Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel (8 page)

This object stood imperturbable, above and outside them. The quality it seemed to have most was a self-containment, of a creation not necessarily—though he’d never seen anything like it—unique. If, for instance, all the snowflakes in the world, instead of being so crazily versatile, had been shaped to a compassionately single design, then any one of them would have what this had—the poise of the One. In the far corner of himself that loved one-ness—or perhaps machinery—he restrained an impulse to kneel.

Instead, he got a move on—his normal response to that impulse. Else he might have been mooning there yet in his solitary longing, instead of being so healthfully exposed here to act it out before what now appeared to be an audience close to the hundred he’d invited. One might almost think that he indeed had been observed on the way here—what right had she to expect that he’d be some sort of Godiva for whom the town would draw its blinds? A thrill nevertheless went through him at all she’d expected of him, for which, in the range of conceivability, he might yet be rewarded. It was the thrill of which heroes were made, as he well knew. He couldn’t help it. Getting that thing here, as her letter had predicted, hadn’t been all that strenuous. She’d merely failed to warn him that it might be ludicrous. For, anyone chancing to see the complementary rhythms between him and his charge as they made their way here together, might well be excused for assuming that
it
had been getting the move on him.

Suddenly the Muzak went off, leaving him on, to manage as best he could by himself the stealthy current of time. Had he been asleep? What in God’s name was he doing here? Out front, the audience held up to him that massed sunflower face which all lecturers know—but his was not the simple platform fear. He had been born to this one, he thought as suddenly. He’d been born to
this,
to the right-here and the now, sent forth with eyes, ears, balls and ever-valiant tongue to function along his voyage of discovery, all to suffer pains or joys still unknown, including the adventure of the death that would be the end of him and them—and in all of this he was an amateur. To the end of this mélange that both frightened and beguiled, he would be one.

He covered his eyes with his hands, wishing that all his organs had complementary sets of hands to cover them, or at least some more generally anonymous skin. If, at best, there were only some repository—of professionalism—to which he might apply. He understood quite well that this was merely the Fascist fear, possibly the God-making one also—and that only his flesh was feeling it. Hard lines that only his flesh was also understanding it. For meanwhile, he knew quite as well that in eighteen or so minutes by his watch he would be getting to his feet on performance of business which might be less daily than most, but had at its heart the same fear that was dormant in any, and might attack a man when he was merely staring at his own cuticle—the ordinary citizen’s stage fright and inner self-amaze. He wasn’t having any revelations, by God. Any clam-digger might have this sudden sense of fear, or any Linhouse—or any Anders—and probably not when Anders was belting the universe either, maybe when he was in the middle of a shave. It might come upon one on top of a mountain or a woman, on errand or in urinal, in the movie houses of crowd, or at the weekend sandbeaches of alone. No doubt everybody knew this particular sensation as well as Jack Linhouse. It might be called the oracle of the cuticle. It was the moment when the Muzak stopped, and more clearly than in any foreign land, one stood knee-deep in the utter fantasticality of right-where-one-was. The cure for it was obscure as any of his mother’s for heartburn or hiccups. Since he hadn’t a lump of sugar or a glass of water, he held his breath, then breathed deeply. And had his revelation. This was why one traveled. To get rid of just that.

Just then, a knocking came, apparently at one of the upper doors. But, these doors, like those in any supermarket, were opened in the modern way, by crossing a beam of light with one’s body—the kind of door at which, when set up for entry, it was almost physically impossible to knock. Maybe it was the younger generation knocking, as in that line of Ibsen he’d always despised for its patness. Go away, he said to it silently—
I
am the younger generation. Or was, up to last week. Sure enough, this not being the theater, it went away. Besides, he said after it, we have enough people, all she wanted. Every seat he could see was filled.

He checked his watch again—twelve minutes now—took from his wallet the engraved program with its carefully worded note of explanation, slipped under it the part of her letter she’d asked to have read, put the letter’s other sheet in his hip pocket, and stood up, remembering that at the near end of the basement passage which debouched backstage, there was a toilet. Just as he stood up—bless action for being the cure one always forgot about—a hand was placed on his shoulder. A bear or a ghost, which will you have it, he thought as he whirled. You know which.

The old man seemed taller than he remembered him, unlike most old men. Since last seen, his skin had become the swart color that aged men come to by way of sun or liver. From his dress—the white tennis flannels and dark jacket of any number of first acts marked
Summer: 1914
—it was hopefully the former. Which must mean that Sir Harry had been to Berkeley for his conference.

“Why—!” Linhouse kept his greeting hushed, but held out his hand. It took him a long moment to realize that his hand was being refused.

The old man lowered down at him, using his height so that Linhouse’s head was forced back on his neck, his eyes at close range to that handsomely troughed upper lip, to the cleft, like the finish of an interrupted penstroke, in the chin.

“What have you done with her?” said Sir Harry.

“What … have …
I?
” With each word, a different hazard came to Linhouse’s mind. Were they thinking—they couldn’t think—that he himself had somehow effected her disappearance, disposed of her like a Landru, cut her up and washed her down a drain? Or they
had
thought—and Sir Harry, here en route home and known to be his friend, had been sent—how else would he have found the back way to the podium?—to forestall the scandal of a ceremony. Or—No, it couldn’t be. Old as Jamison had been for her (fifty-four to eighteen)—
eighty
to thirty-four? Could it be? A magnificent man to look at, tellingly lively with his own wife. And an astronomer. Why couldn’t it be? Coming back and forth here, always for the most internationally apposite reasons. And all along, he could have been the new one.

“You were the last one she showed any interest in.” Sir Harry’s voice was hoarse but polite, like a judge who had been up all night over the transgression of a junior. “When I came back, she was gone. Leaving me a letter. All but saying she was here with you.”

She. She. She.

“You too!” said Linhouse. “And I didn’t even know you knew her!” In the eyes above his, he saw at last how it looked to others, that small pigtail flame of obsession. “But as for my—”

“You must be out of your mind!”

“—you must be out of your mind.”

They said it simultaneously. But mid-chorus, Linhouse had already seen it—what the resemblance was. “Sir Harry—” He spoke gently. “May I see your letter?”

It was handed him, the fingers shaking now. He read little more than the few lines above the signature.
When you know the circumstances you will not blame, even though it is the second time for you. My last words are loving. There is a long chance …
(here some indecipherable figures)
that we shall meet again. Go to America.
And below the signature, a small postscript. He didn’t really need to read either. The letter was in French.

When he handed Sir Harry his own letter, it seemed almost, if not quite, an even exchange.

Finally each raised his head, but each averted sideways, like two cuckolds.

Sir Harry spoke first. “Ah, I see. Your ceremony, then.”

“Mmm.” There was a pause. “Perhaps—might we meet afterwards?” And perhaps, like two cuckolds, they would enjoy it.

He looked down at Sir Harry’s letter before returning it.
You may guess,
the postscript said. From the signatures, one wouldn’t have thought the two women had much in common. The signature on his own letter had been round and not very characterful—the farmgirl, the jampot. This scrawl was black and taut, the footprint of an eaglet.
Rachel.

“I’ll go the way I came,” said Sir Harry after a bit. It was his apology.

“Mind the stairs. A bit tricky.”

“Ah yes, thanks—doors up above on the blink, it seems. Stuck tight.”

“Ah, that was you then. Knocking. Sure you can find the way now?” It was a toss-up as to which voice was the more perfunctory. Neither one of them had moved.

“Oh yes indeed, I was taken round the whole show here very thoroughly last time … One setup rather like mine in Bucks, several million pounds worth more powerful of course … Nothing like it even at Berkeley; Anders gets pretty much what he wants.” At last he moved. “No, don’t trouble, always find my way, old Army habit. Sorry if I’ve delayed—and … well … carry on, eh?”

Then, at last, they let themselves look at one another. No, they were not out of their minds. But how extraordinary that they weren’t.

“But—” Linhouse faltered. For there must be some connection. Anders? He tested it. “Anders!”

Sir Harry caught his meaning at once, as neatly as any sibling. But shook his head. “No, no. Oh no, my dear fellow. Not him. At least—not
Rachel
… That is to say—nothing against your young woman.” He flushed—the clean neo-Socialist pink of those who still find the need to apply standards to people. “What I mean to say—ah what a tangle!—not where anyone could think it was you.” He said it with a bow.

Pure Pinero, thought Linhouse. Those flannel pants. Somehow, balk as we may at the ordinary fantastic of our century, there are always these honest little diversions into real unbelievability, to keep us going. Those pants. Father had some just like. And if I’m to last, I ought to have had more to eat than that bun. And I ought to take a leak.

“Sorry not to have been more of a connection!” he said, with a gulp. “But there must be one, you know. Really now. Unless it’s your experience that women just take off like this regularly!”

In immediate horror, he recalled that this had been Sir Harry’s experience—twice. It was unconscious malice on his own part, at having been kept from that leak. As always after these slips, he yearned to say to his opposite: For the sake of humanity, let us love one another—I love you. And how I hate Freud.

But Sir Harry seemed not to have heard. For one thing, the Muzak had begun again, as if insisting that it was now a quarter past three. Also, with the ease of six-feet-four over five-feet-nine, he was looking straight past Linhouse. He had seen the object.

Linhouse waited for the old man to speak—
“Hul-lo”
perhaps, then—
“Hul-lo!”
But the old man said nothing.

Linhouse waited to be asked what it was, so that he might reassure himself with his own answer: “It’s the record of a journey—you saw her letter.” Then, with a shrug, “I’m to let it play, for the crowd.” Or perhaps, owing to their linked circumstance, he need merely give a flick to the letter, remaining dumb. And Sir Harry, mum-dumb also—so related were the co-deserted!—might pass over it with merely a nod.

In which case, what would
he
himself feel then? He had that terrible premonitory sense of being on the edge of identifying in himself a feeling he would be unable to bear—that sense of half of him plodding away from himself with steps nightmare slow and these fated only to find themselves returning, indrawn again to the monster at his own center—the cephalopod that floated on its own arms and wasn’t going anywhere. He waited for his good kind friend, the astronomer s
cientia, scientia
—to recognize it—the object? the feeling? and tell him what it was, in a voice not too far from the one in which nursemaids dealt with natural miracles: “Thunder is the clouds knockin’ together. Days is longer in summer, because. Coo, love, hands away from the fire. It burns.”

But the old man, head lifted, did none of these things. He did what all the others out there hadn’t done. Stood rapt.

Finally, his hand fell on Linhouse’s shoulder, and gripped there.

By its transference, Linhouse recognized his own feeling. He didn’t want to know—what he wanted to know about her. Or to get to know, by any extension of hers, her Elsewhere. On the small unknowns larger ones always rested, eagles taking off from the linnet’s wing. If there was a Great Pyramid shape to knowledge, then it must balance on point, upside down.

His shoulder was free. He heard steps tiptoeing away behind him. On a sigh of readiness from the audience, he walked center stage.

Here, he was as brief as she’d asked him to be, outlining what was known of her disappearance, topped by some remarks in stock encomium style, most of them in the program already. This was in order. There wasn’t a wet eye in the house—never was, at these things—but no one snickered. And when forewarned of the probable length of the “reading,” nobody got up to leave.

In conclusion, he gave them their part of her letter, an equally stock
ave atque vale
effusion of the sort which only the dead and the living dare exchange. Doing so, he saw how cleverly she’d managed to sink, in all this redundancy, almost no fact. Any auditor must take as official what was all so bloody conventional; even the provost must be relievedly thinking that, as so often happens at universities, everything had already been authenticated—somewhere else. For, cleverest of all, she’d managed, without precisely saying so, to attach the object to Jamison himself. It now had the beautiful, secret authenticity of the one trove which that generous man hadn’t been able to relinquish, its origin as open to their surmise as that of a bottle picked up at sea—or from the ziggurat of Babylon, or the pithoi of Knossos—by a hand much more securely dead than hers, and one in life a member of the National Academy.

And now, as per instruction, a stenographer, previously alerted, tripped up to the platform on signal and seated herself with pad and pencil in a chair set at a discreet distance.
Tape won’t do,
the letter had said.
Nothing electrical. And make it a girl.
One of the younger departmental staff, the secretary had a head as pretty as a painted bead. Inclined forward within that wimple of her trade, the round collar, it lent the object a final halo, as in those charades the onlookers were already so well trained to—she might have been leaning toward a dreadnought, or a tube of shaving cream. Her expression was just right for either. There was just enough room between her and it for Linhouse to get by.