Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel (42 page)

I studied the very stairs she had gone up, as she did daily, in tripping health or at her new lamed glide, and always oblivious, or almost, that every step of my existence here, and the risers too, must have a name as large as a territory, taken from your infinitely stretchable alphabet of them, from
avarice
to
Angst,
to
Zartheit,
to
zest.
I saw the range of them, a Jacob’s ladder only as high and difficult as the thirteen actual and countable steps before me might be for me, but with what stiles and fences, steeplechases and Père Lachaises on the way—and John-a-Baptist pits, and common stubbing stones. In all the languages of your world there was the same little list from
aleph
to
zed—
and none of it was to be had by hearsay.

Then the spasm gripped me for true, for deep, for aye.
Nor was I myself
to be had so. Nor was I.

And now indeed I knew the true nature of that most hurtful nothing-to-say which, through all this fateful night of speeches and shadows and scenes at windows, had grown and grown in me until in this black dark, lit only by me, it bid fair to burst my boundaries also, scattering my rosy diffusion far and wide. For such a state of nothing-to-say is actually the vacuum which at one prick is sucked out, as if by a single gasp-breath, into action. Often this is the way you yourselves are moved to it or make yourselves to move.

And now too there had come upon me that eventuality which early on I had once teased myself with—laughed over, never really dreaded, and at last put by—that I might one day find myself with rather enormous feelings and no mechanism as yet to vent them with; I had jokingly defined this as “a sneeze with no place to go.” Then I had forgotten it. Who after all so dreads the accession of riches that he will not put by his terror of them until the time comes? And now it, this eventuality which even your best ahs and aies and eeows wouldn’t suffice to express. Remember it, those of you who have been young? I had
everything
to say, but not yet the furnishment to do it with.

So I did what the young do, of course: I went up the stairs anyway. And though I was now only as visible as any an excited one of you, I seemed to myself a veritable pillar of fire as I ascended them and went, timorous as a newborn lion—if these had navels—down the hall.

The door to that haven of hers which I had never seen was darkly ajar. Should I push it in? Before I could do so it was opened from within, as if she had expected me. Still, darkness. My own brilliance blinded me.

Then I heard her voice, almost at where would be my ear.
“Wann dich ime busch ferlore hoscht, guk ame bam nuf.”

Was this only one of her many
patois,
or out of some final language of experience, saved up for this one, for me?

Then I heard her construe it, in sad-perfect compound, as if she had heard me think that, or had said this many times before. “When lost in the woods, look up a tree.”

There was no tree, but in the dimness I could see papers, placards, letters, newsprint, a whole clearing house of them strewn about everywhere, and near several office machines, off to one side, what must now be in disuse or disrepair—for it was half buried under paper also—her wooden track. All this I saw as one sees things in one’s own light—only half regarding them. She was standing almost in front of me, behind a screen back of which she had been disrobing. All her garments lay in a Mexican-European-American jumble on the floor, between us. In the rear of the room behind her, there was a full-length mirror, in it a whiteness which might have blinded me had I fairly looked at it. Above the screen, her head regarded me. After a moment, her hands, one on either side of her head and opened like false wings, came to join it.

So we stared at one another, each in our own light. What hers was I could not yet descry, except that, not as powerful as mine, it did not need to be—it was still different, and that was enough.

But between us, as with the pile of clothes, stood another—the shy observer. I fumbled for its name, not knowing whether I was honest or ignorant. When it did not give ground, and I could find no better, I spoke to her, across it.

“Teach me pleasure,” I said.

And if, with all my non-heart and voice I put, as in a book of your books, a line here of asterisks, it is not in order that you might be free to think for yourselves on what happened then, but for its sadder opposite, that from our lacks, it could not.

First I saw her in the mirror, just as you often see your lovers. I saw her, melted from neck to knee in such a curve of beauty as I had not forgotten, it being also—except for my slight, new indentation—mine. But she would not have this be the end of things, and kicked aside the screen. Then, turning up her palms with the slightest of sighs, she regarded me.
You are You
her eyes said to me, and all my being said the same to hers. But, in the nature of things both of us added: Not quite.

We were ships that pass in the night.

We were an old couple, one of us old in experience, one of us—by your account—in age. We were a young couple, each of us in the flesh of a new world. Like any two of you, we were the same, but different. And like any two, there was only a partial cure for it. So, until morning, curve to curve—we leaned.

Palm up, palm down, people are the wilderness.

Despite which, she left everything in exquisite order. When I woke next day in one of the downstairs salons, past noon of a high, sunny day that beamed into every cranny of the house through windows with their blinds now set at precisely halfway, I thought of it. Like any good housekeeper, she had said, she had to clean house before she left for a journey; that it might be for forever made no difference, or in fact more. So, some hours before dawn, we began it, I only watching of course, but following her everywhere. These obligatory scenes of watching do occur here after all, and are not unpleasant, so long as—yes, I must say it—a termination is in sight.

The kitchen was a disgrace, she said; besides, she said, with a smile she meant to be glorious, it was no place for a man. So it was then I took a last carbonation which must carry me for some time. Away from the not quite wasted spell of her presence, I felt a growing cuteness in her which I deplored. I was apprehensive too that her face—dear
dimming
face I said to myself harshly—wouldn’t last through our encounter, but it did. It was a face which had launched quite a bit in its time, and with minor alteration, it survived until the need for it was gone. Meanwhile, I could tell for myself how very private I was getting, and how there was on the increase in me too that sense-of-the-past-in-the-very-present which so bollixes up the lives of all the thoughtful, here.

It was in the welter of her bedroom, again while she had left me alone for some moments, that I was most afflicted with it. She, while breathing with an effort which caused me dismay—“No, it was all right,” she said; it was just that she already felt herself to be breathing at high altitude—had dismantled the wooden practice-track she was supposed to have been using, and was at this moment storing its pieces in the basement, where if someday discovered it might be taken for parts of one of those old toys on which all basements dream. She wasn’t sure why she had to do this, or—to my inquiry—whether it was an instance of femininity or merely human, the “merely” being hers also. She supposed that she perhaps did it to commemorate a deception she had practiced—and now told me of—on me. For, after a few token sessions she had never used the track at all, but had employed those hours in secret drilling sessions with colleagues in the area—the sounds I had heard her make, and had so dwelled on, being those of a tape recorder she drew from the corner and now showed me. Did I wish to hear it? I looked sadly or so I hoped—on that fair skin of hers now so callousing and said no. It was for this reason that I had been locked in. Even during our nights at the library—she added in a sudden rush of confidence—while I was safe in my carrel she had not always been there, but in proportion as my slackening rate of speed enabled her to provide me with fodder for some hours ahead, she had slipped out to those facilities in Hobbs which she and her band used nightly, on only one occasion carelessly leaving evidence that they had. Deceptions, alas, were necessary, she said; it was hoped we would not mind. She said it very prettily. I said no.

The word “fodder” had been hers also, so, while reading some of the admonitory notes to herself which were scattered all over the desk and dresser, and here and there tucked in the many mirrors, I wasn’t surprised to see in a rather neater file of them marked
Transportation—Eli,
one large memo: “Get a horse van?” Beneath was the advertisement of a nearby stable and stock farm, dated only two days ago. The desk was further covered with lists and compilations of all the places and institutions she thought she ought to show me—a touring of which, under her tutelage, I half still trembled toward and shuddered over, as opportunity safely lost. Still, all hints being useful, I studied them, from
Funerals and Hospitals
to
Picnics and Galleries,
noting with some tenderness a memo to stop by the Chinese collection at the Philadelphia museum, where there were some
famille rose
vases which reminded her of me.

As for the planned picnics, the ice-picnic wasn’t among them. These spontaneities do occur, I thought, on both sides. And both sides, I was sure, would forget to watch for them. I wish I was not so smart, I thought, but quickly pointed out to myself that since I had never thought this before, it too must be human. I was getting to like the word more every day, and to use it, accurately I hoped, more and more often. It was very human of her, for instance, to leave notes to herself all over, in capital letters, WHAT TO DO ABOUT WAR? And bending closer, I saw a small item of another kind, that touched me most. It was a Shell map of environs which included Sunbury, Pennsylvania. To it was clipped the estimated driving time from Philadelphia, also a faded recipe employing the black walnuts she had said were indigenous to the region, and sundry other indications, the clearest of which was the picture of a farmhouse. At the last, I thought, she was like them all. She had meant to go back. And forward as well, of course, for everywhere on the walls I saw, with what I hoped was a smile—large placards bearing the motto from Ours which I had given her in response to a plea that I choose the one which seemed to me most significant. “Happiness is a total ellipse.” She had pasted it everywhere. And I had not been untruthful; she would see it in every public place, and hear it from every groove. It was the one community lie we are permitted ourselves, the one which in the public interest every citizen, until his last scream, honorably accepts. She, though no diarist like me, might yet have her own record of our adventure, in notes to herself inscribed, not on paper or cardboard, but on the forward flesh itself, and—helterskelter, wild or neat—much like these. And in her last scream she might voice that addendum which in life might not be said even sotto voce: Or, not quite.

Meanwhile, hearing her come up the stairs, I could reflect that during these twenty minutes I myself had accumulated some very profitable feelings.

Housecleaning, she said on return, always gave her ideas. I myself had noticed this, but concluding that it tended to supply her with a host of minor ideas which took the place of the major ones. This might well be debated between us, I thought, under the topic, “What is a major idea, and must one go out of the house for it?” Her assuredly minor one was that she was worried over my carbonation supplies for the months to come, and could we consider her leaving on the air conditioner in the museum, it to be set at the slot for fresh air?

Apart from the fact that I had no mind to be at the mercy of a machine, I deemed this a proper time to tell her that I too had been practicing a deception. I brought this out, as I said, in response to her having told me hers. Indeed, if our relationship hadn’t quite been an affair, in its expiring moments it rather resembled a marriage. I told her in detail of our talent for seeming to become objects. My ability to sit, as both a vow and a more valuable accomplishment, I kept to myself. At first she mourned loudly that I hadn’t told her of this in time for travel purposes, until I assured her that the process took some months of hibernation—in fact, and oddly enough, just so many months as I had to wait here. And it was as I had hoped; all Our hatchment, so painstakingly plotted, came out just as wanted, only now the hatching was hers. Housecleaning did give her ideas—she even volunteered an old aquarium from the basement, in place of a bell-glass, but I was able to refuse, assuring her that a colleague might check on me from time to time. This was not quite true, but I saw no reason to reveal how far our plots went or our talents; we can be rather lapidary too. In short, I was able to convey the idea from my brain to her mouth with a splendid economy of both energy and time. For, once having conceived it, she ran round like crazy, doing everything from checking temperatures to phoning banks. And of course, writing her last letters. In watching her at these, I found her still dear enough, in fact so much so that I could not afterwards recall whose idea it was: to send Jack. But each of us, wherever we were, would await his arrival with pleasure.

So at last, we found ourselves in a house stripped of all evidence that anyone but a lady had lived here, the placards and other correspondence a heap of ashes in the fireplace, and even those cooled. The cottage itself, blinds up now, since I would be in the museum in the rear, lay sealed against all except the sunrise. She herself would be going to “the facilities” well before. It was appropriate that we make our adieux, brief as these might be, in the room which had meant so much to us—this was one idea we had truly together—and there we repaired.

Going down the hall, I reflected, not on all that had ensued but as much as I had time for, being ever more conscious of time’s passing. We had been right, I thought, to wait for this particular set of applicants. I would be confirmed in my judgment, and my advice to my colleagues: Use the brightly-stupid ones to get us here; they have more reason to. And trained as they have been to seem humble and amenable, they have more energy for the final arrogance—which is to make an exchange of peoples, rather than of vehicles. And time enough, when we get there, to make use of the stupidly-bright.