Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel (17 page)

Would that not be an altogether new race of sports? Don’t answer. Hear me out.

I stood there on my ledge, pretty much between of things as it was, and considered what to do next, meanwhile accustoming myself to the aches of surface intimacy. Remember that until very recently I had lived as a creature of suspension, vibrationally inclined toward this or that surface or person but formally never touching any. By the very nature of Our being, we are thus exempted from having to know
where
we are; there’s no need for it. On Here, the surface-intimacy ache performs a very necessary frictional function, as can be seen by watching any a one of you fidget. It keeps people in a constant state of conclusion.

In other words, the ledge was hard, the air buffety, and the rain which minutes before had been like silver sunshine to my outline—was now rain. Also there was my temperature, now much exhilarated, and even, it seemed to me,
ready
—for what actions I hadn’t the slightest. The multiple sensation of all this is best described for you as a sneeze with no place to go; in fact I recall worrying whether there mightn’t be future danger of developing rather enormous feelings too far in advance of the body mechanisms necessary to vent them. A constant trouble of adult intelligences getting themselves born again—or however you want to term it—is that so many of their early fears are later authenticated. But back to my ledge.

Below, the air, though clearing, was also darkening; it must have been what is here called both closing time and opening time, and all along the street there were black rounds bobbing by in singles and pairs, and sometimes spatterdash or all of a muggle, like the raindrops themselves. It was positively fascinating to watch, and for me of course, uncannily Outside-ish, which is the way with Us when for whatever reason—and indeed there are not many—a One gets out of rhythm with his groove and is put to One side until he recovers it. Because of this—and included in it a positive sadness for the
older
sadness—I didn’t watch for too long. My impatience to get back to Bucks was now uneasily confused with my impatience to get down—down there, to where the people were. Apropos of this (and of the cheaply eternal jokes on the errors of identity likely to be made at first crack by visitors from elsewhere), I was never under any misapprehension that
umbrellas
were people. There’s no denying that, on the staircase of matter-to-energy transmutation, your metamorphic stage is rather low. But certainly no a One in his right Opinion would ever confuse you with any of your artifacts. I rather think you must have no idea of just how strange you are.

Just then, my character gave a modest instance of itself, reminding me that I should never find out the amount of my weightfulness here until I practiced it. No sooner said than done. My temperament, evidently a strong one, made little distinction between the practical and the unavoidable. I decided to jump-fall. Rather fearfully, I let myself go, softly concentrating on no other destination beyond “I-down.” I found that I could slide gently down the span of that thought, approximately in whichever direction I pointed it. Tentative as I was, the process took quite a while, during which I had time to reflect. Since I still felt no sense of direction in the smaller sense—that is, Yours—it was possible that maps and compass points of the sort I had seen in the photostat animal books were a universal need here, for the convenient portage of which you yourselves,
vide
those books also, no doubt would have long since developed pouches in your persons. It struck me that I might already have done so myself.

I immediately attempted an all-over inspection of my outline, but found myself in an odd difficulty; since the last time I had done this, my vision, with woeful inefficiency, seemed to have reconcentrated itself in my upper end. There was no longer any use in trying to see myself whole, but by a number of anglings which may have looked rather flirtatious from below, I managed to check, finding, so far, no violations. But just before I came to rest—about two feet above the pavement, against the rosy panes of a sweetshop—a question, a monster question which to date had never unfolded itself during the entire course of my adventure, now did so. You on Here may be better able to meet this particular question since, no matter what you think of Yourselves, you have had to get used to alternatives in every direction. But fancy a world which believes itself unexcelled except by those beings beyond the Beyond who may have achieved total circularity—in which case it won’t matter. Fancy a world of creatures so at One in every pore and constituent that the very word “stranger” is expressed as “another a One like me, only grayer.” Fancy, in other words, a world of creatures who swarm like bees toward their own beauty. For these, even to frame such a question was an impertinence. But, nevertheless, what were You going to think—of Me?

It was now fairly dark, just before the lamps were lit, and nobody was passing. I hugged the pane, against whose rosiness, effected by glassine paper lining, I had perhaps even been attracted, as butterflies are to their own blend. Butterflies were diurnal; where did they go of an evening? Where does a truant One go when it has run away from its glass house? Yes, deny it as I would, I could see there were potholes in the firmest character. For I wanted to hide.

I found that facing my vision inward toward the window was a help; since I couldn’t see them, perhaps they wouldn’t see me. Perhaps this was even the rule here. I concentrated on the window and its contents. At this time, as you will recall, I could already read your finer print, and in addition to the instant way in which We could already compute languages generally, for Here-purposes I had been teacher-grounded in two of your principal ones. When I say “compute” you must take this literally. This is another great divergence between Ours and Yours which no doubt is already clear to you. Consider. Among creatures already so used to appendages as You, the development of pseudo ones, or machines, was predictable. But where any talent or performance of value is attainable, We would never think of letting out to an appendage what with a little more fiddling could be embodied directly in Ourselves. And so we have done. Learn how to fly a hoodinkus—and perhaps to fall with it? Run a byjiggerby—and perhaps have to run after it? Master the controls of a thingamagooly, and one day find ourselves—? What shortsightedness! We do all these things in our Own.

And as I gazed hunchily into that window, I saw to my delight that the piles of stuff there were dotted with little lettered flags. At the same moment,
Candy
ticked up in me, in response to the substance I saw there, then, “Revise: American for: Revise:
Sweets.
” Any comprattler can do this. And it was going to be more than useful fun to be able to tick “Umbrella” when confronted with one, though this is as far as it goes. Spell and parse we can, and poet too. Sometimes, since we
are
beings, we have been known to produce responses we haven’t even been set for. But we know better than to confuse words with meanings; consider your pronouns. But, as real communication, all written language is dead for us, to those of our vibrational Order a mere playing of harpsichords. But some of us still took pride in the performance of the obsolete, which is what so often happens to anything turned over to the machine.

“S-sreets!” I murmured to myself dutifully. Spoken language we of course hadn’t had in the memory of any a One. The voiced labials, though troublesome to produce from within, can be practiced very successfully. Diphthongs pose no problem, if long enough to bend. My real difficulty is a slight but constant curvature of the vowels.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t an idea what the stuff in the window was for—that sort of thing is a
concept.
(And
that’s
computation for you.) But the signs, in all their pretty, pointed Gothic, and each attached to a heap of counters of a unique cabalistic design, enchanted me. I am one of those antiquated a Ones who cannot pass up anything in print. I read them out, voicing very slowly, but I thought correctly:
FIZZER FRUIT: NUTTIE CRISP: TREACLE TOFFEE: SHERBET BON-BON: RASPBERRY FUZZLE.

Directional signals? Then why these paper twists of color, whorls of ribanded red and white, alongside? Gaming counters were a possibility; as Ones of a total economy, we ourselves were pushingly fond of a small risk. I studied a jolly neat little pile of beige and brown strips combined with near-circle bits inside which ever smaller concentrics narrowed to nucleoles of white—meanwhile pleased to find that my enthusiasm kept me at a convenient levitation of some fourteen inches from the ground, and that, with slackened winds, my pink was fading, making me less visible than before. Plumb center of the window, the largest placard said in plain Roman:
LICORICE
. Quote on the tick, there came without warning, “Lickerish: lecherous. Ex.:
Lickerish bait, fit to ensnare a brute.
”

“Silence!” I said to it. “Who asked you!” But the monkey had already quoted, as a matter of fact from a part of that dear book of yours, my first one here. Milton: John. I stared, unbelieving. The signs, admittedly incomprehensible, then were street lingo, or perhaps even those scabrous rhymed ditties sometimes fancied by our postcard types. From far down the street, there were now sounds coming on toward me, but these scarcely registered, for I had caught sight of a mound at the back in which the pieces were darkish mauve and heart-shaped—and then it was plain. Some in other piles were greenly luminous, yet others brownishly studded, and it was these exotics which had put me off, but here and there, as with the heart-shapes, I recognized shameful old dream inhabitants I knew. What a hiding spot I had chosen! In the public street, these replicas. Good God then, this was pornography.

Shortly, of course, I came to my sin-senses; it was a miracle that I hadn’t confused worlds before. The licorice was actually of help, its short-long strips so suggestive of what transcribed-sonic looks like on tape. From then it was but a jump to my own earliest communication lessons here, and then to the real if rather more boring significance of that bow window, those chromatic little models, so kindergarten neat, those strict little pedagogue flags. Of course, of course. It was a demonstration-translation—perhaps even arranged in Our honor—and very nicely done too. Gradually, my violent all-over flush of complexion, worse even than the winds had brought, subsided. What polyphonies of transfused meanings were possible here!—though I fancied I caught some miscalculations of interval. But once one had the clue, the whole business fell into line. It was merely some bit of theory, qualitatively illustrated, as they could do so well here. It was a symbol-signal lesson. Of course. Color-count-read.

Again, what
politesse,
perhaps to the foreigner, perhaps only to the primitives on its own streets of Here—but all it did was make me feel homesick in a curiously compound way. Homesickness is of course to feel both Here and There and to feel bad about it, and since I was truant from both it is no wonder that mine was of a certain complexity. As is my wont, I tried to find a compound word for it. I was alone on a dark street, in a dark town, on a dark world—compared to mine. I was lone-billions away, and touchless. Voices coming nearer failed to disturb my grim reverie. I was Out of touch and To blame. That’s where I was, and I had the name for my feeling. I was suffering from uniquity, which means to be alone and bad. The best cure for it is a bit of friendly conversation.

Round the corner came a flying wedge of it.

Remember that I was from a world without corners. To this day, I remember the exhilaration of it, my first brush, in a flare of voices and steaming mackintoshes, with a company of Youse. To shouts of “B’lloon!” I was pushed one way; with answering cries of “Blimp!” and “Where’s its ruddy gondola?” I was pushed another. I saw nothing; because of some ancient danger response I hadn’t known to be in me, all my pores had set closed. I gave myself up to the rocking motion with which I was being passed about, in what seemed to me a roughly circular path and an envelope of smell, as I was sent from spice-grubby being to being, and all this was not unpleasant—perhaps the tossing thrill that cat gives mouse is reciprocal. And though I knew deep within me that I ought to be up and away, each touch added to my weightfulness—is this the trap here? And my pores remained closed. I remember it all, that blind game of battledore and touch-me which showed me the weakness of sleep dreams as against waking ones. To evoke it all I have only to whisper the talisman: “Round the corner You came.”

Suddenly there came a noise from the shop, and a lighter voice, one of them emerging. “Boys, boys! Stop that; you’ll break Mrs. Porter’s window.” It was a voice nothing like my mentor’s, who had as oval a voice as ever turned space into music, but it was certainly somewhere in the same category. “I’ve ’alf a mind,” it said. It was as if a voice like Hers had been left out in the rain a bit. And alongside it, a smaller voice said, “Oo mums, whatever is it! Oo mums, is it an advert?”

I felt myself to be against the windowpane, blushing in my blind darkness for all words ending with that syllable. Whoever were the Boys, they had let me go. Then, to my surprise, the larger voice said, “Do b’lieve she’s right, and is it ever
lovely!
”

These words, said so tenderly, warm-cooled me to a tremble. Whatever I was to them here, I was approved. I felt an internal moisture. The pores of my dark began to reopen. “Just with your pinkie now, love,” the voice continued. “You boys stand back and give ’er a try. Ever so gently now, ducks. Turn it around, do, and we’ll have a look at what it’s selling.”

As yet, I hadn’t met up with your concept of sell-buy, our basic precept being: A One is a Has, or translated: I Have what I Am. But now, trembling, I felt for the first time a soft meeting of flesh and flesh, a meeting fully half of which is the shivering toward it. One stroke barely grazed me, the next tapped. And when I did not move, the next—pushed. Indescribable. As it left me and I sensed it returning, all I meant to do was to lean toward it. All within me, of past and future history, did that. And being familiar with the former, you’ll have guessed what was bound to happen.