Complete Short Fiction, page 30
The rolling and pitching slowly abated, though the rain came down steadily, drumming on the aluminum hull. Cora lay tiredly back in her seat and her thoughts turned hard and bitter. They had won, but they had paid too high a price. She remembered Milton’s Stein’s calm, professional voice as he spoke of death and ruin in a flat spin, just before the Tesla’s radio gear was smashed by a grapefruit-sized lump of ice. Their hard-fought triumph seemed spoiled and stupid.
At that moment Ray, who was peering at his bare feet and his socks, hanging on the control wheel to dry, said in a thoughtful voice, “I wonder if fags get to go to heaven?”
The comment seemed entirely too much for Cora, and she bared her large teeth in rage, then turned to Ray. “Listen,” she said in her most acid tone, “do you realize why you’ve got this stupid thing about hating homosexuals, Ray? I’m going to tell you. You had something going with Van Stevens, either in your head or for real, and when he died piloting in that crazy thunderhead project you organized, you just flipped right over the edge on that subject. You should go to a shrink, Ray. You’re sick in the head!”
But for once, Ray made no answer or change of expression, and Cora, replaying those cruel words in her own head, realized she had gone over the edge herself. She reached and put her hand on Ray’s arm. “Ray, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. We’re both upset over this, over Milt and Bertie.” But even this dropping of her defenses had no effect on thoughtful Ray, and he said nothing more while the clouds cleared away and a big yellow sun popped up over the rim. Fifty yards away, Techoceanics’ substantial recovery vessel, Alessandro Volta, stopped to put down her power launch to take off Cora and Ray, then fasten the falls from a stern-mounted A-frame to bring the battered Tesla aboard. Nearby, two big offshore cutters, Dauntless and Intrepid, carried the overflow of important guests who had come to see the heroes be rescued amid the ruins of the storm they broke in half. Elected officials, important persons in the federal meteorological establishment, and high-level bureaucrats including a secretary or two from several departments, watched from the cutters, but not, as the Times sarcastically noted in a waspish editorial about federal meddling, anyone from Justice or the federal judiciary.
While the launch brought still-silent Ray and introspective Cora across to the Volta, a big Coast Guard machine descended onto the after platform of the Dauntless, and still more dignitaries climbed rapidly out of the helicopter cabin to peer across at them.
The chop was still two or three feet high, but Cora, then Ray, made the jump to the lowered, slanting ladder and clambered up to the main deck of the Volta. All the hurricane modification team and its friends had been brought out by a triumphant Techoceanics Corporation. Bobby, white and grinning and allowed to come only because the doctors knew his not being there would be even more harmful, was held tightly around the waist by a slim, now happy and thus pretty, Bettina in a bright and shapely dress. Arthur Goodspeed looked exhausted, a thousand years old, and completely at peace, and beside him stood Professor Worth, Moke Mogamo, and Walter Nunes. Nearby was a completely dazzled Peter Heartshorn, clutching his father’s hand. Mr. Heartshorn’s pouched and puffed cheeks gave him the aspect of an overweight squirrel finally, happily, ready for the winter. Stew Johnson held Peter’s other hand and now and then explained some technical point to the gaping boy in a stern, professional whisper.
Clustered together near the front were the Hartford people, many more now and including the great man himself, B.B. Broadhurst, president of gigantic Hartford Fire and Casualty and chairman of the Underwriters Weather Modification Group. Taller than his lieutenants, his silver mane of hair was a shine of power in the TV lights.
But as Cora and Ray stepped from the ladder to the deck, to loud cheers and applause from everyone and hoots from the cutters’ sirens, the first people they saw were Stein and Smith, for the small escape capsule and its large parachute had been taken from the water only a half hour before by the Volta, and the two men stood in their mussed coveralls, their bulky flying suits still over their arms, beaming at everybody.
At that moment, the most extraordinary thing of all happened. Ray, his eyes suddenly blinded by tears, dashed unsteadily forward with a cry of “Oh, thank God!” and flung himself on the astonished pilot, sweeping up an owlishly blinking Bertram Smith with his other arm, and then kissing and hugging them both with babblings of thanksgiving and praise.
Bobby, who stepped forward to shake Cora’s hand, stopped in arrested amazement. “Cora,” he said softly, “what in the hell have you been drinking on that boat?” But Cora only blinked at the cameras and said nothing.
Biddle Bonniford Broadhurst strode hastily across the deck, his large, liver-spotted hands wide in welcome, then clasped Ray, Milton, and Bertram Smith in his own huge embrace, beaming back at the cameras. “Come on, Cora,” he shouted, “Get over here! You earned it, lady, and I’m going to give it to you!”
Soon the four heroes were separated and adjusted, two on each side of looming B.B. Broadhurst, who fished a large-size certified bank check from his pocket and turned, bowing low and gracefully to Cora, who smiled fear-somely and seized the check. “One million dollars, Cora. Less than a tenth of a percent of Claude’s loss potential for us, and more to come,” said Broadhurst, making large, expansive gestures. He turned and bowed again to Milton Stein. “And Captain Stein, we received your message loud and clear in Hartford about the Blackbird, and we’re going to get you two of them.”
That was too much for Ray. “Oh hell, B.B.,” he snarled, “just give us one and hand the other one to Israel. Then that damn-fool judge, what’s his name . . . Farbgold, Silverfarb, Golden-finger . . . will electrocute those college-punk environmental freaks. . . .”
Fortunately, most of this was made confused or inaudible by a combination of Cora’s loudest snarls and by both Bobby and B.B. Broadhurst stepping rapidly forward with loud, agitated laughter. Broadhurst waved his arms wildly at the others. “Come on, you giant-killers, get in the picture, all of you!” he roared in all directions.
As they pressed noisily forward, Moke said in Bettina’s ear, “Man, I’m really glad to see that old Ray is okay. I figgered he’d been beaned by one of those ice balls when he kissed Milt and Aunt Bertie.”
“Oh, give Ray his moment of sweetness, Moke,” said a smiling Bettina. “Nobody’s completely imperfect. Remember what you said on the way over to Wasque?”
The idea of Ray’s sweetness had turned Moke’s agile mind in another direction. He leaned back, while B.B. noisily tried to get them adjusted for the TV shots, so that Bobby, Bettina, Nunes, and Professor Worth could hear. “Did you guys ever actually picture Ray and Cora making it together?” he asked in a quiet voice. “I mean totally undressed, on a giant, queen-sized motel bed with a bottle of gin on the nightstand.”
So sudden and unlikely was this vision that Bobby, Bettina, Nunes, and the professor simultaneously doubled over in attempts to stifle their uncontrollable laughter. As the TV lights and cameras panned across the assembling group, Walter Nunes’s mother, Isobel, sitting proudly in her New Bedford parlor to watch her son honored on TV as one of the tiny team of hurricane busters, was dismayed to see him bent, helpless, in a convulsive laughing fit. “Well, he never did take much of anything seriously,” she said apologetically to the other women.
Her next-door neighbor, Rose Meideros, snorted. “So, and what’s wrong with enjoying yourself? And look, those two big shots and that old professor are broken up, too.”
That observation mollified Isobel Nunes somewhat, but she thoughtfully shook her head. “Still, see how straight, how dignified and proud that big colored boy who works with Walt stands there. He went to Harvard, Walter told me. My, what a difference that makes!”
The Geometry of Narrative
This is, as you’ll see, a bit hard to categorize. I think it’s a short story, but "short” is a measure of length. . . . Anyway, watch your step, and enjoy!
The graduate seminar, “Modern Critical Theories,” (Eng. Lit. 674, 3 Cr.) theoretically occupied only Wednesday afternoon, but in fact it stretched into a region where time virtually ceased to run. There was no relief, for with only six of us in the small seminar room, drowsing or nodding into a sweet ten-minute repose now and then was impossible. We were all graduate “section hands,” earning our tiny pittances as we pursued will-o-the-wisp doctoral degrees by teaching the vast, sluggish, introductory courses in English Lit and its stunted, bastard child, Rhetoric (whatever Rhetoric actually is).
Yet what we chosen few studied in our ivory tower of scholarship was even more boring and useless than the oversimplifications we droned at the sleeping or whispering frosh. Finally, after more than two hours of an especially confused lecture. I spoke my complaints to Professor Herman Gabriel Stang, an ancient full bull in English Lit and my major professor.
“Dr. Stang,” I said as bravely as possible, “may I speak, for once, frankly to you at this seminar?”
Old Stang, his bald pate a ruddy shine under the fluorescents, turned little colorless eyes in my direction. A diamondback rattler, I thought suddenly, would contemplate a lost prairie dog with similar warmth. “Academic freedom, Mr. Pilson, is the foundation stone of this university. Of course you may speak with frankness,” he said from wrinkled lips that hardly moved. His large and rimless trifocals reflected the room lights with a shimmer as his head continually shook and gave him the look of a man turning into a huge bee.
“Then, sir,” I said, “I wonder if you would comment on the purpose behind all this stuff we’re doing, all these so-called critical theories, like structuralism, deconstruction, semiotics. Hell, we can’t even get the freshmen to wake up for Mellors plowing Lady Chatterly. If we ever tried to talk semiotics to them, half the class would dislocate their jaws from yawning and the rest would go into coma.”
Stang gave us all a frozen grimace and thin Miss Lee, sitting at my left, gave a shiver and took a large gulp of hot coffee. “You see English Literature as mainly cheap, titillating entertainment then, Mr. Pilson?” he said in an arctic voice.
“Not a bit,” I answered. “Look, there are plenty of good, useful reasons for reading and studying literature, but hocus-pocus like semiotics and the rest don’t relate to any of them. The trouble with English Literature is that it’s run out of dissertation topics. I mean, how many more studies of Henry James’s letters to his publisher’s cousin’s landlady can there be?” That was a bold shot, since James was one of old Stang’s “men.” Miss Lee’s almond eyes went slightly wider, and she casually shifted her chair so as to get a bit farther along the table and away from me.
Stang, surprisingly, gave me a considerable smile. “So, since we have buried James under whole forests of dissertation paper, you see us now simply creating new scholarly methods as—What is the new slang word?—a scam to keep old men like myself employed?”
I nodded, also smiling in what I hoped was a steady way. “I couldn’t have stated it any better than you did, Professor,” I said. “Anybody can think up more useful literary tools than semiotics in ten minutes. Take the idea of narrative geometry, for example . . .”
The room fell silent, and Dr. Stang’s face took on a more crafty, yet somehow more human expression. “So, Mr. Pilson, you’ve been planning an ambuscade for me, a little scene to enliven our labors. Very well, I will be a sport and play the Stan Laurel part. What, Ollie, is narrative geometry?”
Several in the class chuckled in relief at Stang’s suddenly jocular tone, and Miss Lee, who was doing her dissertation in film, gave a brief yet grateful laugh.
“It’s always been around,” I said, shrugging and speaking with the casual assurance of supposedly long acquaintance. “Any narrative has a beginning, middle, and end. Well, that description also defines a one-dimensional line.”
Dr. Stang fired off a pitying sneer. “That sounds like the sort of profound triviality that might entrance the scientific community, but what exactly does it say to us about any given literary work?”
“Nothing,” I said. “You’ve got to go to at least two dimensions, to flat graphs. Plenty of the old books dealt with Shakespearean plots in terms of a rising and falling line. One coordinate was the time sequence of the story and the other was something to do with whether the plot was under development or resolution. The method helps you pick out the moment of peak narrative intensity.
“Okay, now let’s extend to three-dimensional geometrical systems. An example might be the Arabian Nights stuff. You know, the Thousand and One Nights? What is the geometrical analog to this work? Think of a three-dimensional volume, say a sphere, which represents Sheherezade and her framing story, in which she spins yarns to delay her execution. Inside that sphere and all contained by it are the thousand stories she tells. Think of them as smaller spheres within the frame story-sphere but having various sizes and relationships. Some story-spheres only touch each other and may form chains, stories in which one person and then another spins a yarn, each in turn but all within the same outer reality.
“Sometimes several story-spheres are completely enclosed, each within the next-larger outer one, as when a character in one story offers to tell a fiction, and then a character in that fiction starts on a new narrative with new characters. The point is, this assemblage of intersecting, enclosing and tangent spheres can be seen as a geometrical model of the total work. Probably undetected patterns and strengths in the story groups could be uncovered by a study of the total figure, but I think you’d need a computer-graphics capability. There are just too many stories to do it by hand on paper.”
I stopped the lecture and Dr. Stang, who did not look especially impressed by all this, shrugged. “Well, perhaps, perhaps. But one swallow does not a summer make, Mr. Pilson. I assume you can offer other congruities between geometry and narrative structure?”
“Let’s take a geometrical system and then try to imagine its literary counterpart,” I said quickly, now waving a confident hand at him. “A four-dimensional hypercube or tesseract can be projected into our space in the form of a large cube with a smaller one inside and the two connected at their eight corners. The big cube is the solid boundary of the hypercube nearest to our space, the little one inside is the bounding cube farthest away, and the two are connected by six other distorted cubes that stretch away from us into the fourth dimension. You might call that fourth dimension time, and say that the little cube is the same cube as the big one, but now farther off in future time. It’s really going to be the same size up there ahead, but we show it smaller to indicate that it’s farther off.”
I gave Miss Lee a sideways glance, saw a concealed but unmistakable bewilderment, and plunged ahead anyway. “Okay, instead of time as the fourth dimension let’s use something I’ll call narrative distance. Take a classic example, the play-within-the-play in Hamlet. Here are two separate three-dimensional realities: the play, Hamlet itself, with old Claudius popping his mental cork when he sees the Hamlet-buggered script acted out, and the shorter, smaller, on-stage murder-of-Gonzago play. But the little play is at a greater narrative distance than Hamlet, both from the real audience and from the Court of Denmark watching it on stage, since it is presented as a created artifact within the ‘true’ or ‘real’ drama. So not only is this part of Hamlet modeled by a four-dimensional geometrical object, but the staging assumes the exact projected form of the hypercube, with one small stage located in the middle of the other, larger one. Pirandello did the same sort of thing, as have others.”
Professor Stang had been following me closely and his crafty expression now intensified. “Interesting, Mr. Pilson, but it so happens that I know a little about metageometry and related matters. If this literary model is worth anything, shouldn’t we be able to perform, in a literary sense, the same manipulations that are possible in four-dimensional, geometrical space? For example, a normal cubical space, when rotated a half-turn in the fourth dimension, produces a mirror-image reversal of three-dimensional objects contained within it.”
I knew old Stang cared little for geometries and less for geometers, and had picked up that tidbit at the joint faculty-student science-fiction seminar last term, when we discussed an H.G. Wells story about a chemist whose body was reversed right for left by being flipped over in the fourth dimension. But I nodded with enthusiasm. “Tom Stoppard really did that when he wrote the play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” I said at once. “That play is Hamlet in mirror-image narrative. The original main characters—Ophelia, Hamlet, his mom and dad—are only seen now and then, while the minor characters in Shakespeare’s play are turned into the leads in Stoppard’s. Furthermore, when they did the play in New York, they set the staging as though you were looking at the actual Hamlet from the back, from behind the servants’ quarters of Elsinore Castle. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead can be geometrically modeled as Hamlet after a mirror-image reversal due to a half-rotation in the fourth dimension.”
It all sounded slick, but of course I was ready, whereas old Stang was taking in the whole thing from scratch, piece by piece, and each piece was a new thing. But he was paying close attention. “Mr. Pilson, this trial balloon you’re sending up is bright and gaudy enough, but I doubt it has much lift. The number of serious literary works that match these patterns is few indeed.”
“On the contrary,” I said firmly, “the concept of one reality lying inside another applies to every literary work. Everything written has at least two, interconnected three-dimensional spaces; the space of the author and the space of his word-constructed work.”
I looked around fiercely. “Look! We here, this little discussion between Dr. Stang and myself, our whole university, can only be recorded as words on paper, right? Somebody in another and entirely different three-dimensional space wrote these words, yet both these spaces are totally interconnected, in the same sense that the front and lack spaces of a hypercube are totally connected through the fourth dimension. And they are connected across that new direction I’m calling narrative distance.”
