The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1

by Carol Emshwiller

  The view from Josephine’s balcony was exciting in a different way. Daytimes the river was full of sailing vessels (some quite large), and skiffs and barges — often library barges full of books, sometimes small boats rowed by several princes such as myself, but in the service of some lesser library. At night the lanterns on the far banks looked as though they were lit up for a festival. It was a view not many princes of the library had been privileged to see. I was grateful for it. In fact I wasn’t sure I wanted an apartment on the eighteenth floor. I just wanted Josephine and that things should stay as they were.

  I wasn’t sure what Josephine wanted. Perhaps she didn’t know herself I often thought she chose me not because of me at all, but because I was a prince and had access to forbidden rooms. Any prince would have done as well. She even told me so to my face, laughing at me, but then she would take it back—say that that was her idea at first, but that it wasn’t anymore-—that she loved me for me. I didn’t know what to believe, but actually I didn’t care, as long as I had the privileges of her balcony and bedroom.

  You might think that I would regret the promises I made to her in our moments of passion, but what else had I to give? She already had everything and she gave so much to me, including the river view, and boats, and lights along the shore. What could I give her but my one and only gift, access to words that we had probably forgotten the meanings of, let alone the pronunciation, access to excesses neither of us could imagine in our wildest conjectures.

  Yet for all this, she was an innocent—in many ways as innocent as she looked. Perhaps her desire to see forbidden documents was out of that same innocence. How could she foresee, being who she was, words that might be dangerous—that might harm?

  It was this innocence that lured me. I especially liked it in her voice. She sang, but not professionally. Her voice wasn’t powerful enough. It was fluty, breathy, young… She never suspected that her voice was too small ever to amount to anything. She was even innocent of the fact that she couldn’t carry a tune and that her rhythms were often off in odd ways. Yet her voice was to my taste. It was all of a piece with her pale beauty. Like her voice, which no one but me thought worth listening to, no one but me thought she was beautiful. Perhaps she could read this in my eyes. Perhaps this was why she picked me.

  Though it was she who tempted me, I knew full well that if the thing were done, I couldn’t blame her for it. And it was I who had sworn the oaths, not she.

  I didn’t rush into it. I asked her, over and over, why anyone would want to see subversive books, least of all she. Didn’t we already have more than enough words? More than enough concepts? More, in fact, than we could handle as it was? More than anyone person could learn about in a lifetime? We already had ideas that ought to be voiced only in the privacy of one’s own home, and we had words for no other purpose than to be said in anger; there were even books that came in plain brown wrappers. Why would anyone want or need even more outrageous ideas than we had?

  “Because they’re there,” she always said. “Because they exist.”

  I told her she shouldn’t be overawed by what she didn’t know. I said she ought to learn to live with a little bit of ignorance. I tickled her toes as I said it so she would think I was just teasing, but I wasn’t. “Might just as well,” I said, “write down wrong words and things not true; so that what is written is lies.” Even as I said it, I felt I had blasphemed.

  Josephine turned away and looked out the window to the far side of the river, squinting. I stopped stroking and tickling her feet and we were silent for a long time.

  We were lying sideways across her hammock, I facing upriver, she, facing down. My boots were on the floor, my cap of honour carefully on top of them. The cap was the pale blue of the library—the honorable blue of honorable words.

  Suddenly we turned to hold each other for comfort, and the holding turned into caresses, and she said (and it wasn’t the first time), “What lewd things do you suppose they have in that safe about how to make love? What evil ways that we can’t even think of?” And we began to think of the ways and to laugh, and then we tried to find the ways: backward, forward, upside down, until we fell out of the hammock (and it wasn’t the first time).

  Afterward Josephine wondered if everything in the safe might be hilarious, but I said that was unlikely.

  At that time I wasn’t sure if I would open the secret safe for her or not. In fact I really thought I wouldn’t. I didn’t want anything to change. I stalled her. I kept questioning her. But then things changed.

  Normally Josephine’s mother never bothered to come down to her daughter’s apartment. Normally Josephine’s mother never bothered with her daughter at all. I wondered about this sometimes, but then I knew that the head librarian had a busy schedule. And then Josephine was a grown-up—in her thirties as I was. Yet I did think that she and her mother might have been friends and talked now and then, but they never did that I knew of But then her mother did come and it was clear that she had come in anger, for she bounded in, slammed the door and shouted for Josephine, whom she called Joe. (Josephine was so unlike a ‘Joe’ that I was almost as shocked by that as I was by what happened afterward.)

  We never did find out what that first anger was about because she was even angrier when she found me there, naked, and her daughter dressed in what was, essentially; nothing but mosquito netting. (We had been, again that day, playing the same game of “What is written in the forbidden safe?”)

  “Not worthy of the word,” she said. “Either of you.” And to Josephine, “Must you pick lovers from the gutter?” I thought she hadn’t noticed my uniform and my cap on my boots beside the couch. “I’m a prince of the library,” I said. “Rats,” she said, “from the cellars. That’s what everybody calls you.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this. We even called ourselves cellar rats sometimes, but I never expected to hear it from the very people who were the bosses of our bosses, people we considered our kings and queens, and for whom we were the princes. Here was one of the very ones who had told us we were princes and should conduct ourselves as such, saying, “Rat, rat, rat…” I was not only shocked by that, but also by the fact that one of the leaders of the library could be so out of control.

  When she could catch her breath, she told Josephine that she might at least have had a smidgen of dignity for the sake of her mother and her mother’s job, and then she turned to me and told me that, if she found me on any floor higher than the first basement, she would have me de-capped and forbidden to wear library blues ever again.

  That I couldn’t be on or above the ground floor meant I had no access to the library books that occupied the first seven floors of the library. We princes had access to all seven floors if we were so inclined, which was more than most citizens had. I had (I realized it right then) not taken advantage of my privileges, and now access to “understanding beyond all understanding” was out of the question to me forever.

  And then there was the fragrance of the library on those days when incense burned in the lower halls! And the soft light from the alabaster lamps! Often I sat among the books, not to read, but to be in the silence and the glow. And I knew I was welcome-that the patrons of the words liked to see the princes come and sit with them. They would smile and call me prince. The library was, in a way, father and mother to me after I had left that distant village in order to come here to be a prince.

  What Josephine’s mother said also meant that I had no access to the elevators that took me up to Josephine’s rooms.

  And how could Josephine’s mother say we were rats to everybody? When I walked the streets I could see that the whole world of words knew we were word-proper men in responsible positions. I was thinking it would serve Josephine’s mother right if her daughter did enter that safe and if she did read whatever there was in there that was the most lewd and the most subversive. I no longer had any desire to save either myself or Josephine from her crazy wishes. In fact I hoped she would be caught
and her mother shamed by it. And yet I did… I really did love Josephine. But I wanted her to share my fate-to be dragged down with me so we would still be together one way or another. I was partly banned and partly cursed, why not both of us completely cursed? Or blessed as the case may be. “Then shall your eyes be opened and ye shall be as Gods.” Our eyes will be opened and we will know what is to be known.

  Josephine’s mother said she would talk to Josephine later—that she had to leave right then because she couldn’t stand the sight of me.

  As I dressed, I told Josephine to meet me in a lower hall the next night… that we would go into the safe. That we might as well do it, and it would have to be now or never.

  She looked frightened, but I thought she was more frightened of her mother than of breaking any forbidden laws. She said she would be there, but I could see the desire for it had left her. It wasn’t a game anymore. I wasn’t sure if she’d be there or not, but I thought that if she was, it would be a sign that she cared about me—that she could be with me without the tickling, and the giggling, and the pretending, and that she could defy her mother for my sake.

  And she was there. She was even early, waiting for me. I couldn’t help but smile—though I was worried about my future, which didn’t look good no matter what happened now. She came into my arms as if she really loved me and we held each other a long time. It wasn’t dangerous for us in those lower corridors. It wasn’t that unusual for princes to bring girlfriends here. There were few places a prince could take someone where they could be alone for a while. We wouldn’t be noticed when other princes came by.

  After we had held each other long enough to soak up comfort and courage, I told her my plan. It wouldn’t be hard if I could be quick with the combination. Things were quite lax, actually. We princes were serious about our guarding, but it had been decades since anyone had tried to get into those safes without authorization. We put in our time, dutifully, but we didn’t expect confrontations. Changing of the guards took place in a front hallway some distance from the safes and the ceremony had, in recent years, evolved into an elaborate rite that we princes felt was worthy of the word and of the library. We liked the pomp of it and so did our bosses. Josephine and I could simply wait in an adjoining hall listening to the clump, clump of the guards until they clumped away for the ceremony.

  But, just as the footsteps faded and Josephine and I were about to make a run for the safe, there was a squeak and grind, and, not three feet from where we were standing, a section of a malachite panel seemed to split and out came the head of the central book committee and hurried to the safe. If he’d looked about anxiously he’d have caught us, but he seemed sure of himself as though he’d done this so often he no longer thought much about it. It took him only a second to open the door. He bypassed all the complicated turnings of the dials and simply pulled a single small lever and the safe opened. He is a bulky man, but graceful for all that, and he slid in sideways and the door shut behind him silently.

  Josephine and I looked at each other as though the world had turned upside down, which, for us, it had. We hesitated only a few moments and then we followed, using the same little lever. The door swung open and we were in. Only when the door closed behind us did we wonder how we would be able to get out of there. As it happened that was taken care of

  It was a large nondescript room and nobody was in it. There were only a few book racks along the walls and these were more than half empty, the books that remained lying helter-skelter on the shelves without dignity. There were several mismatched long tables and a few cast-off chairs, none of them worthy of the library. (We princes had better than these in our barracks.) On the tables there were several books lying as though recently put down. Some were open and turned over, their backs broken. There were even some on the floor, corners bent from having been dropped and pages dog-eared. Neither of us had ever seen books that had been treated this way. Though there was dust everywhere, there were signs of recent use, clean spots and smudged spots. Obviously people read here. We turned to some of the books to see what they were about. What we glanced at didn’t seem to have anything new to us: bondage, rape, sex with animals… We’d heard of these before. But we didn’t want to spend much time with the books. We were too worried about where the head of the book committee might have gone and when he would be coming back. There were no good hiding places in that room.

  We found the secret door by the smeared place along the wall where many dusty hands had worked another lever. You could see, along the floor, that one of the bookcases used to be pulled over to cover it but, obviously; nobody bothered with that anymore. Above this door someone had pencilled rather carelessly the same words that were over the library doors: BEWARE ALL YE WHO ENTER FOR HERE IS UNDERSTANDING BEYOND ALL UNDERSTANDING. Behind the door I thought I could hear the sound of running water and strange cries. Also I thought I heard a horse whinny, and birds, and laughter, and I remembered what Josephine had said about it, maybe, being hilarious, and I felt the prickle of gooseflesh along my arms.

  All through this Josephine and I had kept looking at each other, frightened and awed, not knowing what to think. And now we looked at each other again. She nodded. “We’ve gone so far,” she said, “one more thing won’t make any difference.” I pulled the lever then and as the door opened the sounds came clear. Yes, water, shouting, squeals, but not a single word.

  Inside was a garden… a jungle… fountains, hanging plants, bushes, huge ferns. Great purplish lights overhead, and people all naked, all pawing at each other, making animal sounds and laughing hysterically. Here were the elite of the library—even Josephine’s mother—scorning the word and living out the forbidden secrets of the forbidden safe. There was a horse and a goat. There was a peacock making dreadful squawks, but no more dreadful than the squawks of the people. There were yaps, yowls, howls, caws, caterwaulings, and great ha-has. They, at least, found it hilarious.

  Josephine and I quickly took off our clothes in order that we might hide among the naked bodies. Josephine pulled her hair down to cover her face as much as she could and we stood there, holding hands, knowing that all the words we had learned were lies—that the word was not the word as we understood it—that things were not done according to what was written, or, at least not according to any writing we knew of

  Of course being naked didn’t hide us for long. Josephine’s mother recognized her at once. We were seized and, in a drunken, laughing frenzy, knives were brought out, and hammers, and pliers. All the people looked as though they finally had, in us, what they’d been waiting for and hoping for a long time. I saw Josephine’s mother give the first blow that knocked out her front teeth, screaming at her the only words I heard in that place at all. “Stupid,” she yelled. “Crazy, crazy. You could have been down here any time you wanted if you’d picked a proper lover from the right class of person. You could have been down here with the best of us any night you wanted to, wordless.”

  You might think this was the end of words for Josephine and me, but I have someone who knows my signals, even after all these years, she still knows. My mother reads my eyes and lips, counts taps, knows my gestures. She writes it out and I nod yes or no. Then she will tell.

  And Josephine and I still have each other. Our eyes say all that needs to be said.

  The Start of the End of It All, Mercury House, 1991

  There Is No Evil Angel But Love

  SHE IS eighty-two and in love. Impossible to be in love now, but she is in it. Dried up just there where love takes place, so no more of that for her. Yet she loves. And cries about it. Not cries for any real reason because so far nothing lost. Nothing gained, that is, in order to have lost anything yet. Still she cries, but only a few tears. Hardly enough to bother taking a Kleenex to, though perhaps her tears have also dried up like that other part of her.

  She hasn’t ever really loved until now—at least not that she can remember. But why not? And why never married? Why never had a real life like everybo
dy else has, with husband and children? Or even just one child? Was that too much to ask? Just one man and one child?

  The man—that man she loves now but hasn’t met yet—isn’t as old as she is, yet he’s white-haired. (If she had ever had a son, he would be white-haired by now, too.) He has a sad expression. That’s what made her fall in love. But she doesn’t want to change it—doesn’t want to make him happy. She likes him as he is. Something mysteriously wrong inside him. Secret sorrows. She likes that.

  She knows he drinks too much—or at least too much in her opinion. She sees that every evening, looking out her window and into his window one story below hers and across the street. He comes home tired. She can tell by his walk. And then, inside his apartment, the way he flops onto his ragged old couch and stares into space before he gets up, finally, to turn on his music and make himself a drink. She . knows what the music is even though it’s winter and all the windows are shut. She’s heard it in the summer—Beethoven symphonies for the most part. None of it, except maybe the slow movements, the kind of music you’d think somebody would listen to when tired.