. I will not be harmless nor will I be sent back into any towers no matter how tall, my hands tied and without knives or matches. I will fill my own sky. I nearly saw that. I nearly had that a vision. I mean instead of all those swans and horses… expecting sunshine… a few flaws… and I almost had one almost perfect moment….

  Croton Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, summer 1978

  Omens

  WAIT.

  Don’t reach out.

  Stand still or whatever sort of spell there is here on 21st Street and 6th Avenue will break before the light changes and it says WALK in green letters. But what can .... happen after that first glance except that they go on, she to an Italian grocery store (she certainly must be Italian), he to the nearest coffee shop where there’s magic in those boomerang shaped designs on the counter top, magic where you might walk through a mirror so suddenly you’d never know you were doing it.

  And don’t go near those Spanish-speaking short-order cooks. He knows this. Hides his eyes with his hands pretending headache. Eats a sixth of a pizza. Drinks tea.

  Well, how can a man like that be loved without casting a spell, too big, too fat, too hairy, too old and with one secret lewd desire. Count seven steps and seven steps and seven steps or nine. Walk around this par
ticular block three times with umbrella up thinking: Remember Mother. She had a right to be angry that last year before she finally died. Remember (vaguely) almost dying, too. That was the only time ever held hands with mother.

  Three days pass.

  Another meeting is unlikely, but now he has found himself standing next to her at Nedick’s. He spills mustard on his beard and doesn’t even know it. Guesses it, though, but isn’t sure. Beard always was mustard colored right around his mouth anyway.

  She avoids his face. (He sees that.) He doesn’t have his glasses on and can’t read the runes on her purse. Certainly she would have liked to turn him into a big dog with his fur full of burrs. He wears his pants too low. (Everything he owns is brown.) They don’t speak.

  It’s crazy! Now they have met in Macy’s basement, both buying identical black wool scarves. He smiles. Frowns. · Smiles. Winks. A tear comes to that eye . and he turns away to wipe it. When he looks back he sees her old tan sweater already off into the crowds beyond. He waits for his change and then leaves in the opposite direction. It’s the only thing to do. Sits hopefully in the front of Chock Full O’Nuts for twenty minutes. Shuffles back to apartment in basement of brownstone thinking of Nietzsche and the Birth of Tragedy.

  So, while thirty to forty pigeons mate in Central Park, while six or eight men are goosing women in the subway, while the first conference on prostitution is taking place, he says, “She loves me, she loves me not,” breaking out the teeth of his plastic comb and she has a sudden headache as though someone were sticking pins in her doll.