Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel (14 page)

Doubt. It comes with I-ness also, and it is not a great stalker, but an army of squirrels. Almost fainting or sinking—what a feeling it is when the
I
wobbles like that!—I steadied myself against those helpful shelves, repeating the conclusion of the catechism:

“Resolved: That for those who wish to emigrate from either side, there shall be set up a means for an Exchange of Persons.” Yes, that was our great adventure.

And having concluded, I started over again: “Whereas—” and went through it completely. For purposes of holding oneself where one is, there is nothing more tonic than a catechism firmly repeated. For, with each circle of it, I found I could toss a doubt overboard: It is not the means for the project that bothers me, nor the risks to those at home, who must be prepared to undergo what I had, nor that I may lack recruits, even though I cannot as yet assure any One what gender would be theirs. Ah, that’s better. Ah,
here.
I am still Here.

If anything, it was Her confusion, at the end of our talk, which was most worrying me now. Not mine. Why, I was even clearheaded enough now to be able to find that compound word—to describe her state of mind—which had earlier eluded me. Since, at home, what we use for language
begins
with monosyllable, and thereafter concentricates inward, while Your Babel proliferates every which way, it is ho easy task for a One to choose words here, much less combine them. Yet I did it! I found the exact word to describe her temperament:
silly-unsafe.
Curiously enough, she hadn’t seemed so in the beginning. Silly-unsafe. And why this should provoke in me, even as I said it again, that same tender feeling—was still a mystery to me. Suddenly it was clear to me, what was happening. The process was taking over. Even as her intellect swelled gently into curve, mine of course—and hurrah for it—was straightening out. Did this mean I was giving evidence of gender, or acquiring it? One thing at least I now suspected. It was unsafe to assume that they would let me choose.

Idly now, and much less nervously, I rested in my niche, carefully avoiding either end of the wall where, though still rounded, there was a kind of corner, no doubt placed there to get me used to the idea. Quick as I am, it seemed to me impossible that I should learn anything more this morning. But in addition to the discovery that I have just recounted, and to my having found that it takes approximately thirty-five rounds of the catechism for my temperament to settle itself, surely a useful prescription, to have—another residue remained. Revolving slowly at my usual angle of inclination—somewhat less acute than the angle at which the gyroscope forever aims at the same point in the heavens—I contemplated this fact, as newly embodied in Me. An army of doubts can be terrifying, perhaps even return one, in total consummation, to the vacuum. But apparently one generalized little itching of it is just the friction to hold us down to the variable. I couldn’t get over how self-contained a certain measure of doubt had helped me to feel. I couldn’t get over looking. For what did I see but that I was now—though still rather too delicately for plebeian purposes—rather more visible than before.

And what should happen then, but that, no sooner than emerged from the pinkness of that joy, I should be assaulted by, provided with—oh, sneaky-sneaky, your diversions are
endless!—
another. I saw on the shelf, just parallel with my top curve, or perhaps an inch or two below it, a small open book I hadn’t noticed before. And looking into it—how … can … I … say … this … slowly enough? I had become slowed down enough to—In fact, as I now know, except for a nucleole here and there or possibly a particle, I was standing stock-still, still enough to … I could read.

Not without design, the book was one containing many soliloquies. Though as yet I could only read
instantly,
the whole book being plain to me at one gulp-glance, I found that by repeating this process, I could manage to linger here and there, to savor. I rank this, among all the experiences I have had here, as perhaps the—well, I suppose I should reserve judgment. But—a fact you may be ignorant of—since at home Our life, or Life, is in its serene totality considered a work of what you would call art, we have none of your lesser muses. So, you may understand what I was up against as I first read—such contortions and coagulations, such strenuosities as who would conceive language or anything else here would curve toward?—I was adaze. And
au contraire
to all my practical training here so far, the business of which had been to separate the data of those senses which in me already acted totally—to indoctrinate that an eye alone is the see-er, that one tastes with the tongue only—this book of verse seemed almost suicidally intent on going back to the melange. And from this plunge, what a rainbow of the variable, as if the lenses of many telescopes large and small had been melted down in a pot where all the other sensations besides vision were already waiting—what flapping banners of color, what marble pictures, eaten by music! Good God!—I was glad I had been given that phrase, by whatever duenna. And beneath all of this, a contradicting, of such an imperative as I had never met before, as if all the muscles of mind were at work
against
shape of any kind, against it and number and quality also, dragging up, ever up, out of the potpourri, in a neap tide toward its own pure moon. Good God.

What saved me from going back, for good, where I came from? Yes, I confess it, there was a moment there when I thought of it, when balance rocked on balance, and I hung between our two worlds like a jack-in-the-box in the pit of the gondola of a balloon going around infinity. I ask you, very humbly. What saves
you?

All I now remember is that, dizzying myself against the shelves, at what must have been an acute caricature of my customary angle, I asked Me, to be sure in the manner of the soliloquy, yet with something of Myself added: Can I bear it? Can these veils support—the insupportable? Can this integument—withstand it? Can a One who was clearly not intended to—be a “one”? Can I bear all this
here
-splitting?

And cautiously-furtively, from somewhere withonward, I was answered. Not vocally, not even with any of the facilities of language—whose little games and pastimes I began from that moment to despise. It was … as if many images fluttered toward me to console me as I myself would wish to be consoled, to prove me the center of their circle, as mathematically as an old-style geometric proposition: Yes, you can if you stand up
straight.
Once you learn the quantity of your own
strength.
If you’ll just stand up straight, and be a—

Where these intimations might be engendered, I had no idea, as, firmly now, they goose-stepped toward me impeccably from all directions, until finally, by the most brilliant of maneuvers—
hup,
one, two,
hup—
they co-imaged in me, henceforth their center.
Halt!
And slowly, slowly, I felt myself—from without but from within too—pressured up toward the perpendicular. One by one, each image came forward, gave me an invigorating punch, and retired smartly, fist still ready-clenched. You are straight. You are strong. You are hard. You are hardstrong. You are straight. Each of these blows was accompanied by a distant background music as of yo-heave-ho’s and encouragements.
“Steady me boyo and up
y
ou go!”
In a final rain of blows, I was hoisted. And above all, gasp, punch: You are never. You are never, punch. Silly. You are never silly, punch. Punch, punch, punch. Never. You are never silly-weak, punch. Never silly-soft, punch. You are never, punch, in any way
curved.

And suddenly—
“wuddya know, boys”—
there I was, perched on top of Myself, a good bit higher than any of the gargoyles I had seen looking out over Paris. After the first surfeit—miles and miles of it and what a view—the world was mine if I could only stay up there—a few doubts came by, but nothing to worry about, a few ravens. You wouldn’t have thought them enough to make me almost afraid to look down at myself, to wake up.

At last, I was emboldened to dare to look at myself once again in the glass—and wuddya know, indeed. I was a dream. To be sure, I wasn’t any more visible than I had been, and no further changed in outline, no bumps, no holes. But there wasn’t a sign of the horizontal or the acute about me. I was a perfect dream of the vertical. This is it, I thought; this is really it. This is How I Am. And a last punch hit me.
You are safe.

W
HEN A “ONE” OF
the beings here first begins to suspect that he is acquiring a character, or as you like to say, firming one, the first thing he asks himself to do is to test it, in order to find out what it is. And in my progress toward becoming one of you, I was no exception. Since, at home, character is unmixed with gender, I was perhaps under even direr need to do so, being totally unable to distinguish between them. Perhaps both were acquired at one strike here, which would certainly be by far the most economical, I found myself thinking, then scalded myself for hanging on to an idea which was far too much like Us—such was not the style in which they would handle things in this marvelously spindrift world. They would certainly be more haphazard about something so important here. And there must be some prescribed one of their hazards which would be the proper test for what I now had.

How I was to find out by myself what this test was for a few paltry minutes perplexed me, until it occurred to me that I need only put my trust in
what
I now had, and perhaps it would already be influential enough to instruct me how to test it. It was time for a little self-exhortation. “I am straight—” I said to myself, “
very
straight.” And I am strong, perhaps not
very,
but … quite? I feel certain that I am about to be—whatever it is that I am about to be.

After a few round-rubbings of this, I looked down at myself and found I had indeed worked up a glow. Why, I had no idea, I thought self-admiringly, that I was so hot-threaded! I must be getting pinker-blooded all the time. And though by now somewhat winded, and though it was well past the hour for my midday inflation, without pausing to so refresh myself, I went on, conjuring my image. “I am—whatever it is that carries its own weight, stands fast, and talks short. I intend to fight for my rites. I am a being of few words. Or as soon as I get over my initiation, I intend to be. I intend to act. And there isn’t a curve in my body!”

This last wasn’t true, of course; indeed, quite a large part of my statement was couched in words which were unfamiliar to me, but certainly must have swum up out of my own innerstink. But, if I were ever really to get over being an ellipse—that carefulest of beings bogged in the middle-mean—this was all part of it. “This is all part of it!” I almost shouted. Yes, I almost shouted. Up to then, you must understand, I had spoken only by means of an all-over surface vibration, but now this appeared to have localized itself somewhere above my diameter, narrowing its timbre but widening its volume. That I not only had a voice, but that its first real utterance was almost a shout, was not this enormously encouraging to what I had in mind?

And just then—I fell back, exhausted. Indeed, miserable to report, I fell back so thoroughly that I found myself far beyond my former angle, far gone past even an acute case of it—in fact, I was pure horizontal.

Now, ellipses, like the horses I had seen in some of the photostats, never lie down in this position; unlike you, they are never even caught dead in it. Pride goeth, I thought, lying there. How it would have alleviated my misery to know all the positions you are really capable of—that this was all part of it too. But at the time, all I could find was a whisper in which to excuse myself to my image. “It’s because I don’t know my own strength as yet,” I said. Don’t say
as yet,
came the caution. I spoke up, still with a sigh. “Rather, I am simply a being who doesn’t know its own strength.” When there was no reply, I took that to mean that I might continue in this vein. “Probably, I am a creature of such strength that it would be dangerous for me not to know the limits of it.” Silence. “Maybe I ought to test my strength-hood, not for itself, but for the sake of the weaklings I will surely encounter.” Quite a pause after this one, too. So at last I dared to say it. “Try me. What
is
the test for what I believe to be my—” But since I wasn’t really sure whether it was character or gender I was applying for, I simply shouted again, this time, “Try me.
You just try!
” And found myself miraculously on my feet—that is, vertical—once more.

And not only that—even braver. I went round the room, and anywhere I met myself in the glass, which was everywhere, I said to it, “Come on now, think you know the test, huh; come on now, brother!” Brother. Where does one get those ideas? But when the answer came it was right from my authority in the glass there. It was only a whisper, quietly-firmly, as such answers should come, but I heard it. “Want to
step outside?
I dare you. Why don’t you step outside, and
just see?

And since my intended being was not one to refuse a dare, that was what I prepared to do. Greenhorn that I was, I even gathered up almost all my energy, under the impression that what had carried me afield and over the great transparencies would more than easy fade me through a wall. There was a door in the wall, a large, regally obvious one of about ten feet in height, but of course, as far as doors were concerned and staircases, too, or any of those playthings which cater to the appendages, I was an aristocrat and had never used one in my life, the same being true of my manner of dealing with obstacles, it never having occurred to me to go over or around one, instead of
through.
So I gathered myself for the elide, took a last look at my image—never pinker, never prouder—said jauntily, “I’ll meet
you
outside!”, touched the proper thought, and—WHAM.

How I lived to tell this tale must after all be some sort of durility test—I must have ricocheted from surface to surface, up, down and sideways, fully thirteen times, being saved only by the dimensions of the room, just big enough to permit me the barest air-interval of relief, between making connections. During which, as with your drowners here, much passed before me. I comprehended how thoroughly I had gone against everything my mentors had been at such pains to teach me—against all the friction, weightfulness and lethargy it had taken me months to acquire. Above all—and as if I had never heard of catechisms—I had totally forgotten how much more Here I now was than There. Only let me get through this, I prayed, I promised, and I’ll never again forget the distance between a floor and a ceiling. And it’s true, I’ve never had to stop to puzzle over that later; there’s something to be said for the school of hard knocks. Then at last, I once again lay prone.