The Nagle and I grabbed for our luggage. We both had red faces, flamed by the moment of truth.
“Nagle,” I said, “I feel sorry for you. You will soon stand chin deep in snow and discover at the moment of triumph that you have carried a fryer to practically the North Pole.”
“Really, Harold. Do you plan to hit me?”
“No violence from me,” I said. “The violence is done.”
Le Granf found a spot, a clearing in the woods. Clarette settled into it as if it were a four poster, a remarkable landing, one-point.
The deal with Le Granf was for him to wait.
The Nagle’s egg was as ready as the Glak’s. Neither of us anticipated more than a few minutes. Outside in the absolute cold, the Nagle and I wrapped scarves around our faces. We lugged our burdens toward a place near trees.
“This is it,” I said.
Like duelists, we stood back to back. We bent to our bags. Out came the Glak egg, hopping to my hands. It was hot as a muffin. More fissures lined the shell and more showed all the time. The egg was more like a web.
Le Granf stood near the plane out of decency. He could see how serious we were and hummed the wedding march.
The egg broke in my hands.
I was holding a blinking, stringy thing with stubs for wings and fat.
“Hi, Glak,” I said.
“Hi, Glak,” the Nagle said to his chicken.
You would think my warm hands and the furnace of my affection would have meaning to a Glak barely sixty seconds old. No. Already, it strained for escape, looking at me as if I were a Nazi.
I put it gently on the frozen turf. It did what it was supposed to. It waddled, fell, slipped, staggered, stopped, stretched and said glak in a raucous manner.
Cheep, said the Nagle’s chicken, and he said, “Did you hear that?”
I paid him no attention. My Glak, the Glak I should say, was examining the world. It took a step toward the forest, but hesitated.
“Come here, Glak,” I said to the wasteland.
Glak. Cheep.
The Glak did not come back. It took a baby step toward the woods, then another.
I moved after it, but stopped. There, in the land of stones, I heard Elsie Moonish’s dictum on love without possession, the act without the owning.
I without Glak, Glak without me. We were both our own men. Poor Glak. Already it speared looks here and there in a jerky search for its own kind. Were there any others?
Would it find them? Did we do this frazzled thing a favor or the worst injustice?
“Goodbye, my Glak,” the Nagle was saying. His chicken had taken a stroll, too. The Nagle began snapping pictures of it for the record. I had no use for the record, and Hikhoff had written nothing of Polaroids.
“Glak,” said my Glak, more raucous than before. And there it was, Hikhoff’s croak, pre-vowel shift as they come.
The Nagle snapped away at his impostor, a yellow tuft.
Then the newborns met. The Glak and the chicken felt each other out, shrugged, shivered, took a look at Labrador and walked off together into the primeval forest.
“A Glak and a chicken,” I said to the Nagle, who rolled film. “Some team. Chickens, at least, are not extinct. Glaks do not yield their drumsticks so willingly. Maybe hope blooms here in the snow.”
Off went the birds. What could I say? Could I give wisdom? Could I say, “Call Fridays?” Could I say, “Read The Snow Goose by Gallico and drop in to show gratitude on Christmas?” There was nothing I could say. With a bird, just-bom is the equivalent of a human adolescent. There is a definite loss of communication.
“Come on, crazies,” said Le Granf. “Clarette is oozing oil.”
Polite at the end, the Nagle and I offered firsts at the door. We were subdued. Le Granf started his rubber band motor.
“Wait,” I said, climbing out, running back to the nursery where two shells lay open like broken worlds.
“Moron. Come on,” said Le Granf.
I put my Hikhoff on the ground, facing the trees.
At Goose Bay I said to Le Granf, “Monsieur, you are a reindeer’s udder.” Nothing.
I said, “Sir, you are an abortion.” Puzzlement.
I said, “Pierre, your missing arm should goose the devil.” Double take.
I said, “Laval, you are a lousy pilot with a greasy plane.” He hit me on the head. I hated to use Le Granf that way, but I needed the jolt. I felt better, much better, purged. It was the Nagle who picked me up.
“Nagle, what do you plan to do now?” I said. “Myself, I plan to go some place where a pineapple can grow. Someplace where the sun is the size of a dinner plate. I am going to get salt water in my mouth.”
Still reeling, I thought, who needs me most?
E. MOONISH SYRACUSE, NEW YORK OFFER PLUS-PLUS
IN SALUBRIOUS CLIMATE STOP ALL EXPENSES STOP
PLENTY HONEY STOP PLEASE REPLY COLLECT STOP LOVE
STOP HAROLD NORTH
After cabling, I went with the Nagle for a drink. While the drinks were being brewed, I excused myself, left for the john and read FINALLY under an open bulb.
Dear Harold,
Bless you and keep you. Also, thank you. Harold, enclosed is a check for $1000. Write poems. Also, here is my recipe for a grand roast Glak:
Take Glak, place in pan, cover with butter and garlic salt. Add paprika, and pepper. Line pan with roasting potatoes and tender onions. Place in preheated range 450 degrees. Cook 30 minutes per pound. Serve hot. Suggest lively Gumpolskierchner ‘59 for a sparkle.
Best regards.
David Hikhoff
“It was delicious, delicious,” I yelled to Hikhoff. “Boy, you have some weird sense of humor.”
Hikhoff, roller of RRR’s, chamber of guts, juggler of opposites, galloping ghost, A.E.I.O.U. now sleep well.
So it was that I entered my puerperium, which is gynecological for the time of recovery after delivering, the time of post-partum elation. Of life after birth.
Mike Resnick is such a jolly, pleasant, unassuming soul that it’s almost difficult to think of him as a writer. Even the way he puts his name on his books, the simple and prosaic “Mike Resnick” instead of“Michael Q.L. Resnick, Esq.” or some such goes a ways toward showing what kind of man, and writer, he is. Upon meeting him one searches in vain for the signs of torment, of a diseased childhood or fractured sensibility that one tends to associate with successful authors.
Clearly this is someone wholly content with life, whose daily work is a litany of bliss and ease, devoid of worries, fears, or concerns. Except for one thing. Mike Resnick is a writer, and as such is prey to all the torments and terrors and horrors that travel hand in hand with that agonizing, miserable, misbegotten profession. It’s just that on Mike it doesn’t show as much as it does on some others.
But it’s all still there. Even in passing, as in …
Beibermann’s Soul
MIKE RESNICK
When Beibermann woke up on Wednesday morning, he discovered that his soul was missing.
“This can’t be,” he muttered to himself. “1 know I had it with me when I went to bed last night.”
He thoroughly searched his bedroom and his closet and his office, and even checked the kitchen (just in case he had left it there when he got up around midnight for a peanut butter sandwich), but it was nowhere to be found.
He questioned Mrs. Beibermann about it, but she was certain it had come back from the cleaner’s the previous day.
“I’m sure it will turn up, wherever it is,” she said cheerfully.
“But I need it now,” he protested. “I am a literary artist, and what good is an artist without a soul?”
“I’ve always thought that some of the most successful writers we know had no souls,” offered Mrs. Beibermann, thinking of a number of her husband’s colleagues.
“Well, I need it,” he said adamantly. “I mean, it’s all very well to remove it when one is taking a shower or working in the garden, but I absolutely
must have it before I can sit down to work.”
So he continued searching for it. He went up to the attic and looked for it amid a lifetime’s accumulation of memorabilia. He took his flashlight down to the basement and hunted through a thicket of broken chairs and sofas that he planned someday to give to the Salvation Army. Then, just to be on the safe side, he called the restaurant where he and his agent had eaten the previous evening to see if he had inadvertently left it there. But by midday he was forced to admit that it was indeed lost, or at the very least thoroughly misplaced.
“I can’t wait any longer,” he told his wife. “It’s not as if I am a best-selling author. I have deadlines to meet and bills to pay. I must sit down to work.”
“Shall I place a notice in the classified section of the paper?” she asked. “We could offer a reward.”
“Yes,” he said. “And report it to the police as well. They must stumble across lost and mislaid souls all the time.” He walked to his office door, turned to his wife, and sighed dramatically. “In the meantime, I suppose I'll have to try to do without it.”
So he closed the office door, sat down, and began to work. Ideas (though not entirely his own) flowed freely, concepts (slightly tarnished but still workable) easily manifested themselves, characters (neatly labeled and ready to perform) popped up as he needed them. In fact, the ease with which he achieved his day’s quota of neatly typed pages surprised him, although he had the distinct feeling that there was something missing. some element that could be supplied only by his misplaced soul.
Still, he decided, staring at what he had thus far accomplished, a lifetime’s mastery of technique could hide a lot of faults. So he did a little of this, and a little of that, made a correction here, inserted some literary pyrotechnics there. He imbued it with a certain fashionable eroticism to impress his audience and a certain trendy obtuseness to bedazzle the critics, and finally he emerged and showed the finished product to his wife.
“I don’t like it,” said Mrs. Beibermann.
“I thought it was rather good,” said Beibermann petulantly.
“It is rather good,” she agreed. “But you never settled for rather good before.”
Beibermann shrugged. “It’s got a lot of style to it,” he said. “Maybe no one else will see what’s missing.”
And indeed, no one else did see what was missing. His agent loved it, his public loved it, and most of all, his editor loved it. Beibermann deposited an enormous check in his bank account and went back to work.
“But what about your soul?” asked his wife.
“Oh, make sure the police are still looking for it, by all means,” replied Beibermann. “But in the meantime, we must eat—and technique is not, after all, to be despised.”
His next three projects brought higher advances and still more critical acclaim. By now he had also created a public persona—articulate, worldly, with just a hint of the sadness of one who had suffered too much for his Art—and while he still missed his soul, he had to admit that his new situation in the world was not at all unpleasant.
“We have enough money now,” announced his wife one day. “Why don’t we take a vacation? Surely your soul will be found by then—and even if it isn’t, perhaps we can get you a new one. I understand they can make one up in three days in Hong Kong.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said irritably. “My work is more popular than ever, I’m finally making good money, this is hardly the time for a vacation, and weren’t you a lot thinner when I married you?”
He began sporting a goatee and a hairpiece after his next sale, and started working out in the neighborhood gymnasium, so that he wouldn’t feel awkward and embarrassed when sweet young things accosted him for autographs at literary luncheons. He borrowed a number of surefire jokes and snappy comebacks and made the circuit of the television talk shows, and even began work on his autobiography, changing only those facts that seemed dull or mundane.
And then, on a cold winter’s morning, a police detective knocked at his front door.
“Yes?” said Beibermann, puffing a Turkish cigarette through a golden holder, and eyeing him suspiciously.
The detective pulled out a worn, tattered soul and held it up.
“This just turned up in a pawnshop in Jersey,” said the detective. “We have every reason to believe that it might be yours.”
“Let me just step into the bathroom and try it on,” said Beibermann, taking it from him.
Beibermann walked to the bathroom and locked the door behind him. Then he carefully unfolded the soul, smoothing it out here and there, and trying not to wince at its sony condition. He did not try it on, however—it was quite dirty and shopworn, and there was no way to know who had been wearing it. Instead, he began examining it thoroughly, looking for telltale signs—a crease here, a worn spot there, most of them left over from his college days—and came to the inescapable conclusion that he was, indeed, holding his own soul.
For a moment his elation knew no bounds. Now, at last, he could go back to producing works of true Art.
Then he stared at himself in the mirror. He’d have to go back to living on a budget again, and of course there’d be no more spare time, for he was a meticulous craftsman when he toiled in the service of his art. Beibermann frowned. The innocent young things would seek someone else’s autograph, the television hosts would flock to a new best-seller, and the only literary luncheon he would attend would be for some other author.
He continued staring at the New Improved Beibermann, admiring the well-trimmed goatee, the satin ascot, the tweed smoking jacket, the world-weary gaze from beneath half-lowered eyelids. Then, sighing deeply, he unlocked the door and walked back to the foyer.
“l’m sorry,” he said as he handed the neatly folded soul back to the detective, “but this isn’t mine.”
“I apologize for taking up the valuable time of a world-famous man like yourself, sir,” said the detective. “I could have sworn this was it.”
Beibermann shook his head. MI’m afraid not.”
“Well, we’ll keep plugging away, sir.”
“By all means, officer,” said Beibermann. He lowered his voice confidentially. “I trust that you’ll be very discreet, though; it wouldn’t do for certain critics to discover that my soul was missing.” He passed a fifty dollar bill to the detective.
“I quite understand, sir,” said the detective, grabbing the bill and stuffing it into a pocket of his trenchcoat. “You can depend on me.”
Beibermann smiled a winning smile. “I knew I could, officer.”
Then he returned to his office and went back to work.
*
He had been dead and buried for seven years before anyone suggested that his work lacked some intangible factor. A few revisionist critics agreed, but nobody could pinpoint what was missing.
Mrs. Beibermann could have told them, of course—but she had taken an around-the-world cruise when Beibermann left her for the second of his seven wives, met and married a banker who was far too busy to discuss Art, and spent the rest of her life raising orchids, avoiding writers, and redecorating her house.
There was a time when our civilization wasn’t sensitive to the point of implosion. When people used words now shunned in polite society. When human beings with incapacitating injuries were referred to as crippled instead of physically handicapped or deaf rather than hearing impaired. When Raymond Chandler employed such terms heads dropped closer to print, as if expecting to find the solution to confusion and mystery buried deep within the smudged letters themselves. When Damon Runyon used them readers threw back their heads and laughed. Same terms, different reactions. Words with power, with effect, with guts.
Now all we get are polite euphemisms, usually delivered with an aggravatingly smarmy sense of superiority. Perhaps some sensibilities are now spared that would otherwise be bruised, but there is also honesty in pain. Ted Cogswell was not a prolific writer, or a best-selling one, but he was honest, bless ’im. And honesty
there is aplenty in …
Thimgs
THEODORE R. COGSWELL
… And the ground was frozen solid. It took them two hours before they reached Hawkins’ coffin.
“ ‘See, ’ grunted the coroner as he threw back the lid, ‘he’s still there. I told you you were seeing things.’
I’ve got to be sure,” said Van Dusen thickly, and grabbing a smoking lantern from beside the grave, he thrust it down into the open casket.
“A shrill scream tore through the night air and he slumped over—-dead! Instead of the heavy features of the man he had killed, Reginald Van Dusen saw HIMSELF!”
There was a sudden ripple of discordant music from the loud-speaker and then the unctuous voice of The Ghoul broke in.
“The coroner called it suicide. And in a way I suppose it was …” His voice trailed off in a throaty chuckle. “The moral? Only this, dear friends, if you should ever be walking through a strange part of town and come upon a little shop you never saw before, especially a little shop with a sign in the window that says shottle bop, we sell thrings, or something equally ridiculous, remember the case of the cluttered coffin and run, don’t walk, to the nearest morgue. HA HA HA HA HA.”
As the maniacal laughter trailed away, the background music surged up and then skittered out of hearing to make way for the announcer. He only managed to get three words out before Albert Blotz, owner, manager, and sole agent of World Wide Investigations, reached over and turned off the little radio that stood on the window sill beside his desk.
“Boy,” he said, “that was really something. Eh, Janie?”
The little crippled girl behind the typist’s desk at the other side of the dingy office looked up.
“What?”
“The program. Wasn’t k something?”
“Beats me,” she said. “1 wasn’t listening. Somebody has to get some work done around here. ” She pulled a letter out of her correspondence basket and waved it in the air. “What about this Harris letter? It’s been sitting here for a month. After spending the guy’s dough the least you can do is write him an answer.”
Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves Page 9
