Carmen Dog (20 page)

Then the creature leaps off the float, pa-ing vigorously, and comes straight to her. The crowd opens up for him. And such a tall, bright thing he is! “Pa.” She sings it tentatively, not knowing what will happen, but it comes out so full-throated that everyone turns to stare at her. “Pa,” again. And again. And he, his pale eyes.... They
are
the same pale eyes—the very ones! Yes, and the Escamillo voice. She'd recognize it anywhere. They laugh and begin to sing the duet as it should be sung. Even as they are singing, many hands pull them up onto the wagon full of opera singers. Here she is at last, she and the baby, among them. Then she sees, just beyond, a fat and familiar mustachioed face ... a too-familiar face, and he is calling out to her, “Wait, wait. You are she whom I seek.” She turns away. Of course he doesn't recognize her in this costume. No one does. Probably not even the pale young man, though she is hoping that he does, now, as he holds her elbow and looks into her eyes.

"I, also, was seeking you,” the young man says. “Yes, it really is you, and I see that you know me. And I knew you weren't that old woman back then when I went for another balloon. First I recognized the baby, but then I could see that it was you by your eyes. I've remembered your eyes ever since the stage door ... your golden-brown eyes. I'll always know who you are from them."

Pooch is human enough by now to blush at his words. The transparent down on her cheeks (hardly as much as on the baby's head) cannot hide it. She also cannot hide her smile of pleasure.

But now the little orchestra on the float has begun the familiar strains, and the young man takes her hand. “Do you know this aria?"

Of course she does; it's Carmen's “bird” song: “Love, like a rebellious bird.” How apropos! To the costume, at least. And he is leading her to the front of the platform. “Come, sing a solo."

Here they are at Fifty-seventh Street. And there, right in front of the Academy of Motherhood building, things have been arranged as though for a circus, or perhaps for an extraordinarily acrobatic opera. High wires have been stretched, and trapezes and huge nets guyed from buildings and street lights. A ringmaster, in top hat and white riding breeches, stands beside a similarly attired dwarf. Both are full-breasted women. Several clowns of both sexes are already doing skits to keep the crowd happy before the real show begins.

But that particular Academy member who had gone into the basement for his nefarious purpose has come up with a large shopping bag. He makes his way through the crowd and crosses the street with his heavy load. He has never been the most reasonable of the members, though he was one of those who had always been particularly nice to his mother.

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Everything worth while in him had come from mankind.... His love of the arts, of wisdom, of the ‘humanities'! God! Would that wisdom lay rather in ‘caninities'!

—Olaf Stapledon

Pooch's voice has always gathered crowds and either made them silent or set them to humming along. Now all the creatures near her fall silent, the thousands of false Rosemarys and false policemen as well as those, male and female, who are simply being themselves. Even the kazoo band, almost a block away, changes its tune so that it can hum along in harmony with her singing. Pooch's way of singing has changed the meaning of the aria. It has become contemplative and seems to be saying something sad about them all. “
Quand je vous aimerai? ... Peut-être jamais, ... L'oiseau rebelle ... c'est bien en vain qu'on l'appelle.... L'oiseau que tu croyais surprendre, battit de l'aile et s'envola;
...” Why, it's not the bird of love at all, but the bird of life. At those words, “
batite de l'aile
,” Pooch makes little helpless flapping gestures. How can anyone not love this small, fluttering Papagena! She brings to every mind a new thought of what love and life might be. If her master had been there in the crowd, surely he, too, would have changed for the better, if only for the duration of the song.

When Pooch has finished, the pale young man grabs her and hugs her so as to quite crush her feathers, and the crowd yells, “Encore, encore.” Valdoviccini has pushed to the front and is standing just below her, yelling as loud as any of the others.

Looking him right in the eye and still safely enfolded in the arms of her Papageno, Pooch removes her feathered cap and lets her silky ears hang down.

"No,” he shouts, “it can't be!” But she nods, yes.

"I've been a fool,” he says, but then he surprises her. “Oh,” (and there is such pain in his voice) “where is Chloe? I must find her and, dear Pucci, please forgive me, and do you think Chloe ever will?"

He looks so desperate that Pooch believes he is sincere. He might still be thoughtless and selfish, perhaps ignorant (or, more likely, too wise in worldly ways and not ignorant enough), but not actually cruel. Of course the same might be said about the doctor and his dreadful experiment. Perhaps he also was thoughtless and too knowledgeable. Perhaps even the master....

Well, why should she be the judge and jury of such things? “The last I saw Chloe,” she says, “she was there,” and she points, at the Academy of Motherhood. “She and a number of others donated themselves for the motherhood experiments. I would be among them if I had not been taken away."

Just as they turn toward the building, the bombs go off.

First the front doors burst outward in smoke and flying glass. A few seconds later flames are seen deeper inside. Perhaps some of the paraphernalia, regalia, and insignia of motherhood are not as fireproof as advertised. (One cannot help but wonder if this is on purpose, or if some antimotherhood forces have infiltrated the promotherhood staff, or if the motherhood staff itself may have more ambiguous feelings than one would have wished.) At any rate, a fire is well under way and as soon as the two primary blasts go off, other blasts follow.

Creatures scurry hither and yon, some pushing back away from the blaze, others pushing forward toward it. Pooch can see, silhouetted against the smoke and flames, creatures hurrying to rescue those trapped inside. Rosemary in her policeman suit looms above all of them, pushing her way into the building. She is followed by the doctor, also in policeman outfit, and after him by several Rosemarys pulling their skirts up and tucking them inside their policeman pants at the waist. And then Valdoviccini. Pooch wonders how he got to the doors so fast in all this confusion, and after him ... goodness, Isabel! What possesses her to enter that inferno? Can she actually want to rescue someone?

Then Pooch, without a second thought, rushes to the fiery doorway. She doesn't know what is in her mind: whether it is to rescue Isabel one more time or whether she is thinking of Chloe, Phillip, Basenji, Mary Ann, all her friends, and those others not yet friends.

Behind her comes the pale young man, calling out that she must not risk herself or the baby ... that she should let him do it, but Pooch doesn't hear, and, in fact, doesn't realize that she still has the baby on her back until she is halfway up the first flight of the back stairs. Then she feels its grip around her neck. Thinks, too late, to go back. Passing through that doorway again is out of the question by now. Besides, hasn't it been through everything with her: the dirt, the thirst, the hunger, the pound, cages, solitary confinement, even howling at the moon?

She twists her head to give it a lick on the cheek. “Whatever life brings, we'll share,” she says, and “I can do no more than the best I can.” Of course the baby can't understand all this except on an emotional level, but it calls her “Mama” for the first time. Then murmurs it over and over in her ear as she trots up the stairs.

Through all this confusion the three vice presidents are safely encased in their Early-Life pens and are being powdered, air-dried, rocked, and sung to. They have given up struggling with the machinery and now lie exhausted, letting themselves be tickled and petted. The explosions reach them only as dull thunks. They don't even wonder about them, having their own problems with this overzealous mothering.

All three men are beginning to feel that mothering itself may be a more powerful weapon than they had thought. It seems to them now more violent than bombs. They are overwhelmed by it. Each one decides that, when they are let out, they will launch a great campaign to be sure to keep motherhood in the hands of men who can deal with it. (They are sorry now that they gave first prize in mothering to the man who invented this pen.) They have come to believe that motherhood should be dealt out, even to infants, in small, insignificant doses so that it can always be held within reasonable bounds. It's sexy, too. They see that now, and they do not want to sink into that kind of softness, either. They will steel themselves against it and help other men to do the same. The inclination to sink into loving arms must be carefully modulated so that it doesn't get out of hand. How can there be any peace with such a force as this in the world? But if men can stick together, they will prevail against the softness. Meanwhile the vice presidents have no choice but to sink into the great pink breasts and be done to as the machine-mother wishes. It is hoped they will be let out
in time
.

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The fourth [priest] carried the model of a left hand with the fingers stretched out, which is an emblem of justice because the left hand, with its natural slowness and lack of any craft or subtlety, seems more impartial than the right.

—Robert Graves

While the three vice presidents remain in their pens, the members of the Academy who had been restrained in harnesses, leashes, toddler straitjackets, or facsimiles have been freed by their comrades from across the street, with the help of the Rosemarys from the police department. Now they have made their way up the stairs so that at last all the creatures of every sort have made their way to the temporary safety of the roof. There is Pooch, the doctor, and Rosemary, Phillip, Cucumber, Valdoviccini, and even Isabel (who is growling and pacing and snapping out at mothers and Academy members alike—in her nervousness she seems to have reverted to her old “human” disposition). Fire engine sirens are heard in the distance, but they're not getting any closer. They are stuck somewhere out at the edge of the crowd. For the time being, however, all the creatures are safe.

It is a political moment, for here are the Academy of Motherhood members facing the mothers-to-be and quite outnumbered by them and their friends. The Academy members are wondering, now, if they shouldn't have been a bit less brusque in their treatment of the mothers—if they shouldn't have, for instance, warmed the specula, patted hands or paws now and then, been reassuring. Suddenly they understand the importance of small gestures and that indulging in them would certainly not have wasted significant amounts of time.

Beneath them, and above the street at the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-story levels, the acrobats wait, relaxed, sitting sideways on their swings. They are dressed alike in brilliant blue with sequins of silver. The females among them (dressed similarly but with silver tiaras) are all halfway between human and chimpanzee, or gibbon, or orangutan. (The orange fur of these last contrasts beautifully with the blue of their costumes.) But ape or not, they all have such nice smiles, one feels sure that one can put one's life in their hands. Of course these acrobats were set up for an entirely different purpose: a daring rescue, yes—just as this will be—only now they will be rescuing everyone, friend and foe alike.

Up on the roof in the flesh—or rather in the fur—stands the leader of the opposition, the largest and most abominable of all females. This is motherhood gone wrong! Rosemary has shed her policeman suit and stands there in all her terrible splendor. This is motherhood just as they've always suspected it was. Great and Terrible World-Mother. Big Mama. Venus of Willendorf no longer fitting in the palm of one's hand, but as she probably really was, maybe seven feet tall, and in this case with little beady eyes peering out from beneath furry brows.

Every time the wind changes, smoke is blown right onto the roof and some smoke is seeping up, here and there, through seams around the roof edges. So, amid coughing and wheezing, Rosemary asks both sides to make quick promises to love and honor, have and hold, in sickness and in health, till death do ... and so forth, but just at the last minute, when everyone is supposed to say “I do,” the Academy members say “I don't.” They have realized that things must be done in a hurry, but why in a hurry the female's way? They know there's no time to bicker. So everything is left unresolved as they go about the business of rescuing each other.

The mounted heads, the bear and zebra rugs, and all the other disguises are piled up at the far edge of the roof to burn along with the building, a fitting funeral pyre for those poor, dear creatures whose skins and heads they are.

Then a strange thing happens ... a kind of brilliance and a shaking, not just of the building because those on the ground feel it, too. Later the doctor will say that the explanation is quite simple, really, and has to do with star forces. It is merely a quake—a universe quake of some sort, a readjustment of galactic forces into a more stable equilibrium. And now, unless the earth should tip on its orbit or some such thing, all should be even better off than before.

Everyone feels that lurch except the swinging acrobats. Everyone sees it as a streak across the sky. It is a moment in which everything might change back to the way it always has been. In Pooch there are a few seconds of utter dogness, frightening her so that she feels her heart somersault. No, no, no! Humanity! She wants to join the humans.

She shuts her eyes, then opens them. All is as it just was. Only a few creatures out of place and those only by a yard or two. Perhaps one dwarf too many standing on the parapet. And there, the doctor is already kissing Phillip. Valdoviccini, holding hands with Chloe. One of the Academy members has his arms around Cucumber. A poem springs into Pooch's head.