Joanna Russ - Second Inquisition

VIP免费
2024-11-18 1 0 68.73KB 33 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt
VERSION 1.0 DTD 032700
THE SECOND INQUISITION
Joanna Russ
If a man can resist the influences of his townsfolk, if she can cut free
from the tyranny of neighborhood gossip, the world has no terrors for
him; there is no second inquisition.
-John Jay Chapman
I often watched our visitor reading in the living room, sitting under the
floor lamp near the new, standing Philco radio, with her long, long legs
stretched out in front of her and the pool -of light on her book revealing
so little of her face: brownish, coppery features so marked that she
seemed to be a kind of freak and hair that was reddish black .but so
rough that it looked like ,the things my mother used for .scouring pots
and pans. She read 'a great deal, that summer. If I ventured out of the
archway, where I was not exactly hiding but only keeping in the
shadow to watch her read, she would often raise her face and smile
silently at me before beginning to read again, and her skin would take on
an abrupt, surprising pallor as it moved into the light. When she goat
up -and went into the kitchen with the gracefulness of a stork, for
something to eat, she was almost too tall for the doorways; she went
on legs like a spider's, with long swinging arms and a little body in the
middle, the strange proportions of the very tall. She looked down at my
mother's plates and dishes from a great, gentle height, remarkably
absorbed; and asking me a few odd questions, she would bend down
over whatever she was going to eat, meditate on it for a few moments
like a giraffe, and then straightening up back into the stratosphere, she
would pick up the plate in one thin hand, curling around it fingers like
legs, and go back gracefully into-the living room. She would lower
herself into the chair that was always too small, curl her legs around it,
become dissatisfied, settle herself, stretch them out again-I remember so
well those long, hard, unladylike legs-and begin again to read.
She used to ask, "What is that? What is that? And what, is this?" but
that was only at first.
My mother, who disliked her, said she was from the circus and we
ought to try to understand and be kind.: My father made jokes. He did
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...0Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt (1 of 33)3/13/2004 12:18:21 AM
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt
not like big women or short -hair--which was still new in places like
ours- women who read, although she was interested in his carpentry
and he liked that.
But she was six feet four inches tall; this was in 1925.
My father was an accountant who built furniture as a: hobby; we had a
gas stove which he actually fixed once when it broke down and some
outdoor tables and chair ' he had built in the back yard. Before our
visitor came o, the train for her vacation with us, I used to spend all my
time in the back yard, being underfoot, but once we had met her ,at the
station and she shook hands with my. father-I think she hurt him whets
she shook hands-I would watch her read and wish that she might talk to
me.
She said: "You are finishing high school?"
I was in the archway, as usual; I answered yes.
She looked up at me again, then down at her book. She said, "This is a
very bad book." I said nothing. Without looking up, she tapped one
finger on the shabby hassock on which she had put her feet. Then she
looked up and smiled at me. I stepped tentatively from the floor to the
rug, as reluctantly as if I were crossing the Sahara; she swung her feet
away and I sat down. Art close view her face looked as if every race in
the world had been mixed and only the worst of each kept; an American
Indian might look like that, or Ikhnaton from the encyclopedia, or a
Swedish African, a Maori princess with the jaw of a Slav. It occurred to
me suddenly that she might be a Negro, but no one else had ever
seemed to think so,
possibly because nobody in our town had ever seen a
Negro. We had none. They were "colored people."
She said; "You are not pretty, yes?"
I got up. I said, "My father thinks you're a freak."
"You are sixteen," she said, ".sit down," and I .sat down. I crossed my
arms over my breasts because they were (too big, like balloons. Then
she said, "I am reading a very stupid book. You will take it away from
me, yes?"
"No," I said.
"You must," she said, "or it will poison me, sure as God," and from her
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...0Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt (2 of 33)3/13/2004 12:18:21 AM
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt
lap she plucked up The Green Hat: A Romance, gold letters on green
binding, last year's bestseller which I had had to .swear never to read,
and she held it out to me, leaning back in her chair with that long arm
doing all the work, .the book enclosed in a cage of fingers wrapped
completely around it. I think she could have put those forgers around a
basketball. I did not take it.
"Go on," she said, "read it, go on, go away," and I found myself at the-
archway, by the foot of the stairs with The Green Hat: A Romance in
my hand. I turned it so the title was hidden. She was smiling -at me and
had her arms folded back under her head. "Don't worry," she said.
"Your body will be in fashion by the time of the next war." I met my
mother at the top of the stairs and had to hide :the book from her; my
mother said, "Oh, the poor woman!" She was carrying some sheets. I
went to my room .and read through almost the whole night, hiding the
book in the bedclothes when I was through. When I slept, I dreamed of
Hispano-Suizas, of shingled hair and tragic eyes; of women with
painted lips who had Affairs, who went night after night with Jews to
low drives, who lived as they pleased, who had miscarriages in
expensive Swiss clinics; of midnight swims, of desperation, .of money,
of illicit love, of a beautiful Englishman and getting into a taxi with him
while wearing a cloth-of-silver cloak and a silver turban like the ones
shown in the society pages of the New York City newspapers.
Unfortunately our guest's face kept recurring in my dream, and because
I could not make out whether she was amused or bitter or very much
of bath, it really spoiled everything.
My mother discovered the book the next morning. I found it next to
my plate at breakfast. Neither my mother
nor my father made any remark about it; only my mother kept putting
out the breakfast things with a kind of tender, reluctant smile. We all
sat down, finally, when she had put out everything, and my farther
helped me to rolls and eggs and ham. Then he took off his glasses and
folded them next to his plate. He leaned back in his chair and crossed
his legs. Then he looked at the book and said in a tone of mock
surprise, "Well! What's this?"
I didn't say anything. I only looked at my plate.
"I believe I've seen this before," he said. "Yes, I believe I have." Then
he asked my mother, "Have you, seen this before?" My mother made a
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...0Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt (3 of 33)3/13/2004 12:18:21 AM
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt
kind of vague movement with her head. She had begun to butter some
toast and was putting it on my plate. I knew she was not supposed to
discipline me; only my father was. "Eat your egg," she said. My father,
who had continued to look at The Green Hat: A Romance with the
same expression of unvarying surprise, finally said:
"Well! This isn't a very pleasant thing to find on a Saturday morning, is
it?"
I still didn't say anything, only looked -at my food. I heard my mother
say worriedly, "She's not eating, Ben," and my father put his hand on
the back of my chair so I couldn't push it away from the .table, as I
was trying .to do.
"Of course you have an explanation for this,'." he said. "Don't you?"
I said nothing.
"Of course she does," he said, "doesn't she, Bess? You wouldn't hurt
your mother like this. You wouldn't hurt your mother by stealing a
book that you knew you weren't supposed to read and for very good
reason, too. You know we don't punish you. We talk things over with
you. We try to explain. Don't we?"
I nodded.
"Good," he said. "Then where did this book come from?"
I muttered something; I don't know what.
"Is my daughter angry?" said my father. "Is my daughter being
rebellious?"
"She told you all about it!" I blurted out. My father's face turned red.
"Don't you dare talk about your mother that way!" he
shouted, standing up. "Don't you dare refer to your mother in that
way!"
"Now, Ben-" said my mother.
"Your mother is the soul of unselfishness," said my father, "and don't
you forget it, missy; your mother has worried about you since the day
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...0Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt (4 of 33)3/13/2004 12:18:21 AM
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt
you were born and if you don't appreciate that, you can damn well-"
"Ben!" said my mother, shocked.
"I'm sorry," I said, and then I said, "I'm very sorry, Mother." My
father sat down. My father had a mustache and his hair was parted in
the middle and slicked down; now one lock fell over the part in front
and his whole face was gray and quivering. He was staring fixedly at
his coffee cup. My mother came over and poured coffee for him; then
she took the coffeepot into the kitchen and when she came back she
had milk for me. She put the glass of milk on the table near my plate.
Then she sat down again. She smiled tremblingly at my father; then she
put her hand over mine on the table and said:
"Darling, why did you read that book?"
"Well?" said my father from across the table.
There was a moment's silence. Then:
"Good morning!"
and
"Good morning!"
sand
"Good morning!" said our guest cheerfully, crossing the dining room in
two strides, and folding herself carefully down into .her breakfast chair,
from where her knees stuck out, she reached across the table, picked
up The Green Hat, propped it up next to her plate and began to read it
with great absorption. Then she looked up. "You have a very
progressive library," she said. "I took .the liberty of recommending this
exciting book to your daughter. You told me it was your favorite. You
sent all the way to New York City on purpose far it, yes?"
"I don't-I quite-" said my mother, pushing back her chair from the
table. My mother was trembling from head to foot and her face was set
in an expression of fixed distaste. Our visitor regarded first my mother
and then my
father, bending over .then tenderly and with exquisite interest. She said:
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...0Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt (5 of 33)3/13/2004 12:18:21 AM
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt
"I hope you do not mind my using your library."
"No no no," muttered my father.
"I eat almost for two," said our visitor modestly, "because of my
height. I hope you do not mind that?"
"No, of course not," said my father, regaining control of himself.
"Good. It is all considered in the bill," said the visitor,. and looking
about at my shrunken parents, each hurried, each spooning in the food
and avoiding her gaze, she added deliberately:
"I took also another liberty. I removed from the end-' papers certain-ah-
-drawings that I did not ,think bore any relation to the text. You do not
mind?"
And as my father and mother looked in shocked surprise and utter
consternation-at each other-she said to me in a low voice, "Don't eat.
You'll make yourself sick," and then smiled warmly at the two of them
when my ; mother went off into the kitchen and my father on to the he
was lane for work. She waved at them. I jumped up as soon as they
were out of the room.
"There were no drawings in that book!" I whispered.
"Then we must make some," said she, and taking a pencil off the
whatnot, she drew in the endpapers of the book a series of sketches:
the heroine sipping a soda in an ice-cream parlor, showing her legs and
very chic; in a sloppy bathing suit and big grin, holding up a large fish;-
r driving her Hispano-Suiza into a tree only to be catapulted straight
up into the air; and in the last sketch landing demure and coy in the
arms of the hero, who looked violently surprised. Then she drew a
white mouse putting on lipstick, getting married to another white
mouse in a , church, the two entangled in some manner I thought I
should not look at, the lady mouse with a big belly and two little mice
inside (who were playing chess), then the little mice coming out in
separate envelopes and finally= the whole family having a picnic, with
somethings around' the picnic basket that I did not recognize and
underneath in capital letters "I did not bring up my children to test-';
cigarettes." This left me blank. She laughed and rubbed it out, saying
that it was out of date. Then she drew a white
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...0Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt (6 of 33)3/13/2004 12:18:21 AM
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt
mouse with a rolled-up umbrella chasing my mother. I
picked that up and looked at it for a while; then I tore it
into pieces, and tore the others into pieces as well. I said,
"I don't think you have the slightest right to-" and
stopped. She was looking at me with not anger exactly
-not warning exactly-I found I had to sit down. I
began to cry.
"Ah! The results of practical psychology," she said dryly, gathering up
the pieces of her sketches. She took matches off the whatnot and set
fire to the pieces in a saucer. She held up the smoking match between
her thumb and forefinger, saying, "You see? The finger is-shall we say,
perception?-but the thumb is money. The thumb is hard."
"You oughtn't to treat my parents that way!" I said, crying.
"You ought not to tear up my sketches," she said calmly.
"Why not! Why not!" I shouted.
"Because they are worth money," she said, "in some quarters. I won't
draw you any more," and indifferently taking the saucer with the ashes
in it in one palm, she went into the kitchen. I heard her voice and then
my mother's and then my mother's again, anal then our visitor's in a
tone that would've made a rock weep, but I never found out what they
said.
I passed our guest's room many times at night that summer, going in by
the hall past her rented room where the second-floor windows gave out
onto the dark garden. The electric lights were always on brilliantly. My
mother had sewn the white curtains because she did everything like
that and had bought the furniture at a sale: marbletopped bureau, the
wardrobe, the iron bedstead, an old Victrola against the wall. There was
usually an open book on the bed. I would stand in the shadow of the
open doorway and look across the bare wood floor, too much of it and
all as slippery as the sea, bare wood waxed and shining in the electric
light. A black dress hung on the front of the wardrobe and a pair of
shoes like my mother's, T-strap shoes with thick heels. I used to
wonder if she had silver evening slippers inside the wardrobe.
Sometimes the open book on the bed was Wells's The Time Machine
and then I would talk to the black glass of the window, I would say :to
the transparent reflections and the black branches of trees that moved
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...0Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt (7 of 33)3/13/2004 12:18:21 AM
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt
beyond it:
"I'm only sixteen."
"You look eighteen," she would say.
"I know," I would say. "I'd like to be eighteen. I'd like to go away to
college. To Radcliffe, I think." ,
She would say nothing, out of surprise.
"Are you reading Wells?" I would say then, leaning against the door
jamb. "I think that's funny. Nobody in this town reads anything; they
just .think about social life. I read a lot, however. I would like to learn
a
great deal."
She would smile then, across the room.
"I did something funny once," I would go on. "I mean funny ha-ha, not
funny peculiar." It was a real line, very popular. "I read The Time
Machine and then I went around asking people were they Eloi or were
they Morlocks; everyone liked it. The point is which you would be if
you could, like being an optimist or a pessimist or do you like- bobbed
hair." Then I would add, "Which are you?" and she would only shrug
and smile a little more. She would prop her chin on one long, long hand
and look into my eyes with her black Egyptian eyes and then she
would say in her curious hoarse voice:
"It is you who must say it first."
"I think," I would say, "that you area Morlock," and sitting on the bed
in my m-other's rented room with The Time Machine open beside her,
she would say:
"You are exactly right. I am a Morlock. I am a Morlock on vacation. I
have come from the last Morlock meeting, which is held out between
the stars in a big goldfish bowl, so all the Morlocks have to cling to the
inside walls like a flock of black bats, some right side up, some upside
down, for there is no up and down there, clinging like a flock of black
crows, like a chestnut burr turned inside out. There are half a thousand
Morlocks and we rule the worlds. My black uniform is in the
wardrobe."
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...0Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt (8 of 33)3/13/2004 12:18:21 AM
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt
"I knew I was right," I would say.
"You are always right she would say, "and you know the rest of it,
too. You know what murderers we are and how terribly we live. We are
waiting for the big bang
when everything falls over and even the Morlocks will be destroyed;
meanwhile I stay here waiting for the signal and I have messages
clipped to the frame of your mother's amateur oil painting of Main
Street because it will be in a museum-some day and my friends can find
it; meanwhile I read The Time Machine."
Then I would say, "Can I come with you?" leaning against the door.
"Without you," she would say gravely, "all is lost," and flaking out
from the wardrobe a black dress glittering with stars and a pair of silver
sandals with high heels, she would say, "These are yours. They were
my great-grandmother's, who founded the Order. In the name of
TransTemporal Military Authority." And I would put them on.
It was almost a pity she was not really there.
Every year in the middle of August the Country Club gave a dance, not
just for the rich families who were members but also for the "nice"
people who lived in frame houses in town and even for some of the
smart, economical young couples who lived in apartments, just as if
they had been in .the city. There was one new, red-brick apartment
building downtown, four stories high, with a courtyard. We were
supposed to go, because I was old enough that year, but the day before
the dance my father became ill with pains in his left side and my
mother had to stay home to take care of him. He was propped up on
pillows on the living-room daybed, which we had pulled out into the
room so he could watch what my mother was doing with the garden
out back and call to her once in a while through the windows. He could
also see the walk leading up to the front door. He kept insisting that
she was doing things all wrong. I did not even ask if I could go to the
dance alone. My father said:
"Why don't you go out and help your mother?"
"She doesn't want me to," I said. "I'm supposed to stay here," and then
he shouted angrily, "Bess! Bess!" and began to give her instructions
.through the window. I saw another pair of hands appear in the
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...0Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt (9 of 33)3/13/2004 12:18:21 AM
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt
window next to my mother's and then our guest-,squatting back on her
heels and smoking a cigarette-pulling up weeds. She was working
quickly and efficiently, the cigarette between her teeth.
"No, not that way!" shouted my father, pulling on the blanket that my
mother had put over him. "Don'-t you know what you're doing! Bess,
you're ruining everything! Stop it! Do it right!" My mother looked
bewildered and; upset; she passed out of the window and our visitor
took 'her place; she waved to my father and he subsided, pulling the
blanket up around his neck. "I don't like women who. smoke," he
muttered irritably. I slipped out through the
kitchen. --
My father's toolshed and working space took up the farther half of the
back yard; the garden was spread over the nearer half, part kitchen
garden, part flowers, an then extended down either side of the house
where w e< had fifteen feet or so of space before a white slat fence `
and the next people's side yard. It was an on-and-offis
garden, and the house was beginning to need paint. My mother was
working in the kitchen garden, kneeling. our guest was standing,
pruning the lilac trees, still smoking.' I said:
"Mother, can't I go, can't I go!" in a low voice.
My mother passed her hand over her forehead and called "Yes, Ben!"
to my father.
"Why can't I go!" I whispered. "Ruth's mother and Betty's mother
will be there. Why couldn't you call Ruth's mother and Betty's
mother?"
"Not that way!" came a blast from the living-room window. My
mother sighed briefly and then smiled a cheerful smile. "Yes, Ben!" she
called brightly. "I'm listening." My father began to give some more
instructions.
"Mother," I said desperately, "why couldn't you-"
"Your father wouldn't approve," she said, and again she produced a
bright smile and called, encouragingly to my father. I wandered over to
the lilac trees where our visitor, in her usual nondescript black dress,
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/...0Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inquisition.txt (10 of 33)3/13/2004 12:18:21 AM
摘要：

file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/New%20Folder/Joanna%20Russ%20-%20Second%20Inqui...

收起<<
Joanna Russ - Second Inquisition.pdf

共33页,预览10页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：33 页 大小：68.73KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-11-18

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 33
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注