Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel (46 page)

After him, the little secretary came peeping out from wherever in the wings she’d disappeared to, and tiptoed, wide-eyed and scared, to within a few paces of me, where she set down the tape recorder, then knelt so thoughtfully—but just out of reach—to start it going. Then she too ran. At the door, she blew me a kiss. At the door—though I had my back turned by now and didn’t see him—I wouldn’t have been surprised to see that at the door, he looked back. But I was confused now, and too tired to consider whether chivalry kept me at my post, or chargin—or tired muscles. Humanity never comes evenly. I would sit a bit. And there might be no more answer than this to much of human conduct. Some of us run; some stay.

Then I turned, from the depths of his chair.
“Shadows?”
I called after him. He was gone. But I sat in wonder. This is our last scream, before the crater. Here, it was my first.

And so, my long soliloquy was finished. But this had been the formal one, hero that I had been; now I had one for myself. Everybody here is a hero at least for a day—the day on which he is born; and then forever, in the long night, all are heroes there. I looked out upon you until you were gone, all of you soon to lie, with your shields, in your slumber. But before then, in the between of those two poles, you are ordinary people, of the commonest betrayals, and with your own heroisms to make. I meant to be ordinary, and I had a few thoughts for myself on this, as even the unheroic do.

Now, meditating back there in the cottage in that summer lamasery of one member, as the violet passage of the hours was succeeded by the white, I had learned to watch all the equinoxes of the day. This is very important, though I do not mean to sound wise. And I do not know whether wisdom comes of it. But, when after my long sojourn, I was carried out of there, it was mysteries I was giddy with. I had never lived with mystery before. Your rooms were chock-full of them. So it was mysteries, not conclusions, that I presented myself with now.

They know their own queerness, I thought—meaning
you.
They understand that, by the one thin particle, they are born into the beyond. I shall become one of them, as—slowly into their vortex—so do I. And in this adventure, perhaps the appendages of the body, which I have all this time been so fixed on, need not antedate those of the soul. By nature, I am a virtuoso of images; by these I will plod on, but this time in their same danger—that my shadows, unlike my body, will not last my time. But consider that this too must have a bearing on what—to one in want of it—is of all their possessions, the sum. For consider not their death, but the manner of it. Everybody who dies here is a person.
Everybody who has ever died here, has been a person.
Repeat it, repeat it—for they have a repetition, they have a beat here also, and this is what they mean here when they say “the people.” Everybody who dies here is a person. And nobody has ever known how it comes about.

The tape flapped, somewhere along in my reveries, and after a while, the machine ran down. That stops the recording! I thought, meaning forever, though of course I was wrong. But it did bring practical considerations once more to mind. And my mind was—somehow to go underground, yet remain among you. At first, my thought was to stay there in the neighborhood, where I knew the basements, and indeed there I did stay, until enough of the old pallor and intangibility overcame me, making me fit again to travel. Then, finding that I could travel safely in almost any weather except snow—when memory brought tints which were unsafe—I left the Ramapo, at least for many voyages to come. I had no wish to haunt the people there, who as it was—though they might no longer believe in what they had seen—would never again know for sure what object here might not have its images, or whether every object in their universe might not be a Trojan horse. Besides, there were not people enough, in just a valley and a mountain range, for my purposes. And what were, were too refined.

Think of me then, as in many public places—under the George Washington Bridge perhaps, by dawnlight, counting the first cars. Or listening to the radio that whines on happily in Filipino, in a whisky-box squatter town. Or watching all the diseases of Asia, and the buboes of gladness too. I often look in mirrors. I watch the babies always, for hints. Think of me wherever protoplasm really carbuncles, or shrinks or swells, or even dies. And as in private places also, for sometimes I am a beast in chambers, groaning moonward, like yourselves. One day, on that day when the hands and the feet, and the sex and even the full face finally come upon me—then at that point, I shall no doubt remember the shadows of my old home as celestial ones. And
at that point
—
I
shall be human. Humanity never comes evenly. Until then, I am an envoy, which has so many meanings and all of them rightful—an ambassador and a deputy, a dedication, a poem. Until then, think of me as where the people are—as you think of yourselves.

And say a blessing for all those in a state of between.

One night, after many wanderings which do not cease, I found myself on a small footpath, a meander, which if I wished, I could count as a place where I had been born, though I have many such places now. I was used now to there being no line of demarcation between the happening and the brooding; wherever there is difference, such a two must meld. I could see, to the south, a view. The views of your planet are from all sides, really, but for simplicity’s sake let us say that it was only from the south. I saw what I now knew. I saw the great wallows of light between cities and their parks, between the park and the field and the desert, and on all, cherished as if within a wild sea, the closeness of the starved.

And I said to myself the old lesson for messiahs, that I now say to you. What is humane? The small distance. What is wild? The mortal weight. Wherever there is difference, there—is morality. Where there is brute death, there love flits, the shy observer. I had my feelings now, those mysterious pains which held them to living. And I said a blessing for all those who live in mystery. The wilderness was all before me—and I was glad that I had come.

Hortense Calisher (1911–2009) was born in
New York City
. The daughter of a young
German
-Jewish immigrant mother and a somewhat older Jewish father from
Virginia
, she graduated from
Barnard College
in 1932 and worked as a sales clerk before marrying and moving to Nyack, New York, to raise her family. Her first book, a collection of short stories titled
In the Absence of Angels
, appeared in 1951. She went on to publish two dozen more works of fiction and memoir, writing into her nineties. A past president of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters
and of
PEN
, the worldwide association of writers, she was a
National Book Award
finalist three times, won an
O. Henry Award
for “The Night Club in the Woods” and the 1986
Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize
for
The Bobby Soxer
, and was awarded
Guggenheim Fellowships
in 1952 and 1955.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1965 by Hortense Calisher

Cover design by Kelly Parr

978-1-4804-3740-1

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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