Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (291 page)

“But you do not go to them.”

“No. This is my country.”

“And it will be mine, too. After all it was made in the first place by people willing to give up luxuries. Besides you are contradicting yourself: if Haggershaven cannot avoid being infected by what is outside it, neither can any other spot. Part of the world cannot be civilized if another part is backward.”

There was no doubt her demure expression hid stern resolution. Whatever else it hid was not so certain. Evidently Mr. Haggerwells realized the quality of her determination for eventually he proposed to the fellows that she be allowed to stay and the offer of her money be rejected. The motion was carried, with only Barbara, who spoke long and bitterly against it, voting “no.”

In accepting Catty out of charity, the fellows unexpectedly made an advantageous bargain. Not merely because she was always eager to help, but for her specific contribution to the Haven’s economy. Before this, clothing the Haven had been a haphazard affair; suits or dresses were bought with money which would otherwise have been contributed to the general fund, or if the fellow had no outside income, by a grant from the same fund. Catty’s artistry with the needle made a revolution. Not only did she patch and mend and alter; she designed and made clothes, conveying some of her enthusiasm to the other women. The Haven was better and more handsomely clad, and a great deal of money was saved. Only Barbara refused to have her silk trousers and jackets made at home.

It was not entirely easy to adjust to the new Catty, the busy, efficient, self-reliant creature. Her expressive voice could be enchanting even when she was speaking nonsense—and Catty rarely spoke nonsense. I don’t mean she was priggish or solemn, quite the contrary; her spontaneous laughter was quick and frequent. But she was essentially not frivolous; she felt deeply, her loyalties were strong and enduring.

I missed her former all too open devotion to me. It had caused embarrassment, impatience, annoyance; now it was withdrawn I felt deprived and even pettish at its lack. Not that I had anything to offer in return or considered that any emotion was called for from me. Though I didn’t express it to myself so openly at the time, what I regretted was the sensually valuable docility of a beautiful woman. Of course, there was a confusion here: I was regretting what had never been, for Catty and the nameless dumb girl were different individuals. Even her always undeniable beauty was changed and heightened; what I really wanted was for the Catty of now to act like the Catty of then. And without any reciprocal gesture from me.

The new Catty no more than the old was disingenuous or coquettish. She was simply mature, dignified, self-contained, and just a trifle amusedly aloof. Also she was very busy. She did not pretend to any interest in other men; at the same time she had clearly outgrown her childish dependence on me. She refused any competition with Barbara. When I sought her out she was there, but she made no attempt to call me to her.

I was not so unversed that I didn’t occasionally suspect this might be a calculated tactic. But when I recalled the utter innocence of her look I reflected I would have to have a very nice conceit of myself indeed to believe the two most attractive women at Haggershaven were contending for me.

I don’t know precisely when I began to see Catty with a predatory male eye. Doubtless it was during one of those times when Barbara and I had quarreled, and when she had called attention to Catty by accusing me of dallying with her. I was essentially as polygamous as Barbara was polyandrous or Catty monogamous; once the idea had formed I made no attempt to reject it.

Nor, for a very long time, did I accept it in any way except academically. There are sensual values also in tantalizing, and if these values are perverse I can only say I was still immature in many ways. Additionally there must have been an element of fear of Catty, the same fear which maintained a reserve against Barbara. For the time being at least it seemed much pleasanter to talk lightly and inconsequentially with her; to laugh and boast of my progress, to discuss Haggershaven and the world, than to face our elementary relationship.

My fourth winter at the Haven had been an unusually mild one; spring was early and wet. Kimi Agati who, with her children, annually gathered quantities of mushrooms from the woodlots and pastures, claimed this year’s supply was so large that she needed help and conscripted Catty and me. Catty protested she didn’t know a mushroom from a toadstool; Kimi immediately gave her a brief but thorough course in mycology. “And Hodge will help you; he’s a country boy.”

“All right,” I said. “I make no guarantees though; I haven’t been a country boy for a long time.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Kimi thoughtfully. “You two take the small southeast woodlot; Fumio can have the big pasture, Eiko the small one; Yoshi and I will pick in the west woodlot.”

We carried a picnic lunch and nests of large baskets which were to be put by the edge of the woodlots when full; late in the afternoon a cart would pick them up and bring them in for drying. The air was warm even under the leafless branches; the damp ground steamed cosily.

“Kimi was certainly right,” I commented. “They’re thick as can be.”

“I don’t see…” She stooped gracefully. “Oh, is this one?”

“Yes,” I said. “And there, and there. Not that white thing over there though.”

We filled our first baskets without moving more than a few yards. “At this rate we’ll have them all full by noon.”

“And go back for more?”

“I suppose. Or just wander around.”

“Oh…Look, Hodge—what’s this?”

“What?”

“This.” She showed me the puffball in her hands, looking up inquiringly.

I looked down casually; suddenly there was nothing casual between us anymore, nor ever would be again. I looked down at a woman I wanted desperately, feverishly, immediately. The shock of desire was a weight on my chest, expelling the air from my lungs.

“Goodness—is it some rare specimen or something?”

“Puffball,” I managed to say. “No good.”

I hardly spoke, I could hardly speak, as we filled our second baskets. I was sure the pounding of my heart must show through my shirt, and several times I thought I saw her looking curiously at me. “Let’s eat now,” I suggested hoarsely.

I found a pine with low-hanging boughs and tore down enough to make a dry, soft place to sit while Catty unpacked our picnic. “Here’s an egg,” she said; “I’m starved.”

We ate; that is, she ate and I pretended to. I was half dazed, half terrified. I watched her swift motions, the turn of her head, the clean, sharp way she bit into the food, and averted my eyes every time her glance crossed mine.

“Well,” she murmured at last, “I suppose we mustn’t sit idle any longer. Come on, lazy; back to work.”

“Catty,” I whispered. “Catty.”

“What is it, Hodge?”

“Wait.”

Obediently she paused. I reached over and took her in my arms. She looked at me, not startled, but questioning. Just as my mouth reached hers she moved slightly so that I kissed her cheek instead of her lips. She did not struggle but lay passively, with the same questioning expression.

I held her, pressing her against the pine boughs, and found her mouth. I kissed her eyes and throat and mouth again. Her eyes stayed open, and she did not respond. I undid the top of her dress and pressed my face between her breasts.

“Hodge.”

I paid no attention.

“Hodge, wait. Listen to me. If this is what you want you know I will not try to stop you. But Hodge, be sure. Be very sure.”

“I want you, Catty.”

“Do you? Really want
me
, I mean.”

“I don’t know what you mean. I want you.”

But it was already too late; I had made the fatal error of pausing to listen. Angrily I moved away, picked up my basket, and sullenly began to search for mushrooms again. My hands still trembled, and there was a quiver in my legs. To complement my mood a cloud drifted across the sun and the warm woods became chilly.

“Hodge.”

“Yes?”

“Please don’t be angry. Or ashamed. If you are I shall be sorry.”

“I don’t understand.”

She laughed. “Oh my dear Hodge. Isn’t that what men always say to women? And isn’t it always true?”

Suddenly the day was no longer spoiled. The tension melted, and we went on picking mushrooms with a new and fresh innocence.

After this I could no longer keep all thoughts of Catty out of the intimacy with Barbara; now for the first time her jealousy had grounds. I felt guilty toward both, not because I desired both, but because I didn’t totally desire either.

Now, years later, I condemn myself for the lost rapturous moments; at the time I procrastinated and hesitated as though I had eternity in which to make decisions. I was, as Tyss had said, the spectator type, waiting to be acted upon, waiting for events to push me where they would.

XVI.

OF VARIED SUBJECTS

“I can’t think of anything more futile,” said Kimi, “than to be an architect at this time in the United States.”

Her husband grinned. “You forgot to add, ‘of Oriental extraction.’”

Catty said, “I’ve never understood. Of course, I don’t remember too well, but it seems to me Spanish people don’t have the same racial fanaticism. Certainly the Portuguese, French, and Dutch don’t. Even the English are not quite so certain of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Only the Americans, in the United States and the Confederate States, too, judge everything by color.”

“The case of the Confederacy is reasonably simple,” I said. “There are about fifty million Confederate citizens and two hundred and fifty million subjects. If white supremacy wasn’t the cornerstone of Southron policy a visitor couldn’t tell the ruling class at a glance. Even as it is he sometimes has a hard time, what with sunburn. It’s more complicated here. Remember, we lost a war, the most important war in our history, which was not unconnected with skin color.”

“In Japan,” said Hiro, “the lighter-colored people, the Ainu, used to be looked down on. Just as the Christians were once driven underground at exactly the same time they themselves drove the Jews underground in Spain and Portugal.”

“The Jews,” murmured Catty vaguely. “Are there still Jews?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “Several million in Uganda-Eretz, which the British made a self-governing dominion back in 1933 under the first Labour cabinet. And numbers most everywhere else, except in the German Union since the massacres of 1905–1913.”

“Which were much more thorough than the anti-Oriental massacres in the United States,” supplied Hiro.

“Much more thorough,” I agreed. “After all, scattered handfuls of Asians were left alive here.”

“My parents and Kimi’s grandparents among them. How lucky they were to be American Japanese instead of European Jews.”

“There are Jews in the United States,” announced Kimi. “I met one once. She was a theosophist and told me I ought to learn the wisdom of the East.”

“Very few of them. There were about two hundred thousand at the close of the War of Southron Independence on both sides of the border. After the election of 1872, General Grant’s Order Number Ten, expelling all Jews from the Department of the Missouri, which had been rescinded immediately by President Lincoln, was retroactively reenacted by President Butler, in spite of the fact that the United States no longer controlled that territory. Henceforth Jews were treated like all other colored peoples—Negroes, Orientals, Indians, and South Sea Islanders—as undesirables to be bribed to leave or to be driven out of the country.”

“This is very dull stuff,” said Hiro. “Let me tell you about a hydrogen reaction—”

“No, please,” begged Catty. “Let me listen to Hodge.”

“Good heavens,” exclaimed Kimi, “when do you ever do anything else? I’d think you’d be tired by now.”

“She will marry him one of these days,” predicted Hiro; “then the poor fellow will never be allowed to disguise a lecture as a conversation again.”

Catty blushed, a deep red blush. I laughed to cover some constraint. Kimi said, “Go-betweens are out of fashion; you’re a century behind the times, Hiro. I suppose you think a woman ought to walk two paces respectfully behind her husband. Actually, it’s only in the United States women can’t vote or serve on juries.”

“Except in the state of Deseret,” I reminded her.

“That’s just bait; the Mormons gave us equality because they were running short of women.”

“Not the way I heard it. The Latter Day Saints have been the nearest thing to a prosperous group in the country. Women have been moving there for years; it’s so easy to get married. All the grumbling about polygamy has come from men who can’t stand the competition.”

Catty glanced at me, then looked away.

Had she, I wondered afterward, been thinking how Barbara would have rejected my observation furiously? Or about that day in the spring? Or about Hiro’s earlier comment? I thought about it, briefly, myself.

I also thought of how easily Catty fitted in with the Agatis and contrasted it with the tension everyone would have felt if Barbara had been there. One could love Barbara, or hate her or dislike her or even, I supposed, be indifferent to her; the one thing impossible was to be comfortable with her.

The final choice (was it final? I don’t know. I shall never know now) hardened when I had been nearly six years at Haggershaven. It had been “on” between Barbara and me for the longest stretch I could recall, and I had even begun to wonder if some paradoxical equilibrium had not been established which would allow me to be her lover without vexation and at the same time innocently enjoy a bond with Catty.