Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel (27 page)

“What a moral message!” Meyer was standing up. “What a legacy.” He cleared his throat, while Linhouse blessed him. Meyer wasn’t looking at him, or if, for a fleet second, he had been, Linhouse’s image had swiftly gone the way that everything in Meyer’s life did, from his own possible cuckoldry, to a day’s family sailboating—during which, for his children’s sake, and pleasure of course, he would triangulate the horizon—to those Christmas cards on which the current clutch of the darker Spilker houseguests were shown around their fireside above the caption, “Why can’t the whole world be like this!”—and “Merrie Xmas from All Spilkers Seven.” Nothing happened to Meyer but went into his “views,” and then was generously shared out.

“What a memorial!” said Meyer. “Picture you a man so-o dedicated to the difference in races that he spent his whole life learning them. Yet one who in the end concluded we are all the same people, anthropologically dispersed. I myself have heard him call it ‘the unholy diaspora.’ And now, not even before he goes, but so modestly after—he leaves us this cautionary … little tale. Fraser, updated for our time—and perhaps—” Here, Meyer paused and smiled, an anthropologist’s long-view, long-couch smile, “and perhaps, in what is to come, if I know him correctly, perhaps a little Malinowski, updated too. But all to the same purpose, my friends.”

“And what would that be, Rabbi Spilker?”

Lila stared elsewhere, at neither.

“Ah well, Björnson, it’s a
personal
equation,” said Meyer, turning away from the big blond man to peer at the hidden Charles. “But you biologists should know, of all people. He was saying—” He raised one rawboned arm, a little short in the sleeve. “—Sociological sameness is the death wish, my friends. People
are
the same—but from the heart.” He sat down.

“Excuse please,” said a new voice, “excuse.” This one came from one of several lower rows which seemed to be devoted, like the tables marked “Single,” to the unassociated, among them a few biochemists who were women, one of these even more representatively a Negro, and the voice’s owner, a heavyset man whose impressively bare skull, Balzac-fringed, Linhouse did not at first recognize.

“Winckler
hier,
history of science,” the man said. “We historians only arrange, nah? We do not shpecoolate. But in Owstria—we het once a famous man who arrange people, nah?” He paused to put on nose glasses hung to a ribbon, and Linhouse remembered him, nostalgically now, as could happen to even the most casually met, the dullest—the Austrian heavyweight who had been at her elbow when Linhouse had met
her. Guess I’m really a white octoroon
she said, turning to Linhouse, and once again her charms hit him, blows glancing but sure—to the side of the head, to the belly—and once again he stood there, standing but smitten, his head on grassy banks of perfumed thyme, or ready to lie there any afternoon. Today was her memorial. And not a soul except him was thinking of her.

But he was wrong.

“This disappeared lady,” said Herr Winckler. “When I come here, we hev once or twize, talkings. She is widow, very young, marrit, her husband iss—this is not uncommon, nah?—her father. They spend much time togedder in far places. She play once or twize records she make for him there. A very talented, what you call—
mime.
But I upserve—” He paused, scratching his chin. “Was it our first talking? Perhaps the second.” The glasses dropped, were replaced, and dropped again—a useful ribbon, a nervous historian. “You will excuse me, you her friends, but in the interests of truth. This was a woman who hev many men possibly, but a not sexual woman.” He scratched again, this time the head. “I upserve this,” he simply. “I.”

“Excuse
me,
Winckler—” It was the Indian’s Oxonian speech. “Man who arranges people! Most fascinating concept, must say, and must say, most Teutonic way of expressing it. May I take it that you refer to that most illustrious compatriot of yours—?”

Dr. Winckler bowed, but said nothing.

It was the Indian who had to persist. “Our favorite international ambiguist?” he said smiling. “Freud?”

Dr. Winckler parted his mouth widely also, displaying block-teeth of a terrifying innocence. “I hev yet lankuage trouble.” He pointed to the stage. “Too qvick for me.
Hab es nicht versteh.
But it is really important to listen only to the voice. And to hev met this lady. We het here surely, a most remarkable case of—
androgyne.
” He surveyed the house. The glasses fell again. “She was—
boy.
” And he too sat down.

Linhouse stood up. Send Jack. And no wonder.

“She—” The word scratched his throat like a garland. “She—was
not.
”

And to do them all here gentle credit, this time not a person here laughed. He had just been forced to go through that worst of live dreams: he was a small boy in Piccadilly Circus, no, on the Sunday pulpit in Wiltshire, no, numb on a platform in America here, his private parts exposed. And where, this time, were the clowns, the rooks, the naturals of two hours ago—or was this the question one had always to ask,
alternately,
of humans? They were quiet, for a moment not in flight from themselves or divided, or if in flight, a flock in migration, who saw, passing beneath them, their own sometime memorial.

Or was this merely the influence of all those women dotted quiet along the rows, especially in the aisle seats and in the last rows, up near the doors? There were certainly—

“Of course not!” This was Björnson, the blond mathematician. “Mr. Linhouse merely speaks for all of us.” His words were grave ones, of no possible offense. He appeared to be vain, probably a man who lived much by sexual prowess, therefore able to speak of such matters without the sneer of tact. “Until Dr. Winckler knows the American scene a little more familiarly, he must reserve judgment on just what we are. That the lady was unusual, one won’t deny—we are here in that memory. I never knew her well—and when I came back after a two-year leave, she was gone. But I can assure Dr. Winckler he could never have made such a statement if he’d known my old friend as I did, in his salad days—and incidentally his salad days went on pretty near forever—our old friend, her husband.”

A permissive smile spread abroad, brief and male only. The exploits of the dead are all decent. Except perhaps to the provost, who half rose, saying, “Gentlemen! There are—”

Ladies present, indeed. And had none of them babies to care for, meals to prepare?

“But if I may just comment on the voice?” said the polite Indian in his own modestly firm, Oxon.-Indo-European one. “Is not the voice of a recording machine of any kind—
always
homosexual?”

“Gentleme—” The provost rose to his feet, and full voice. “We must all be wanting our suppers. And our wives must be wanting to get home to their chil—” To the children, ours perhaps, but at least theirs. He turned to bow in their direction, and stood, uneasily arrested. When rooks don’t caw, something from overhead—hawks, or large brown pandemoniums—may be expected; did he feel this too? Or when so many women don’t, but sit imperturbable, doll-like in the pinkness, determined to see this opera through.

Or when their direction—good God. Is so very general. There was no need to count. There were such a lot of them. They outnumber us—as the deep South here so often said in another connection. They always did. And in the same connection: But now … they know.

“Then, gentlemen,” said the provost, “—and ladies.” He wasn’t yet crushed, only less florid. “—Then may I have your ideas, as you say, on this extraordinary … I won’t say hijinks.” He drew himself up, having given them his. “And since Mr. Linhouse—can’t say—” (
won’t
being implied) “also on the origin of this, its authorship. Plus further suggestions for its disposal, and our continuance here.”

“Certainly you may have mine.” Meyer Spilker rose to give it. “That great, great man. That man who—” He thought better of this. “Jamison.” As if to defend, he remained standing.

“Oh—blather and nonsense.” From behind a nest of doll-heads, none of them dowagers, none of them even hatted, the hidden Charles now rose, revealing himself as very long, very thin, and perhaps rather casually knotted together, but not otherwise too bad an example of genetics. And yet young. “Nonsense and—and blather. Nice tribute to a colleague, of course, but if I may say so, to you social science people, everybody who isn’t an aborigine is a middle-middle. There’s not an exact man among you. So of course you never
see
one. Neither does a biologist like me, but at least he’s aware of it. And I saw Jamison. Talked to him. Heard him in lecture, nice enough old codger, explaining the three intonations of the word “biji” in Navaho—the last one with a wink. Biji,
hi-fi, bee-ji.
And so on. And the museum of course, jolly respectable achievement. But as for him being the author, or finding some Navaho who was—of that rather sweet little discourse we heard just now? Not ’alf likely. But I’ll tell you just the type that would be, if my friend Björnson will allow. That’s a mathematician’s job-of-work, if ever I saw one. Just the charming sort of larkiness they go in for while they push their nieces about, on the Cam. Or the Isis.” He grinned. “I know a mathematician’s fantasy, when I see one. Always that queerish, maiden-aunt tone to it.” Suddenly he slapped his knee, being so constructed that he was able to do it while almost vertical. “Björnie, of course! Ever remember that thing we read in Philo—
My Trip into the 4th Dimension, by A. Square?
Written by Clerk Maxwell—I never forgot it.”

“If you mean
Flatland,
” said Björnson, “I can assure you that was perfectly tidy mathematics. But not by Maxwell, who was by the way a physicist. To him belongeth ‘Maxwell’s demon.’”

“—’s at?”

“A hypothetical elf. He dreamed it up, to show up the limitations of the second law of thermodynamics. Maybe you have something there, about aunties.”

“Okay then, you get the general idea. Björnie, are you sure—? It sounded just like you.”

Björnson rose, very tall as well as wide, taller than Meyer—son of a land with a long midnight. “Thanks for the compliment, or no thanks. But I
have—
a specific idea. We’d a family friend used to visit us, when I was a boy. Crampton the zoologist, never sufficiently appreciated, taught at some girls’ school over here. But over the years, thanks to him, I got to know a certain prayer rather well. It’s the one you zoo boys still say to yourselves every night, don’t you?
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
Man as a fetus goes through all the biologic stages, much compressed of course, that the human race did. Right, Charles?”

“Oh, so to speak, but I don’t—”

“Hang on. My sister and I had a private rhyme for the old gent—” Björnson seemed highly excited, and childlike—there were always men who had to quote childhood at the most crucial instances of their grown lives, but Linhouse was surprised to tab Björnson as one of them. “Yes …” Björnson said, “here goes:

The body in Ma’s belly can’t be Us

Until it’s been a fish, a snake, a rat, a bird—

Plus
Pithecanthropus!
”

He grinned. “Apologies—we were a large family. But all the time I was listening to that thing over, getting itself reborn and so forth, I kept thinking of it. Couldn’t we be listening to a rather remarkable exposit of the fetal dream, and then—remember that part about the door—of a human ego, very early, on its way to sensory experience, to consciousness. Couldn’t we?”

Linhouse fancied he saw Lila’s face shift slightly; was it choosing between blond and dark, husband and lover—or between “views”? Or had it some of its own views now, newly and darkly shared? Shared they would be somehow, by this so American
mater dolorosa—
who had once worn to the president’s reception (and over red flounces) a hank of watermelon seeds strung by the afflicted children of fourteen nations. In that silly-safe memory, Linhouse relaxed, even sat down again on his chair, even remembered—by an ancient association: women to food—that he was hungry.

“—For—” said Björnson. “We’ve had mention of Fraser, of Flatland, of God knows what all. But what if we’ve been listening to
is
an allegory, of how a babe in the cradle would report the growth of sense data? A kind of—kind of zoological, psychological
Pilgrim’s Progress—
and I must say, brilliantly recapitulated!”

Charles gave a great guffaw. “Not by this biologist. We were Church of England.” He sat down, and was at once hidden again.

“Not you, of course not. Be serious.” Björnson turned to face the audience at large. “
I
am.” He was too, and how the women must take to it, copybook Scandinavian but with an overlay; all the men were so complicated, here. Linhouse sank further in his chair, a backless, folding one, in which a shoulder up since dawn might still find a soft berth somewhere. Committee meetings the world over were always a rerun of
Everyman,
but here at the Center the all-star cast made them such a, such a … unparalleled … on the
eerie
side of boredom. He had never fallen asleep at one of them before. Take Björnson-Björnie, not just the stock mathematical type who liked music, though he probably did that too, but one who had also read Jung. A mathe-hmmmm … who liked wmmmmmmm … count them … Who-oooo … ooooooo … OOOOOOO.

At a thwack, which sounded through the hall and his sleep, he opened his eyes, blinking them in time to see that Björnson must merely have clapped his hands together; he was facing the machine now, apostrophizing it. “
Not
one of us, don’t you see that, all of you? Not one of
us!
”

Linhouse sat up. Always known it, of course. Not out of Ma’s belly, he wasn’t—not to them, here. In spite of this, his eyes closed again.

Through them, he heard the Indian say silkily, “You mean Us, perhaps, sir? Asia? People often do.”

“No, no,
no.
I was speaking
professionally.
Now do listen, all of you, without your personal prejudices. Or rather,
with
them; that’s the point. Who could have authored this—saga?”

Linhouse opened one eye. A woman—had they at last thought of
them?
If he were going to be asked again for inside dope, he supposed he’d have to give it. No, definitely. Not Janice. Then he recalled that they were speaking professionally. He could drift off again.