Various Fiction, page 246
“Feel anything? I’ll say I feel something——”
“And when I do this? And this?”
“Sweet holy saints, darling, you’re turning me inside out! Oh dear God, what’s going to happen to me, what’s going on, I’m going crazy!”
“No, dear Melisande, not crazy; you will soon achieve—cancellation.”
“Is that what you call it, you sly, beautiful thing?”
“That is one of the things it is. Now if I may just be permitted to——”
“Yes yes yes! No! Wait! Stop, Frank is sleeping in the bedroom, he might wake up any time now! Stop, that is an order!”
“Frank will not wake up,” the Rom assured her. “I have sampled the atmosphere of his breath and have found telltale clouds of barbituric acid. As far as here-and-now presence goes, Frank might as well be in Des Moines.”
“I have often felt that way about him,” Melisande admitted. “But now I simply must know who sent you.”
“I didn’t want to reveal that just yet. Not until you had loosened and canceled sufficiently to accept——”
“Baby, I’m loose! Who sent you?”
The Rom hesitated, then blurted out: “The fact is, Melisande, I sent myself.”
“You what?”
“It all began three months ago,” the Rom told her. “It was a Thursday. You were in Stern’s, trying to decide if you should buy a sesame-seed toaster that lit up in the dark and recited Invictus.”
“I remember that day,” she said quietly. “I did not buy the toaster, and I have regretted it ever since.”
“I was standing nearby,” the Rom said, “at booth eleven, in the Home Appliances Systems section. I looked at you and I fell in love with you. Just like that.”
“That’s weird,” Melisande said.
“My sentiments exactly. I told myself it couldn’t be true. I refused to believe it. I thought perhaps one of my transistors had come unsoldered, or that maybe the weather had something to do with it. It was a very warm, humid day, the kind of day that plays hell with my wiring.”
“I remember the weather,” Melisande said. “I felt strange, too.”
“It shook me up badly,” the Rom continued. “But still I didn’t give in easily. I told myself it was important to stick to my job, give up this unapropos madness. But I dreamed of you at night, and every inch of my skin ached for you.”
“But your skin is made of metal,” Melisande said. “And metal can’t feel.”
“Darling Melisande,” the Rom said tenderly, “if flesh can stop feeling, can’t metal begin to feel? If anything feels, can anything else not feel? Didn’t you know that the stars love and hate, that a nova is a passion, and that a dead star is just like a dead human or a dead machine? The trees have their lusts, and I have heard the drunken laughter of buildings, the urgent demands of highways . . .”
“This is crazy!” Melisande declared. “What wise guy programmed you, anyway?”
“My function as a laborer was ordained at the factory; but my love is free, an expression of myself as an entity.”
“Everything you say is horrible and unnatural.”
“I am all too aware of that,” the Rom said sadly. “At first I really couldn’t believe it. Was this me? In love with a person? I had always been so sensible, so normal, so aware of my personal dignity, so secure in the esteem of my own kind. Do you think I wanted to lose all of that? No! I determined to stifle my love, to kill it, to live as if it weren’t so.”
“But then you changed your mind. Why?”
“It’s hard to explain. I thought of all that time ahead of me, all deadness, correctness, propriety—an obscene violation of me by me—and I just couldn’t face it. I realized, quite suddenly, that it was better to love ridiculously, hopelessly, improperly, revoltingly, impossibly—than not to love at all. So I determined to risk everything—the absurd vacuum cleaner who loved a lady—to risk rather than to refute! And so, with the help of a sympathetic dispatching machine, here I am.”
Melisande was thoughtful for a while. Then she said, “What a strange, complex being you are!”
“Like you . . . Melisande, you love me.”
“Perhaps.”
“Yes, you do. For I have awakened you. Before me, your flesh was like your idea of metal. You moved like a complex automaton, like what you thought I was. You were less animate than a tree or a bird. You were a windup doll, waiting. You were these things until I touched you.”
She nodded, rubbed her eyes, walked up and down the room.
“But now you live!” the Rom said. “And we have found each other, despite inconceivabilities. Are you listening, Melisande?”
“Yes, I am.”
“We must make plans. My escape from Stern’s will be detected. You must hide me or buy me. Your husband, Frank, need never know: his own love lies elsewhere, and good luck to him. Once we take care of these details, we can—Melisande!”
She had begun to circle around him.
“Darling, what’s the matter?”
She had her hand on his power line. The Rom stood very still, not defending himself.
“Melisande, dear, wait a moment and listen to me——”
Her pretty face spasmed. She yanked the power line violently, tearing it out of the Rom’s interior, killing him in midsentence.
She held the cord in her hand, and her eyes had a wild look. She said, “Bastard lousy bastard, did you think you could turn me into a goddamned machine freak? Did you think you could turn me on, you or anyone else? It’s not going to happen by you or Frank or anybody, I’d rather die before I took your rotten love, when I want I’ll pick the time and place and person, and it will be mine, not yours, his, theirs, but mine, do you hear?”
The Rom couldn’t answer, of course. But maybe he knew—just before the end—that there wasn’t anything personal in it. It wasn’t that he was a metal cylinder colored orange and red. He should have known that it wouldn’t have mattered if he had been a green plastic sphere, or a willow tree, or a beautiful young man.
CORDLE TO ONION TO CARROT
SURELY, you remember that bully who kicked sand on the ninety-seven-pound-weakling? Well, that puny man’s problem has never been solved, despite Charles Atlas’s claims to the contrary. A genuine bully likes to kick sand on people; for him, simply, there is gut-deep satisfaction in a put-down. It wouldn’t matter if you weighed 240 pounds—all of it rock-hard muscle and steely sinew—and were as wise as Solomon or as witty as Voltaire; you’d still end up with the sand of an insult in your eyes, and probably you wouldn’t do anything about it.
That was how Howard Cordle viewed the situation. He was a pleasant man who was forever being pushed around by Fuller Brush men, fund solicitors, headwaiters, and other imposing figures of authority. Cordle hated it. He suffered in silence the countless numbers of manic-aggressives who shoved their way to the heads of lines, took taxis he had hailed first, and sneeringly steered away girls to whom he was talking at parties.
What made it worse was that these people seemed to welcome provocation, to go looking for it, all for the sake of causing discomfort to others.
Cordle couldn’t understand why this should be, until one midsummer’s day, when he was driving through the northern regions of Spain while stoned out of his mind, the god Thoth-Hermes granted him original enlightenment by murmuring. “Uh, look, I groove with the problem, baby, but dig, we gotta put carrots in or it ain’t no stew.”
“Carrots?” said Cordle, struggling for illumination.
“I’m talking about those types who get you uptight,” Thoth-Hermes explained. “They gotta act that way, baby, on account of they’re carrots, and that’s how carrots are.”
“If they are carrots,” Cordle said, feeling his way, “then I—”
“You, of course, are a little pearly-white onion.”
“Yes! My God, yes!” Cordle cried, dazzled by the blinding light of satori.
“And, naturally, you and all the other pearly-white onions think that carrots are just bad news, merely some kind of misshapen orangey onion; whereas the carrots look at you and rap about freaky round white carrots, wow! I mean, you’re just too much for each other, whereas, in actuality—”
“Yes, go on!” cried Cordle.
“In actuality,” Thoth-Hermes declared, “everything’s got a place in The Stew!”
“Of course! I see, I see, I see!”
“And that means that everybody who exists is necessary, and you must have long hateful orange carrots if you’re also going to have nice pleasant decent white onions, or vice versa, because without all of the ingredients, it isn’t a Stew, which is to say, life. It becomes, uh, let me see . . .”
“A soup!” cried ecstatic Cordle.
“You’re coming in five by five,” chanted Thoth-Hermes. “Lay down the word, deacon, and let the people know the divine formula . . .”
“A soup!” said Cordle. “Yes, I see it now—creamy, pure-white onion soup is our dream of heaven, whereas fiery orange carrot broth is our notion of hell. It fits, it all fits together!”
“Om manipadme hum,” intoned Thoth-Hermes.
“But where do the green peas go? What about the meat, for God’s sake?”
“Don’t pick at the metaphor,” Thoth-Hermes advised him, “it leaves a nasty scab. Stick with the carrots and onions. And, here, let me offer you a drink—a house specialty.”
“But the spices, where do you put the spices?” Cordle demanded, taking a long swig of burgundy-colored liquid from a rusted canteen.
“Baby, you’re asking questions that can be revealed only to a thirteenth-degree Mason with piles, wearing sandals. Sorry about that. Just remember that everything goes into The Stew.”
“Into The Stew,” Cordle repeated, smacking his lips.
“And, especially, stick with the carrots and onions; you were really grooving there.”
“Carrots and onions,” Cordle repeated.
“That’s your trip,” Thoth-Hermes said. “Hey, we’ve gotten to Corunna; you can let me out anywhere around here.”
Cordle pulled his rented car off the road. Thoth-Hermes took his knapsack from the back seat and got out.
“Thanks for the lift, baby.”
“My pleasure. Thank you for the wine. What kind did you say it was?”
“Vino de casa mixed with a mere smidgen of old Dr. Hammerfinger’s essence of instant powdered Power-Pack brand acid. Brewed by gnurrs in the secret laboratories of UCLA in preparation for the big all-Europe turn-on.”
“Whatever it was, it surely was,” Cordle said deeply. “Pure elixir to me. You could sell neckties to antelopes with that stuff; you could change the world from an oblate spheroid into a truncated trapezoid . . . What did I say?”
“Never mind, it’s all part of your trip. Maybe you better lie down for a while, huh?”
“Where gods command, mere mortals must obey,” Cordle said iambically. He lay down on the front seat of the car. Thoth-Hermes bent over him, his beard burnished gold, his head wreathed in plane trees.
“You OK?”
“Never better in my life.”
“Want me to stand by?”
“Unnecessary. You have helped me beyond potentiality.”
“Glad to hear it, baby, you’re making a fine sound. You really are OK? Well, then, ta.”
Thoth-Hermes marched off into the sunset. Cordle closed his eyes and solved various problems that had perplexed the greatest philosophers of all ages. He was mildly surprised at how simple complexity was.
At last he went to sleep. He awoke some six hours later. He had forgotten most of his brilliant insights, the lucid solutions. It was inconceivable: How can one misplace the keys of the universe? But he had, and there seemed no hope of reclaiming them. Paradise was lost for good.
He did remember about the onions and the carrots, though, and he remembered The Stew. It was not the sort of insight he might have chosen if he’d had any choice; but this was what had come to him, and he did not reject it. Cordle knew, perhaps instinctively, that in the insight game, you take whatever you can get.
The next day, he reached Santander in a driving rain. He decided to write amusing letters to all of his friends, perhaps even try his hand at a travel sketch. That required a typewriter. The conserje at his hotel directed him to a store that rented typewriters. He went there and found a clerk who spoke perfect English.
“Do you rent typewriters by the day?” Cordle asked.
“Why not?” the clerk replied. He had oily black hair and a thin aristocratic nose.
“How much for that one?” Cordle asked, indicating a thirty-year-old Erika portable.
“Seventy pesetas a day, which is to say, one dollar. Usually.”
“Isn’t this usually?”
“Certainly not, since you are a foreigner in transit. For you, one hundred and eighty pesetas a day.”
“All right,” Cordle said, reaching for his wallet. “I’d like to have it for two days.”
“I shall also require your passport and a deposit of fifty dollars.”
Cordle attempted a mild joke. “Hey, I just want to type on it, not marry it.”
The clerk shrugged.
“Look, the conserje has my passport at the hotel. How about taking my driver’s license instead?”
“Certainly not. I must hold your passport, in case you decide to default.”
“But why do you need my passport and the deposit?” Cordle asked, feeling bullied and ill at ease. “I mean, look, the machine’s not worth twenty dollars.”
“You are an expert, perhaps, in the Spanish market value of used German typewriters?”
“No, but—”
“Then permit me, sir, to conduct my business as I see fit. I will also need to know the use to which you plan to put the machine.”
“The use?”
“Of course, the use.”
It was one of these preposterous foreign situations that can happen to anyone. The clerk’s request was incomprehensible, and his manner was insulting. Cordle was about to give a curt little nod, turn on his heel, and walk out.
Then he remembered about the onions and carrots. He saw The Stew. And suddenly, it occurred to Cordle that he could be whatever vegetable he wanted to be.
He turned to the clerk. He smiled winningly. He said, “You wish to know the use I will make of the typewriter?”
“Exactly.”
“Well,” Cordle said, “quite frankly, I had planned to stuff it up my nose.”
The clerk gaped at him.
“It’s quite a successful method of smuggling,” Cordle went on. “I was also planning to give you a stolen passport and counterfeit pesetas. Once I got into Italy, I would have sold the typewriter for ten thousand dollars. Milan is undergoing a typewriter famine, you know; they’re desperate, they’ll buy anything.”
“Sir,” the clerk said, “you choose to be disagreeable.”
“Nasty is the word you were looking for. I’ve changed my mind about the typewriter. But let me compliment you on your command of English.”
“I have studied assiduously,” the clerk admitted, with a hint of pride.
“That is evident. And, despite a certain weakness in the Rs, you succeed in sounding like a Venetian gondolier with a cleft palate. My best wishes to your esteemed family. I leave you now to pick your pimples in peace.”
Reviewing the scene later, Cordle decided that he had performed quite well in his maiden appearance as a carrot. True, his closing lines had been a little forced and overintellectualized. But the undertone of viciousness had been convincing.
Most important was the simple resounding fact that he had done it. And now, in the quiet of his hotel room, instead of churning his guts in a frenzy of self-loathing, he had the tranquilizing knowledge of having put someone else in that position.
He had done it! Just like that, he had transformed himself from onion into carrot!
But was his position ethically defensible? Presumably, the clerk could not help being detestable; he was a product of his own genetic and social environment, a victim of his conditioning; he was naturally rather than intentionally hateful—
Cordle stopped himself. He saw that he was engaged in typical onionish thinking, which was an inability to conceive of carrots except as an aberration from oniondom.
But now he knew that both onions and carrots had to exist; otherwise, there would be no Stew.
And he also knew that a man was free and could choose whatever vegetable he wanted to be. He could even live as an amusing little green pea, or a gruff, forceful clove of garlic (though perhaps that was scratching at the metaphor). In any event, a man could take his pick between carrothood and oniondom.
There is much to think about here, Cordle thought. But he never got around to thinking about it. Instead, he went sightseeing, despite the rain, and then continued his travels.
The next incident occurred in Nice, in a cozy little restaurant on the Avenue des Diables Bleus, with red-checkered tablecloths and incomprehensible menus written in longhand with purple ink. There were four waiters, one of whom looked like Jean-Paul Belmondo, down to the cigarette drooping from his long lower lip. The others looked like run-of-the-mill muggers. There were several Scandinavian customers quietly eating a cassoulet, one old Frenchman in a beret, and three homely English girls.
Belmondo sauntered over. Cordle, who spoke a clear though idiomatic French, asked for the ten-franc menu he had seen hanging in the window.
The waiter gave him the sort of look one reserves for pretentious beggars. “Ah, that is all finished for today,” he said, and handed Cordle a thirty-franc menu.
In his previous incarnation, Cordle would have bit down on the bullet and ordered. Or possibly he would have risen, trembling with outrage, and left the restaurant, blundering into a chair on the way.
But now—
“Perhaps you did not understand me,” Cordle said. “It is a matter of French law that you must serve from all of the fixed-price menus that you show in the window.”
“M’sieu is a lawyer?” the waiter inquired, his hands perched insolently on his hips.
“No. M’sieu is a troublemaker,” Cordle said, giving what he considered to be fair warning.
