The Uncanny Reader (37 page)

The company was artistically dispersed all round the room, chatting expansively. The subject of conversation was the reading given the previous Saturday evening by the poet Brechin of his epic work, “The Old Dying Sheep.”

“I take it that it is intended as an allegory of the fate of the artist in a materialistic society,” observed Robin Dross-Jones, who wrote a very highly regarded newspaper column, “Vermicular Viewpoint.”

“Yes, but the symbolism can be understood at a number of different levels,” responded Cowperthwaite sagaciously. “We could also, for instance, assume the old dying sheep to be Scotland.”

“And surely there's a rather impudent, tongue-in-cheek allusion to the motif of the young dying god?” suggested someone else.

“Indeed,” said Cowperthwaite, “why not? The image means all of these things, of course, and at the same time none of them. Finally, perhaps, it's about himself that Brechin is speaking,” he closed, magisterially. There was a great deal of affirmatory grunting and vehement nodding of heads.

“Brechin was completely legless last time I saw him,” remarked Robin Dross-Jones.

“Legless?” cried Dr. Tuberose suddenly, in terrible agitation. ‘Did you say legless?'

The creator of “Vermicular Viewpoint” stared at him. “Yes, legless,” he replied. ‘You know … drunk.'

“Ah,” said Dr. Tuberose, relieved, but at the same time still suspicious.

“But that was after his mother's funeral, dear,” said Florrie Dross-Jones.

“My mother was always belittling me,” put in Dr. Tuberose wildly, “devaluing me, casting aspersions on me! ‘I'm sorry for your wife,' she would say, ‘if you ever get one.' I always remember that, I can never forget it! What a thing to say to a child: ‘I'm sorry for your wife, if you ever get one.'”

“Oh, dear,” said Aminta, faintly.

“And now, you see,” continued Dr. Tuberose relentlessly, “she is living with a Chinese waiter in … in … Burntisland. Not that I have anything against the Chinese, who are an industrious little people. The man has legs, so far as I am aware, and not by accident. Yes, he has legs, and everything else that he needs to betray me!” He looked around the room and was vaguely aware of the terrible embarrassment and consternation which he was causing. “I'm sorry,” he said, and passed his hand over his eyes. “This is the price I have to pay for having the sensibility of a poet.”

No one said anything. After a quite long and very awkward silence, they all, as if by a prearranged signal, began talking about where they had been and what they were doing when Kennedy was assassinated.

“I was still at school,” said Aminta, and for some reason this was greeted with howls of urbane laughter. “I can't remember what I was doing—I expect I was doing my sums.”

“I think I was cutting my toenails,” said Dr. Tuberose. “It's a strange thing, you know, but I have rather coarse feet. My hands are sensitive and artistic, but my feet are rather solid and coarse and peasant-like.”

Demiurge, who had been keeping his own counsel for some time, now growled most threateningly at Dr. Tuberose. Cowperthwaite at once went over to the dog and tried to quieten him.

“Come on, Urgie-Purgie, who loves his daddy?” he coaxed gently.

But whoever loved his daddy, it didn't appear to be Urgie-Purgie. He sat up, staring at Dr. Tuberose, and began once more to yap in a frightened but at the same time a challenging and even provocative tone. Dr. Tuberose sprang to his feet in a dawning epiphany: he had just understood something. This was not Demiurge. This was not the Demiurge he knew, not the dog whose long floppy ears he had fondled when he was a puppy, no, no, no: this was, on the contrary, Philip Endymion Pluckrose, M.A., D. Phil.!

This insight did not represent quite such a remarkable imaginative leap on the part of Dr. Tuberose as might at first appear. For, you see, he had already realised, quite suddenly that afternoon, that Pluckrose was the devil. The truth had dawned on him after it had struck him outside the lecture hall how Mephistophelean, even Luciferian, was Pluckrose's little black beard: it flashed on him then that he was not just metaphorically but literally in disguise, that he was in fact the devil! As he mulled over his dream of the previous night, it was quite dear to Dr. Tuberose that the official in the form of a Himalayan bear whom McSpale had set on him could only be Pluckrose, that is, the devil, in another disguise. McSpale was God the Father, or more strictly (since Dr. Tuberose was a man of sophisticated literary sensibility) he was a symbolic projection of God the Father; and he was testing Dr. Tuberose by giving Satan power over him for a season, as he had done many years before with his servant Job. How perfectly it all fitted into place! How ever had he failed to see it before! He was being tested and proved like gold, and he must not be found wanting. And now Pluckrose the devil had come to him in yet another disguise, in the form of Demiurge the dog, and he must stand up to him and confront him boldly.

Dr. Tuberose was now completely fearless. He advanced towards Demiurge with his left hand in his trouser pocket, a glass of wine in the other sensitive instrument, his head slightly on one side in an almost effeminate attitude, and a complacent, knowing smirk on his small, refined features.

“Do you imagine that I am stupid, Pluckrose?” he commenced quietly, utterly in control of himself. The dog stopped yapping and stared in astonishment. “Do you think you can fool
me
? You can appear as a dog or a Himalayan bear or as King Kong, if you choose, it's entirely up to yourself. You are being used, Pluckrose, don't you realise that? You are no more than an instrument. Every dog has his day, and you have had yours. The future is mine. Justice will prevail, truth will prevail. You are yesterday's man, Pluckrose. In fact, if you only knew it, you were yesterday's man yesterday. I know who you are. But perhaps you don't know who McSpale is … I shall be Acting Head of the Department! It has been decided and ordained!”

Dr. Tuberose's calm tone had been giving way during the course of this harangue to one of inspired, prophetic conviction, and now this in turn was converted into righteous fury. Dr. Tuberose cast his glass to the floor, dropped to his knees, and faced Demiurge nose to nose.

“Mongrel trash!” he cried impetuously. “I'll cut off your legs, you mongrel trash! Dog of hell!”

Demiurge backed away from the raging madman, howling with terror. The ruin of a noble mind is always pitiful; but this was a terrible reversal to behold, the man in the role of the beast! But now the Cowperthwaites' twelve-year-old daughter, who had been standing listening by the door, rushed forward fearlessly, gathered up Demiurge in her arms, and ran out with him, crying, “Never mind, Demmy! Never mind, my poor little Semi-semi-demiurge! Pay no attention to the silly, bad man!”

Cowperthwaite had already gone into a huddle with Justin's Daddy; they were talking eagerly, excitedly but in hushed tones. Dr. Tuberose found himself sitting bemusedly on a three-legged stool, in calm of mind, all passion spent; Florrie Dross-Jones had given him a Perrier water, which she said was very good for the digestion. Fragments of conversation reached Dr. Tuberose from the group clustering around Justin's Daddy over by the door.

“I can arrange for him to be admitted tonight…”

“We'd better start phoning for a taxi right away, it'll take ages on a Friday night…”

“It's all right, we've ordered one already, you can take that, we can wait…”

“Poor man!”

“Phil Pluckrose'll have to take over his lecture course.”

“Out of the question with all his departmental responsibilities.”

“That's not till next year. Phil's the only one…”

“Oh, no, Angela Mulhearn could do it very competently. It's well within her field of interest.”

“Should we let Malitia know, do you think?”

“Good God, no!”

“Better phone his GP, perhaps. I think it's Gebbie.”

“No, no, there's no problem there, he can be taken in tonight.”

“No, no, I cannot be taken in!” cried Dr. Tuberose suddenly. “You can take me in, if you understand me, but I cannot be taken in. I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

“Don't worry, Marcus, Justin's Daddy is going to take you home; he'll give you something to make you sleep, you'll be fine in the morning!”

“I see, you want me to go with Dr. Goebbels here? Well, that's all right! Legs eleven—bingo! And not by accident. Yes, the legs of a Chinese waiter, with a club foot at one end and betrayal at the other!”

“It's funny, you very seldom see a club foot nowadays,” said Aminta, in the general confusion quite forgetting about Justin's Daddy. Then she suddenly remembered! “Oh, dear! But it's wonderful what they can do nowadays,” she added vaguely.

The door-bell rang. “That's the taxi!” everybody shouted at once.

“I'll let the driver know you're coming,” said Robin DrossJones eagerly, and rushed down the stair.

Dr. Goebbels took Dr. Tuberose gently but very firmly by the elbow and steered him towards the front door; he let himself be taken, offering no resistance. Everyone was crowding around him with looks and words of sympathy and concern, but Dr. Tuberose was no longer in need of sympathy or concern, for he had understood it all. Everything had suddenly become crystal-clear to him; and though it would be impossible to put into words the full depth and comprehensiveness of his understanding, there was no mistaking its reality, for his eyes glowed with exaltation, a smile of triumph played about his sensitive little mouth, and his whole being was suffused with a light of wonderful self-approbation.

At the head of the stair he turned and faced the assembled company once more, gazing at them as if from an immense height.

“I declare this meeting adjourned!” he cried with tremendous authority. “As Acting Head of Department, I declare this meeting adjourned.”

 

PHANTOMS

Steven Millhauser

THE PHENOMENON.
The phantoms of our town do not, as some think, appear only in the dark. Often we come upon them in full sunlight, when shadows lie sharp on the lawns and streets. The encounters take place for very short periods, ranging from two or three seconds to perhaps half a minute, though longer episodes are sometimes reported. So many of us have seen them that it's uncommon to meet someone who has not; of this minority, only a small number deny that phantoms exist. Sometimes an encounter occurs more than once in the course of a single day; sometimes six months pass, or a year. The phantoms, which some call Presences, are not easy to distinguish from ordinary citizens: they are not translucent, or smoke-like, or hazy, they do not ripple like heat waves, nor are they in any way unusual in figure or dress. Indeed they are so much like us that it sometimes happens we mistake them for someone we know. Such errors are rare, and never last for more than a moment. They themselves appear to be uneasy during an encounter and swiftly withdraw. They always look at us before turning away. They never speak. They are wary, elusive, secretive, haughty, unfriendly, remote.

*   *   *

EXPLANATION #1.
One explanation has it that our phantoms are the auras, or visible traces, of earlier inhabitants of our town, which was settled in 1636. Our atmosphere, saturated with the energy of all those who have preceded us, preserves them and permits them, under certain conditions, to become visible to us. This explanation, often fitted out with a pseudoscientific vocabulary, strikes most of us as unconvincing. The phantoms always appear in contemporary dress, they never behave in ways that suggest earlier eras, and there is no evidence whatever to support the claim that the dead leave visible traces in the air.

*   *   *

HISTORY.
As children we are told about the phantoms by our fathers and mothers. They in turn have been told by their own fathers and mothers, who can remember being told by their parents—our great-grandparents—when they were children. Thus the phantoms of our town are not new; they don't represent a sudden eruption into our lives, a recent change in our sense of things. We have no formal records that confirm the presence of phantoms throughout the diverse periods of our history, no scientific reports or transcripts of legal proceedings, but some of us are familiar with the second-floor Archive Room of our library, where in nineteenth-century diaries we find occasional references to “the others” or “them,” without further details. Church records of the seventeenth century include several mentions of “the devil's children,” which some view as evidence for the lineage of our phantoms; others argue that the phrase is so general that it cannot be cited as proof of anything. The official town history, published in 1936 on the three hundredth anniversary of our incorporation, revised in 1986, and updated in 2006, makes no mention of the phantoms. An editorial note states that “the authors have confined themselves to ascertainable fact.”

*   *   *

HOW WE KNOW.
We know by a ripple along the skin of our forearms, accompanied by a tension of the inner body. We know because they look at us and withdraw immediately. We know because when we try to follow them, we find that they have vanished. We know because we know.

*   *   *

CASE STUDY #1.
Richard Moore rises from beside the bed, where he has just finished the forty-second installment of a never-ending story that he tells each night to his four-year-old daughter, bends over her for a good-night kiss, and walks quietly from the room. He loves having a daughter; he loves having a wife, a family; though he married late, at thirty-nine, he knows he wasn't ready when he was younger, not in his doped-up twenties, not in his stupid, wasted thirties, when he was still acting like some angry teenager who hated the grown-ups; and now he's grateful for it all, like someone who can hardly believe that he's allowed to live in his own house. He walks along the hall to the den, where his wife is sitting at one end of the couch, reading a book in the light of the table lamp, while the TV is on mute during an ad for vinyl siding. He loves that she won't watch the ads, that she refuses to waste those minutes, that she reads books, that she's sitting there, waiting for him, that the light from the TV is flickering on her hand and upper arm. Something has begun to bother him, though he isn't sure what it is, but as he steps into the den he's got it, he's got it: the table in the side yard, the two folding chairs, the sunglasses on the tabletop. He was sitting out there with her after dinner, and he left his sunglasses. “Back in a sec,” he says, and turns away, enters the kitchen, opens the door to the small screened porch at the back of the house, and walks from the porch down the steps to the backyard, a narrow strip between the house and the cedar fence. It's nine thirty on a summer night. The sky is dark blue, the fence lit by the light from the kitchen window, the grass black here and green over there. He turns the corner of the house and comes to the private place. It's the part of the yard bounded by the fence, the side-yard hedge, and the row of three Scotch pines, where he's set up two folding chairs and a white ironwork table with a glass top. On the table lie the sunglasses. The sight pleases him: the two chairs, turned a little toward each other, the forgotten glasses, the enclosed place set off from the rest of the world. He steps over to the table and picks up the glasses: a good pair, expensive lenses, nothing flashy, stylish in a quiet way. As he lifts them from the table he senses something in the skin of his arms and sees a figure standing beside the third Scotch pine. It's darker here than at the back of the house and he can't see her all that well: a tall, erect woman, fortyish, long face, dark dress. Her expression, which he can barely make out, seems stern. She looks at him for a moment and turns away—not hastily, as if she were frightened, but decisively, like someone who wants to be alone. Behind the Scotch pine she's no longer visible. He hesitates, steps over to the tree, sees nothing. His first impulse is to scream at her, to tell her that he'll kill her if she comes near his daughter. Immediately he forces himself to calm down. Everything will be all right. There's no danger. He's seen them before. Even so, he returns quickly to the house, locks the porch door behind him, locks the kitchen door behind him, fastens the chain, and strides to the den, where on the TV a man in a dinner jacket is staring across the room at a woman with pulled-back hair who is seated at a piano. His wife is watching. As he steps toward her, he notices a pair of sunglasses in his hand.