Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction, page 251
I dressed and instructed the actors in their parts, rehearsing and directing them throughout. The only immunity I got was Midbin’s concession that I needn’t play the role of myself, since in my early part of spectator I would be hidden anyway and the succor was omitted as irrelevant to the therapeutic purpose. Midbin himself did nothing but tend the camera.
Any tinugraph mill would have snorted at our final product and certainly no tinugraph lyceum would have condescended to show it. After some hesitation Midbin had decided not to make a phonoto, feeling the use of sound would add no value and considerable expense, so the film didn’t even have this feature to recommend it. Fortunately for whatever involuntary professional pride was involved, no one was present at the first showing but the girl and me, Ace to work the magic lantern, and Midbin.
In the darkened room the pictures on the screen gave— after the first minutes—such an astonishing illusion that when one of the horsemen rode toward the camera we all reflexively shrank back. Despite its amateurishness the tinugraph seemed an artistic success to us, but it was no triumph in justifying its existence. The girl reacted no differently than she had toward the drawings; if anything her response was less satisfactory. The inarticulate noises ran the same scale from dismay to terror; nothing new was added. Nevertheless Midbin, his adam’s apple working joyously up and down, slapped Ace and me on the back, predicting he’d have her talking like a politician before the year was out.
I suppose the process was imperceptible; certainly there was no discernible difference between one showing and the next. The boring routine continued day after day, and so absolute was Midbin’s confidence that we were not too astonished after some weeks when, at the moment “Don Jaime” folded in simulated death, she fainted and remained unconscious for some time.
After this we expected—at least Ace and I did, Midbin only rubbed his palms together—that the constraint on her tongue would be suddenly and entirely lifted. It wasn’t, but a few showings later, at the same crucial point, she screamed. It was a genuine scream, clear and piercing, bearing small resemblance to the strangling noises we were accustomed to. Midbin had been vindicated; no mute could have voiced that full, shrill cry.
Pursuing another of his theories, he soon gave up the idea of helping her express the words in her mind in Spanish. Instead he concentrated on teaching her English. His method was primitive, consisting of pointing solemnly to objects and repeating their names in an artificial monotone.
“She’ll have an odd way of speaking,” remarked Ace; “all nouns, singular nouns at that, said with a mouthful of pebbles. I can just imagine the happy day: ‘Man chair wall girl floor,’ and you bubbling back, ‘Carpet ceiling earth grass.’
“I’ll supply the verbs as needed,” said Midbin; “first things first.”
She must have been paying at least as much attention to our conversation as to his instruction for, unexpectedly, one day she pointed to me and said quite clearly, “Hodge…Hodge…”
I was discomposed, but not with the same vexation I had felt at her habit of seeking me out and following me around. There was a faint, bashful pleasure, and a feeling of gratitude for such steadfastness.
She must have had some grounding in English, for while she utilized the nouns Midbin had supplied, she soon added, tentatively and questioningly, a verb or adjective here and there. “I…walk…?” Ace’s fear of her acquiring Midbin’s dead inflection was groundless; her voice was low and charmingly modulated; we were enchanted listening to her elementary groping among words.
Conversation or questioning was as yet impossible. Midbin’s “What is your name?” brought forth no response save a puzzled look and a momentary sinking back into dullness. But several weeks later she touched her breast and said shyly, “Catalina.”
Her memory, then, was not impaired, at least not totally. There was no way of telling yet what she remembered and what self-protection had forced her to forget, for direct questions seldom brought satisfactory answers at this stage. Facts concerning herself she gave out sporadically and without relation to our curiosity.
Her name was Catalina Garcia; she was the much younger sister of Dona Maria Escobar, with whom she lived. So far as she knew she had no other relatives. She did not want to go back to school; they had taught her to sew, they had been kind, but she had not been happy there. Please—we would not send her away from Haggershaven, would we?
Midbin acted now like a fond parent who was both proud of his child’s accomplishments and fearful lest she be not quite ready to leave his solicitous care. He was far from satisfied at restoring her speech; he probed and searched, seeking to know what she had thought and felt during the long months of muteness.
“I do not know, truly I do not know,” she protested toward the end of one of these examinations. “I would say, yes; sometimes I knew you were talking to me, or Hodge.” Here she looked at me steadily for an instant, to make me feel both remorseful and proud. “But it was like someone talking a long way off, so I never quite understood, nor was even sure it was I who was being spoken to. Often—at least it seemed often, perhaps it was not— often, I tried to speak, to beg you to tell me if you were real people talking to me or just part of a dream. That was very bad, because when no words came I was more afraid than ever, and when I was afraid the dream became darker and darker.”
Afterward, looking cool and fresh and strangely assured, she came upon me while I was cultivating young corn. A few weeks earlier I would have known she had sought me out; now it might be an accident.
“But I knew more surely when it was you who spoke, Hodge,” she said abruptly. “In my dream you were the most real.” Then she walked tranquilly away.
Barbara, who had studiedly said nothing further about what Midbin was doing, commented one day, apparently without rancor, “So Oliver appears to have proved a theory. How nice for you.”
“What do you mean?” I inquired guardedly. “How is it nice for me?”
“Why, you won’t have to chaperone the silly girl all over anymore. She can ask her way around now.”
“Oh yes, that’s right,” I mumbled.
“And we won’t have to quarrel over her anymore,” she concluded.
“Sure,” I said. “That’s right.”
Mr. Haggerwells again communicated with the Spanish diplomats, recalling his original telegram and mentioning the aloof reply. He was answered in person by an official who acted as though he himself had composed the disclaiming response. Perhaps he had, for he made it quite clear that only devotion to duty made it possible to deal at all with such savages as inhabited the United States.
He confirmed the existence of one Catalina Garcia and consulted a photograph, carefully shielded in his hand, comparing it with the features of our Catalina, at last satisfying himself they were the same. This formality finished, he spoke rapidly to Catalina in Spanish. She shook her head and looked confused. “Tell him I can hardly understand, Hodge; ask him to speak in English, please.”
The diplomat looked furious. Midbin explained hastily that the shock which had caused her muteness had not entirely worn off. Unquestionably she would recover her full memory in time, but for the present there were still areas of forgetfulness. Her native language was part of the past, he went on, happy with a new audience, and the past was something to be pushed away since it contained the terrible moment. English on the other hand—
“I understand,” said the diplomat stiffly, resolutely addressing none of us. “It is clear. Very well then. The Senorita Garcia is heir—heiress to an estate. Not a very big one, I regret to say. A moderate estate.”
“You mean land and houses?” I asked curiously.
“A moderate estate,” he repeated, looking attentively at his gloved hand. “Some shares of stock, some bonds, some cash. The details will be available to the senorita.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Catalina timidly.
Having put us all, and particularly me, in our place as rude and nosy barbarians, he went on more pleasantly, “According to the records of the embassy, the senorita is not yet eighteen. As an orphan living in foreign lands she is a ward of the Spanish Crown. The senorita will return with me to Philadelphia where she will be suitably accommodated until repatriation can be arranged. I feel certain that in the proper surroundings, hearing her natural tongue, she will soon regain its use. The—ah—institution may submit a bill for board and lodging during her stay.”
“Does he mean—take me away from here? For always?” Catalina, who had seemed so mature a moment before, suddenly acted like a frightened child.
“He only wants to make you comfortable and take you among your own people,” said Mr. Haggerwells. “Perhaps it is a bit sudden…”
“I can’t. Do not let him take me away. Hodge, Hodge— do not let him take me away. “
“Senorita, you do not understand—”
“No, no. I won’t. Hodge, Mr. Haggerwells, do not let him!”
“But my dear—”
It was Midbin who cut Mr. Haggerwells off. “I cannot guarantee against a relapse, even a reversion to the pseudo-aphonia if this emotional tension is maintained. I must insist that Catalina is not to continue the conversation now. “
“No one’s going to take you away by force,” I assured her, finally finding my courage once Midbin had asserted himself.
The official shrugged, managing to intimate in the gesture his opinion that the Haven was of a very shady character indeed and had quite possibly engineered the holdup itself.
“If the senorita genuinely wishes to remain for the present”—a lifted eyebrow loaded the “genuinely” with meaning—“I have no authority at the moment to inquire into influences that have persuaded her. No, none at all. Nor can I remove her by—ah—I will not insist. No. Not at all.”
“That is very understanding of you, sir,” said Mr. Haggerwells. “I’m sure everything will be all right eventually.”
The diplomat bowed stiffly. “Of course, the—ah— institution understands it can hope for no further compensation—”
“None has been given or asked for. None will be,” said Mr. Haggerwells in what was, for him, a sharp tone.
The gentleman from the legation bowed. “The senorita will naturally be visited from time to time by an official. Without note—notification. She may be removed whenever His Most Catholic Majesty sees fit. And, of course, none of her estate will be released before the eighteenth birthday. The whole affair is entirely irregular.”
After he left I reproached myself for not asking what Don Jaime’s mission had been that fateful evening, or at least for not trying to find out what his function with the Spanish legation was. Probably he could in no way be connected with the counterfeiting of the pesetas. By making no attempt to learn any facts which might have lessened the old feeling of guilty responsibility I kept it uneasily alive.
These reproaches were pushed aside when Catalina put her head against my collarbone, sobbing with relief. “There, there,” I said, “there, there.”
“Uncouth,” reflected Mr. Haggerwells. “Compensation indeed!”
“Dealing with natives,” said Midbin. “Probably courteous enough to Frenchmen or Afrikanders.”
I patted Catalina’s quivering shoulders. Child or not, now she was able to talk I had to admit I no longer found her devotion so tiresome. Though I was definitely uneasy lest Barbara discover us in this attitude.
XV.
GOOD YEARS
And now I come to the period of my life which stands in such sharp contrast to what had gone before. Was it really eight years I spent at Haggershaven? The arithmetic is indisputable: I arrived in 1944 at the age of twenty-three; I left in 1952 at the age of thirty-one. Indisputable, but not quite believable; as with the happy countries which are supposed to have no history I find it hard to go over those eight years and divide them by remarkable events. They blended too smoothly, too contentedly into one another.
Crops were harvested, stored, or marketed; the fields were plowed in the fall and again in the spring and sown anew. Three of the older fellows died, another became bedridden. Five new fellows were accepted; two biologists, a chemist, a poet, a philologist. It was to the last I played the same part Ace had to me, introducing him to the sanctuary of the Haven, seeing its security and refuge afresh and deeply thankful for the fortune that had brought me to it.
There was no question about success in my chosen profession, not even the expected alternation of achievement and disappointment. Once started on the road I kept on going at an even, steady pace. For what would have been my doctoral thesis I wrote a paper on “The Timing of General Stuart’s Maneuvers During August 1863 in Pennsylvania.” This received flattering comment from scholars as far away as the Universities of Lima and Cambridge; because of it I was offered instructorships at highly respectable schools.
I could not think of leaving the Haven. The world into which I had been born had never been fully revealed for what it was until I had escaped from it. Secrecy and ugliness; greed, fear, and callousness; meanness, avarice, cunning, deceit, and self-worship were as close around as the nearest farmhouses. The idea of returning to that world and of entering into daily competition with other underpaid, overdriven drudges striving fruitlessly to apply a dilute coating of culture to the unresponsive surface of unwilling students had little attraction.
In those eight years, as I broadened my knowledge I narrowed my field. Undoubtedly it was presumptuous to take the War of Southron Independence as my specialty when there were already so many comprehensive works on the subject and so many celebrated historians engaged with this special event. However, my choice was made not out of self-importance but fascination, and undoubtedly it was the proximity of the scene which influenced the selection of my goal, the last thirteen months of the war, from General Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania to the capitulation at Reading. I saw the whole vast design: Gettysburg, Lancaster, the siege of Philadelphia, the disastrous Union counterthrust in Tennessee, the evacuation of Washington, and finally the desperate effort to break out of Lee’s trap which ended at Reading. I could spend profitable years filling in the details.
My monographs were published in learned Confederate and British journals—there were none in the United States—and I rejoiced when they brought attention, not so much to me as to Haggershaven. I could contribute only this notice and my physical labor; on the other hand I asked little beyond food, clothing, and shelter—just books. My field trips I took on foot, often earning my keep by casual labor for farmers, paying for access to private collections of letters or documents by indexing and arranging them.
The time devoted to scholarship did not alone distinguish those eight years, nor even the security of the Haven. I have spoken of the simple, easy manner in which the Agatis admitted me to their friendship, but they were not the only ones with whom there grew ties of affection and understanding. With very few exceptions the fellows of Haggershaven quickly learned to shed the suspicion and aloofness, so necessary a protection elsewhere, and substitute acceptance. The result was a tranquillity I had never experienced before, so that I think of those years as set apart, a golden period, a time of perpetual warm sunshine.
Between Barbara and me the turbulent, ambivalent passion swept back and forth, the periods of estrangement seemingly only a generating force to bring us together again. Hate and love, admiration and distaste, impatience and pity were present on both sides. Only on hers there was jealousy as well; perhaps if I had not been indifferent whenever she chose to respond to some other man she might not have felt the errant desire so strongly. Perhaps not; there was a moral urge behind her behavior. She sneered at women who yielded to such temptations. To her they were not temptations but just rewards; she did not yield, she took them as her due.
Sometimes I wondered if her neurosis did not verge on insanity; I’m sure for her part she must often have stood off and appraised me as a mistake. I know there were many times when I wished there would be no more reconciliation between us.
Yet no amount of thinking could cancel the swift hunger I felt in her presence or the deep mutual satisfaction of physical union. Frequently we were lovers for as long as a month before the inevitable quarrel, followed by varying periods of coolness. During the weeks of distance I remembered how she could be tender and gracious as well as ardent, just as during our intimacy I remembered her ruthlessness and dominance.
It was not only her temperamental outbursts nor even her unappeasable craving for love and affection which thrust us apart. Impediments which, in the beginning, had appeared inconsequential assumed more importance all the time. It was increasingly hard for her to leave her work behind even for moments. She was never allowed to forget, either by her own insatiable drive or by outside acknowledgment, that she was already one of the foremost physicists in the world. She had been granted so many honorary degrees she no longer traveled to receive them; offers from foreign governments of well-paid jobs connected with their munitions industries were common. Articles were written about her equation of matter, energy, space, and time, acclaiming her as a revolutionary thinker; though she dismissed them as evaluation of elementary work, they nevertheless added to her isolation and curtailed her freedom.
Midbin was, in his way, as much under her spell as Ace or myself. His triumph over Catalina’s dumbness he took lightly now it was accomplished; stabilizing Barbara’s emotions was the victory he wanted. She, on her side, had lost whatever respect she must have had for him in the days when she had submitted to his treatment. On the very rare occasions when the whim moved her to listen to his entreaties—usually relayed through Ace or me—and grant him time, it seemed to be only for the opportunity of making fun of his efforts. Patiently he tried new techniques of exploration and expression.
