The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  “How,” she said, but again with finality. She seemed not to mind my arm around her, to hardly notice it, in fact, but she turned and looked at me with that fish-bird/bird-fish stare, and I took my arm away. I couldn’t help it. And then she stretched, reached both wings and arms up as far as they’d go, and, my God, I’d not realized. I’d not understood at all. I just kept saying, “Oh, my God,” over and over. I mean she could never live here. Those wings… they’d have to go. There was no way a person could get around like that. There was no house (that I could afford, anyway) that could contain them. Probably no house anywhere that could. I didn’t even know how she managed to sleep. And think of her getting into a car. I mean trying to. Think of getting into an airplane, for heaven’s sake.

  But now I could see, storm or not, she was going to leave. She was going to take off in this wind. “Stop,” I said, “you’ll be blown away. You’ll be struck by lightning.” But perhaps she had been waiting for a wind like this all along in order to take off. She kept on stretching and making practice motions with her wings. They kept looking larger and larger and sounded like sails when the ship luffs, out of control. Suddenly I didn’t care how wet and cold and hungry I might be, I wanted to come along to whatever rocky cliff she must live on. Nest on. “Take me with you,” I said. “Let me hang on. I can.”

  “Quack!”

  Then there was a great flapping and I reached for her. I had her, for a moment, by one awful, blue-streaked leg, but there was all that wind and sound… a great sound, and I dropped to my knees to keep from being blown off the deck. She headed out over the ocean toward the storm. I heard her “Hawk, hawk” blow back to me as she lifted into the wind.

  And here I was, down… down here with the mess of the party, more drunk than I’d meant to be, and no Pasht to talk to. I couldn’t face my own house. I sat on the deck and watched the storm come, and as soon as the rain started—really started—Pasht came back, not eaten up after all, except she’d lost her tail. Of course I don’t know whether Julia did that or not, but I suspect. It takes away a lot of the snaky gracefulness Pasht had, but I keep her…. I love her anyway.

  Omni, December 1988

  The Promise Of Undying Love

  WE HAVE always yearned for great men. We have been impressed by them. In fact dazzled! Spellbound! We have even hoped to have a truly great man of our own one day. Dressed in our best, we have gone where great men go. We have watched them from the balconies of theaters and concert hall. Watched them on TV. We have sat in their classes and agreed with them desperately. Sent them admiring letters. Called them up. We have always felt that the achieving of an achieving man was worth any amount of pain and trouble. Sometimes we have concentrated so hard on great men that the great men themselves have seen our interest in our eyes, and this has paid off occasionally, and some of us have had, at least for a little while, the company of a great-or more likely a “near-great” man. But usually our attempts to contact the great and near-great fail and we have to turn to ordinary men. Certainly this is true in the long run. After we have lost our good looks, that is. Our needs, however, are even greater then, but we have less hope of satisfying them and so we have to take what is available. Have to kiss lesser cheeks, lesser lips; make do with less money; have to choose the larger and/or most beautiful of two or three lesser penises.

  (Often, for want of a great man, we have pushed our sons toward greatness as best we could)

  But can one resist without a great man? One is alive, that’s about all. One goes about one’s business trapped in the everyday.

  We have resolved that this should no longer be true. Now we will bring great men down among us. We will treat them almost like we treat everyone else: kiss them and hold hands, pinch them, tickle them, lean on their arm, slap and giggle-but not anymore with just any great man. We want the greatest! That we could slap, giggle with, tickle and pinch the greatest man of all.

  As mentioned, most attempts to contact great and near-great end in failure, or at best, achieve only and short term success. How much more difficult, then, to contact and capture the greatest man of all, but how much more rewarding, too. Certainly he is worth any journey—by mule, by foot, by plane, by rubber raft…. and so we will track down, trip-up, seduce, fall upon, or fall down in front of, now, the very greatest man of all.

  Lately the greatest man of all has been kept so hidden that it has been necessary for us to find ways of confirming his existence. Chances are he is still alive and well. We have seen pictures of him through a windshield as he sat in his limousine, once on TV through a telephoto lens, we have seen a huge dark, and fully clothed figure striking poses on the beach.

  But our most recent researches have shown that, though no one will admit it, the great man has disappeared. Even the other great men don’t know where he has gone. That a man of such magnificent size and with such a voice-of such a temperament…. How could such a man quietly vanish?

  There is an important clue to his possible whereabouts. The great man had been known to say on numerous occasions that he wanted to find a warm valley or the breezy top of a mountain or that he wanted to recover from a long illness and be nursed back to health by strangers; that he wanted to wake up with total amnesia, wanted to parachute from and plane into a jungle or be washed up on a foreign sore. In short, wanted to rise up new and fresh without all the old bad habits, the old tics and grimaces. And who among us, man or woman, hasn’t wished the same?

  Now we must put ourselves in that same position: strike out blindly into forests, crashland on islands, be washed up on some shore or other.

  Except we must be wary. There will be impostors, many men may .be almost as large as the great man himself, and wear the same rumpled brown suits; brutal and morose, sad and selfish…. We must not inadvertently fall in love with some slightly lesser version of the man.

  Of course the question that comes instantly to mind is: will we be able to be happy with a man of this sort? But we never expected the great to be easy to live with. We know the great are selfish (how could they have became so great without that?) and we’re willing to put up with it. In fact we have been trained for this from the beginning, taught to put up with almost anything for the other advantages, but mainly that our love will have found an object worthy of it.

  We have a dossier with several photographs of the greatest man of all at several different stages of his live, and we have a list of moles, scars, tics and mannerisms. After having studies this dossier, I was in love with the greatest man already. Also with, his moles, scars, tics, etc., even (or especially) in love with this faults (the crooked teeth, for instance) are “adorable” to me.

  But years must pass until I find myself at this age I am right now, no longer beautiful (if ever) but in a different kind of prime than just good looks: a wiry, rugged, thin, and sunburned prime. I have returned again and again to and through towns, cities, forests, islands… until at last I come upon another teeming shore with another symbolic leaky boat pulled up beyond the tide line, another flight of vast stone steps, another avenue with cherry trees in bloom.

  And now, having mounted the steps, not to see the president himself, but to see the man behind the president. Not figuratively speaking, but the man who is standing behind the president right now, here to unveil his most monumental work… he has been, it is clear, in plain sight all the while. Only gone off for a short vacation and come back long ago, no doubt while I was scrambling around on top of some mountain looking for him and didn’t hear about it.

  All my life has been a preparation for this moment, but now, when it comes right down to it, I have no plan or procedure. I haven’t taken time out from the search to get ready for the actual confrontation. What’s more, I stand here improperly dressed, dirty and tired and… unfeminine. What to do? What to say?

  And suddenly the words pour out. “You see me,” I say, “not as I was, but what you’ve made me. If I have sacrificed the best years of my life (and I have) it has been for yo
ur sake. What I am now, nothing but skin and bone and muscle, is all your fault.

  But can it be that we are already quarreling, or about to, (depending on what he will say)? Perhaps I should try to stop talking if only for a moment.

  I have a view of his crotch from here, where I stand below him on the steps. The thighs are huge. The brown pants sag, especially just there at the center. It is the crotch at eye level that I have been speaking to. I do not dare speak to the eyes. When I look at them see that he is a failure, or at least he thinks so. And these steps. They are not the steps of the capitol building and not even those of the cultural center, but other, lesser steps, though almost as long.

  I have no sympathy for him. After all, if he is a failure, then I, too, have failed.

  But then, before I can stop myself, I’m back on the former topic, as though instead of love. “You must do something for me, I say, “because I have been deeply wronged by you already:’ (How can we get better acquainted if I keep reiterating this complaint?)

  But how not speak out? This man could have changed my life any time he wanted to, simply by coming into view. Why has he kept himself away until he, too, has grown old? Still, I’m too tired to care. I, like all except a very few women, will make do with what’s at hand and when it is at hand.

  For want of a better idea, then, and partially in order to stop the flow of my own words, I fall at his feet. I hope into a small and desirable bundle.

  He comes, with a fat man’s daintiness, down the next few steps. Lifts me up. He limps, he shuffles, with me in his soft, fat arms, on down and out to the beach not far beyond. I’m thinking: How about if we both drift out in a boat with no oars? How about the two of us washed up on some shore? How about both of us with amnesia or high fevers found by natives of a lovely valley or of another planet? But let him take me where he will, I’m tired of thinking for myself.

  (I’m thinking he knows what I know-that he has finally met the woman meant for him-because, in his eyes, the lost dog look.)

  But he’s carrying me on past the boat. “No, no,” I says. ‘The boat. Put me in the boat.” He turns around, a glimmer of hope on his face and starts to put me in it. “Silly man;’ I say, “push off first,” and he puts me down and does, the surf washing at his pant legs. Then he puts me in and seems to think to turn me loose in the waves alone, but I won’t let go. I have a good grip on his lapel with one hand and on his beard with the other. He struggles. He’s leaning on the gunnels and I’m too near the edge myself. The boat teeters sideways and then goes over, hitting him on the head and knocking us both into the waves.

  I rescue him. Large as he is, I pull him up on shore. (It’s a good thing I’ve had all these years of hardships to tone my muscles.) I lie down beside him, in my rightful place at last. If I’m lucky, maybe when he comes-to, he will not remember anything. Here, in each other’s arms, we’ll have a new beginning. Perhaps this is our foreign shore already. I hope so.

  “I forgive you,” is whisper in his ear. “I forgive you everything that’s happened so far.”

  Verging on the Pertinent, Coffee House Press, 1989

  What Every Woman Knows

  WE ALL remember when we first became vaguely aware of them and their sex organs and began to think about them. Later there were those long, long talks about them during which we rated each of them on a scale of one to one hundred; classified them, grouped them, compared them with each other; measured their breasts, waists, hips with our eyes and our fingertips just as we have measured our own penises against those of our fellows. Sometimes, giggling, we entertained each other with a song and dance not unlike what they might do. Still later we began to write words and music about them (their looks and our exploits in relation to them).

  There are many things that we enjoy about them, not the least of which is that the smallest of us can generally find one among them even smaller. Still, we have mixed feelings about them, and sometimes hurt pride, though that never shows in our talk.

  We’ve protested against them and we’ve made laws and a great many rules but they have broken them, sometimes when we least expected it.

  Until lately we’ve kept them out of our domains, preferring that they should live in hinterlands and side streets, outlying districts where we’ve tried to make them as comfortable as possible according to their own special nature. We left them to their own devices there, hoping they would leave us to ours.

  We crossed the river daily.

  When we brought them with us we pointed out the sights.

  Until lately we protected them.

  Until lately we have loved some of them, those with the best figures and features and especially those with long, blond hair.

  Until lately we have lived quite harmoniously with them.

  We have kept from laughing.

  We have tried to be serious about their sex organs.

  But now that we have already probed space and sent our engines to the ocean floor, now that we have climbed all the highest mountains worth climbing, and having cracked the atom and the DNA code, we are at the last frontier. Needless to say, we will be discreet. We will blend into the background as much as possible, and rather than be caught looking at their bodies, we are setting up blinds on the edges of town and are keeping our eyes open for chinks in the walls.

  Our knowledge is spotty. We have only ourselves to judge by; still, we can sometimes make well-informed guesses. Much is clearly empirical. We know, for instance, that the right breast is the larger by two to three cc’s. We know the nipples rise. We know the vulva vibrates of its own accord after the fashion of electric currents passing through mechanical equipment. Sometimes it makes a weird, wet sound like the sound of a kiss. We know it has teeth, but that they are not visible to the naive eye. In virgins the teeth are small and white and soon fall out, after which the larger, yellow teeth grow. We now have available to us a special, protective sheath which may be bent or gouged, perhaps, but never cut in two.

  We know there are seven fully documented cases of the female rape of males.

  Once upon a time the women lived in small, food-gathering groups. They slept wrapped in their hair, huddled against their brothers and sisters, babies at their breasts, and they planned their days one at a time. There was no other way. It was in that period that we worshipped them and took their bodies as the norm. We took their names and they took our fatherhood and thanked us for it, taking appropriate action to ensure conception. Even then they had not only secret ceremonials and drugs that could make you feel like flying, but secret implements of implantation and secret ways to satisfy their needs. For four days of every moon they slept in menstrual huts or soured milk at home. The cheese spoiled. The butter wouldn’t churn. Their sexual desires waxed and waned according to their cycles while we, not knowing any better, left at their most desirous times and were out hunting bears or lions or off on ships, depending on our geographical location. Later they developed that very modern organ, the clitoris, and could satisfy each other in an entirely different way.

  Does a cat have a clitoris? And if so, why? Horses? Cows? Lizards? Birds? Where is the dividing line between those who have and those who don’t? (Fish don’t.) And what of the clitellum and the cloaca? What pleasurable feelings are associated with them? And if ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, and if there are pleasurable cloacal feelings, then is that a final proof of the vaginal orgasm?

  But we believe woman can be explained. Attitudes, for instance, and motivations. Allowed caresses. Sights and sounds inimicable to. Newly discovered erogenous zones (those found in the last year or so). (Remember their main purpose in life may be yourselves… as individuals or in small groups of three or four.) What, then, is their basic method of procedure? Note the carefully plotted floor plans of efficiency kitchens where the steps are counted from sink to dishwasher, from refrigerator to stove…

  A WARNING

  Though a woman’s body can be considered a useful instrument to be played upon (a) by biologic
al forces in the service of the race in general and (b) by the male human animal in particular; this seldom permits any latitude for creative expression on the part of either partner. And what if the particular woman in question should happen to be a person of wide social experience with an academic background and opinions and convictions of her own (as many of them are)? In that case she should be treated accordingly and we ourselves should be the first to grant it. To a cultured person, then, a woman is neither static (stalled) nor quiescent, but an impulsively moving target, animated by concepts and circumstances beyond our wildest hopes and fears. Hardly anything is to be considered impossible.

  But

  “Many women otherwise normal and mature are seized with a painful longing…”

  —Helene Deutsch

  We believe that they have tricked themselves. They are outliving their usefulnesses. Though they continually deny it, they have lost the sense of the proper time and place. Nowadays, even on their special days of the month, they try to act like the rest of us, as though nothing were happening to them. They have lost their names and blame others for it and because of it they cannot tell who their real sisters are nor what land they came from.

  God is a man.

  So are lions and foxes, zebras, tigers, sharks, all dogs and all wolves… male. On the other hand, cows, cats, pigeons are “female.” Whales, chickens (birds of all kinds except the stork), ground hogs, mice, deer, little monkeys-all female, and also (and declaring them incompetent) otters, beavers, spiders, ocelots and manatees.

  This is how it should be.

  The sun is male. Let it shine on the vulva for a full eight hours sometime during the summer solstice and a woman will conceive the sun’s child. It will be a boy of incredible blondness and beauty. If the woman is black, the boy will have red hair and also be of(in this case a dark) incredible beauty.