Caroll Emshwiller - The Circular Library of Stones

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The Circular Library of Stones

By Carol Emshwiller

4/30/01

They said all this wasn't true. That there had been no city on this site

since even before the time of the Indians . . . that there had been no

bridge across the (now dried up) river and no barriers against the mud. "If

you have been searching for a library here," they said, "or for old coins,

you've been wasting your time."

For lack of space I had put some of the small, white stones in plant

baskets and hung them from the ceiling by the window. I don't argue with

people about what nonexistent city could have existed at this site. I just

collect the stones. (Two have Xs scratched on them, only one of which I

scratched myself.) And I continue digging. The earth, though full of

stones of all sizes, is soft and easy to deal with. Often it is damp and

fragrant. And I disturb very little in the way of trees or plants of any real

size here. Also most of the stones, even the larger ones, are of a size

that I can manage fairly well by myself. Besides, mainly it's the stones

that I want to reveal. I don't want to move them from place to place

except some of the most important small ones, which I take home with

me after a day's digging. Often I have found battered aluminum pots and

pans around the site. Once I found an old boot and once, a pair of broken

glasses; but these, of course, are of no significance whatsoever, being

clearly of the present.

Gaining access to their books! If I could find the library and learn to read

their writing! If I could find, there, stories beyond my wildest dreams. A

love story, for instance, where the love is of a totally different kind . . . a

kind of ardor we have never even thought of, more long-lasting than our

simple attachments, more world-shaking than our simple sexualities. Or a

literature that is two things at once, which we can only do in drawings,

where a body might be, at one and the same time, a face in which the

breasts also equal eyes, or two naked ladies sitting side by side, arms

raised, that also forms a skull, their black hair the eye sockets.

For quite some time now I have had sore legs, so digging is an exercise I

can do better than any other, and though at night my back pains me, the

pains usually go away quite soon. By morning I hardly feel them. So the

digging, in itself, pleases me. There is the pleasure of work. A day well

spent. Go home tired and silent. But mostly, of course, it is the slow

revelation of the stones that I care about. Sometimes they cluster in

groups so that I think that here must have been where a fireplace was, or

perhaps a throne. Sometimes they form a long row that I think might have

been a wall or a bench. And I have found a mirror. Two feet underground,

and so scratched that one can see oneself only in little fish-shaped

flashes -- a bit of an eye, a bit of lip -- but for even that much of it to

have been preserved all this time is a miracle. I feel certain that if they

had a library, it's logical they would also have had mirrors. Or if they had

mirrors, it certainly follows they could have had a library.

I keep the mirror with me in my breast pocket. (I wear a man's old fishing

vest.) When people ask me what I'm doing out here, I show the mirror to

them along with a few smooth stones.

At night I write. I shut my eyes and let my left hand move as it wishes.

Usually it makes only scratchings, but at other times words come out.

Once I wrote several pages of nothing but no, no, no, no, no, and after

that, on, on, on, and on, but more and more often there are longer words

now, and more and more often they are making some kind of sense.

Yesterday, for instance, I found myself writing: Let us do let us do and do

and let us not be but do and you do too. And then, and for the first time,

a whole phrase came out clear and simple: Cool all that summer and at

night returned to the library.

Certainly I would suppose the library, being built of stone, to be always

cool in summer, always warm in winter. The phrase is surely, then, true

and of the time. It is interesting that the library itself is referred to in

this, the first real phrase I've written so far. That is significant. What I

have been hoping to do is to reproduce some of the writings from the

library, or reasonable facsimiles. Perhaps this is the beginning of one of

their books.

The circle is sacred to all peoples except for us. We are the only ones

that don't care if a thing is square or a circle or oblong or triangular. The

shape has no meaning to us. A circle could be oval for all we care. I'm

thinking about this because I think I have come across a giant circle.

About a foot down I found what looked like a path of stones, and I dug

along it all day thinking I was going in a straight line: but when I turned

around to look back on what I had accomplished, I saw that, although I

had dug only a few yards, clearly I was curving. Though I had thought to

finish for the day, I turned and vigorously revealed another yard of the

stones, yet knowing full well it would be perhaps a month before I could

uncover a really significant portion of the circle. I was thinking that

probably here, at last, was where the very walls of the library had been

and that, if true, this would be a great revelation of stones (even though

done by an old woman . . . a useless old woman, so everyone thinks). I

felt happy . . . happy and tired after that and, though I came home very

late and my back hurt even more than usual, I sat down, dirty as I was,

at my little table. I shut my eyes and let my left hand write: Let us oh let

us do and do and dance and do the dance of the library in the cool in the

sanctuary of the library.

It rained that night and all the next day, and I knew it had filled up all my

pits and paths with mud. I would have to do much of my digging over

again, and yet I wasn't unhappy about it. Such things come in every life.

It's to be expected. (And doing is digging. Digging is doing. Do, not be.

That's my philosophy and it seems to be theirs, too.) And my latest

discovery was momentous, to say the least. Who would have thought it:

a great, white, stone, circular library to be danced in!

Mostly on rainy days like these I do as the other old women do. I knit or

make pot holders. I make soup and muffins. While I was there doing

old-woman things and looking out the window, I thought, How nice if I

found even only another stone with, perhaps, an O on it. People who

search as I do must be happy with small and seemingly insignificant

discoveries. People who search as I do must understand, also, that the

lack of something is never insignificant, so even if there were nothing to

be found, I was never disappointed, because that, too, was significant --

as, for instance, a library and only one stone with an X on it. Besides, the

less discovered, the more open the possibilities. I always console myself

with that thought.

That night I let my left hand write. It took a long time to get from

scratches to Xs; to no, no, no; but finally it wrote: Let us then stone on

stone on stone a library that befits a library each door face the sun one

at dawn and one at dusk. Many queens saw it. (Perhaps they were all

queens in those days. Or perhaps when they reached my age they

became queens. I would like to think so.)

This was on my mind when I went to sleep and I dreamed a row of

dancing women, all of them my age and all wearing crowns of smooth

white pebbles. They were calling to me to wake up . . . to wake up, that

is, into my dream, and I did, and I was still in my boots, and fishing vest,

and my old gray pants. I didn't, in other words, dream myself to be one of

them, as some sort of queen or other. I was my dirt-stained self, holding

out my grimy hands. And it seemed that they gave me my mirror -- the

one I had already found -- and even in my dream it wasn't shiny and new

but just as scratched as when I found it. They showed me that I must

place the mirror exactly where I found it in the first place so that I could

find it as I did find it -- near the former riverbed and on a slight rise. This

I did in my dream as the old women beat stones together with a loud

clack, clack. And of course it's true; that's where I did find the mirror. It

all fits together perfectly!

(All those old women lacked grace, but perhaps it's not required.)

My daughters . . . I suppose they tell me the truth about myself, though

no need to. Why do they do it? Why feel free to say such things? Do I

talk too much? Do I go on and on about it or about anything? Why, I've

almost stopped talking altogether, wanting, now, other kinds of meanings.

My argument in one Xed stone or a particularly smooth one or several in a

row. I let them speak their ambiguities for themselves.

I showed my daughters my moonstone. I wanted to convince them. I said

it came from the library.

"What library?"

"You know. Out by the dried-up stream."

"You've always had that moonstone. Grandma gave it to you."

"Well," I said, "I found it lying in the mud there." (I knew I was just making

everything worse.)

"You must have dropped it yourself. What were you doing wearing that

out there, anyway? You ought to be more careful."

I suppose I should have been. I know it will be theirs someday.

Later they told me about a place (I've seen it) where there's a doctor's

office in the basement and art rooms, pot-holder rooms, television rooms,

railing along all the halls. Everybody has a cane. I've seen that. I told my

daughters, "no."

Just as crossroads, fire, seashells, oak trees, and circles have special

meanings, stones have meanings, too. Some, upright and lumpy on the

hillsides, are named after women. All the best houses are of stone,

therefore the library also. Molloy sucked them (I have too, sometimes),

found them refreshing. Stone doors into the mountain balance on a single

point and open at the slightest caress. The sound stone makes as door is

not unlike the rustling pebbles on beaches. It is fitting that stones should

be open to question, as my stones are. I liked letting them speak their

ambiguities. When I was not out at my dig, I remembered stones. I

dreamed them, I imagined I heard their clack, clack.

I told my daughters that if I should be found awkwardly banging stones

together on some moonlit night, it would be neither out of senility nor

sentimentality, but a scientific test.

But then I found a stone of a different kind and color: reddish and lumpy.

Essentially nine lumps: two in front, two in back, plus one head, two

arms, and two leg posts. I recognized it instantly. Fecund and wise. Big

breasted and a scholar. Fat and elegant. I wanted to bring this librarian

to her true place in the scheme of things. Restore her to her glory.

Clearly, she not only had babies and nursed them, but she read all the

books.

After this find, I dug in a frenzy. I knew I should be more careful of myself

at my age: follow some rules of rest and recreation, but I believe in do,

not be. Do! Though why should I so desperately want more . . . more,

that is, than the mother of the library? (My daughters will call her a

lumpy, pink stone.) Am I never satisfied?

Never! (My left hand has written: Stone on stone on stone on stone on

stone, almost as though I were building the library out of the words.)

And then as I dug frantically, my eyes were blinded by the setting sun.

Everything sparkled, and I thought I actually saw the library: all white

with a great, clear river before it and a landing where the books (stone

books) were brought in on little ships with big sails. The glistening of the

waves hurt my eyes, but I could see, even so, the librarians dancing on

the beach in front of the sacred circle of the library. And they were all

old. Old as I am or even older -- wrinkled, hobbling women -- I could see

that their backs were hurting them too, but they kept on with the

dancing, just as I kept on with my digging. And I heard the soft, sweet,

fluty music of the library and felt the cool of it, for I, too, stood close to

the western doorway. And we could see one another. I'm sure of it. I saw

eyes meet mine, and not just once or twice.

I stepped forward, then, to dance with them, but I fell -- it seemed a

long, slow fall -- and as I fell, the sun was no longer in my eyes and I saw

then my rocky ground and my dried-up stream bed.

After I got up, I felt extraordinarily lucid. As though I had drunk from the

ice-cold river. Clearheaded and happy -- happier than I'd been in a long

time (though I've not been unhappy digging here; on the contrary). I

didn't want to go home and rest -- I felt so powerful -- but I forced

myself. I had hardly eaten all day, and most important, if I tried to dig in

the dark I might miss something. I might toss away a stone like my

important librarian and not see what it really was.

When I got home that night I found that someone had been at my

stones. They were all, all gone. I was so happy about my little librarian

that I didn't notice it at first. It wasn't until I went to put her on my night

table (I wanted her to be close to me as I slept) that I noticed there

were no other stones there, not a single one. I knew right away what had

happened. My daughters decided that I'm being crowded out by stones.

They think -- because they would feel that way -- that it must be

uncomfortable to live like this. But I was brought up on stones, don't they

remember that? I had geodes. I had chunks of amber. I had a cairngorm

set in silver. Still have it somewhere, unless they took that off for

safekeeping thinking I will lose it out there. Well, perhaps I already have,

but if I did, it's been worth it many times over. And now even my hanging

baskets of stones, gone, and stones from every surface, every shelf, all

gone. Thank goodness I carry my most important ones with me in my vest

pockets.

All these old stones. Mother wouldn't have appreciated them either. The

work, yes, the care I've taken, the effort -- she did appreciate effort and

would have praised me for that -- but she had no understanding of

science and its slow, laborious unfolding. The care, the cataloging, she

would have praised, but perhaps not when all this work involves merely

stones. Back in those days she didn't even like my geodes (especially

those that had not been opened yet). It can't be hoped that she would

have liked my little naked librarian. Mother disapproved of nakedness of

any sort. I, on the other hand, want to stress the importance of

childbearing librarians and so the importance of the bodies of the

librarians, and so all the glory of their old-lady sexuality. (And I have seen

it at the local library . . . the woman in charge sitting with her breasts

resting on the table.)

Coming in like that, then, and no stones, my little librarian in hand, I

couldn't possibly sleep. I was both too happy and too upset. I sat down

instead to draw my new find. If I am, someday in the future, to be judged

for this work by someone who really knows what it's all about, I don't

want to make any mistakes that will spoil the scientific accuracy of the

study. I labeled all the parts: these slits, eyes; that slit, the opening to

the womb. (The look on her face is intelligent and self-sufficient.)

I hid the drawings under my socks. (Who knows what my daughters will

think worth nothing?) I put the librarian in the top breast pocket of the

vest, where tomorrow she will rest over my heart. Then I checked all the

other pockets with my most important stones (all there, thank goodness)

and went to bed. It was nearly morning.

Even so, the next day I woke still extraordinarily clearheaded. I fairly

jogged out to my site. Worked hard all day but found nothing, saw

nothing. Once or twice I did think I heard the sound of flutes and perhaps

some drumming, but I knew that was just my imagination plus the beat of

my own heart in my ears. I always hear that on hot days when I lean

over too much or get up too fast.

When I got home I sensed, again, a change. (Why do they always come

in the daytime when I'm not here? Why are they afraid to face me?) I

couldn't see the changes this time, but I knew they'd been there and I

knew things were gone. I checked my closet first, and yes, those few

dresses I have that I hardly ever wear weren't there. Also the suitcase

that I keep at the back on the closet floor.

A pair of walking shoes were gone, and my best dressy shoes. Also a

white sweater my daughters gave me but that I never wear, except to

please them once in a while to make them think I like it. Then, in the

drawers, I found half my underwear gone and my jewelry, such as I have.

(Probably my cairngorm. I didn't see it there.)

They have already packed me up and taken my things off somewhere,

and I know where. From the looks of what they thought I'd need there --

dresses, jewelry, stockings -- I knew what it would be like: dress for

dinner; sit on porches; play cards; watch TV; sing; entertainment every

Saturday night. Did they think I was so senile I wouldn't notice what was

going on? I knew it wouldn't be long before they'd come for me, and I

wondered exactly when that would be. Perhaps very early in the morning,

before I was up and out at my dig. Well, I would just have to go back out

there right away. The thing was, I wasn't ready yet. Now I would have to

make something happen before I really understood anything. Before I

went out, though, I thought I would sit down, have a cup of tea, and let

my left hand write a bit. I thought it might have something to tell me.

Why not why not lie down and in the sanctuary of the library why not

come cool all night and see the shores of the sky?

(My daughters have never been interested in libraries or in anything they

can't put their finger on or anything they can't understand the first time

they see it.)

Take a white string along and measure and dig in the center of the

library a place to lie down with quilts and pillows.

Nothing much else to do that I could think of right then. I didn't wait. I

did as they said, got white cord, and quilt, and pillow. I didn't bring a

flashlight. The night was clear, stars out but no moon. I could see well

enough to find the center of the library. I dug a shallow grave just my

size and lay down there, facing up, looking at the constellation Swan. I

kept my eyes on that. It took effort, but everything worth doing takes

effort. Effort is what makes it all worthwhile, so I held my eyes open and

on the Swan, her wings stretched out, flying out there so high I knew I

couldn't even conceive of the distance. I forced myself not to sleep.

Pretty soon the Swan seemed to move and wobble and then began to

swoop about the sky. My God, I'd never seen anything so strange and

wonderful as that swooping Swan of stars. And then I heard faintly at

first -- that clack, clack, clack of stones that meant all the librarians

were there around me. I didn't see them, but I knew they were there. I

was afraid to turn my eyes away from the Swan. Nor did I want to by

then. I liked watching it loop and tumble and glide. And then it whizzed by

directly over my head so close I felt the rush of air. And after that, there

was the fat red Venus, life-size, sitting right beside me. "Sanctuary," she

said, but she didn't need to say it. I knew that. "Stay," she said, and all

of a sudden I knew it was death, death now, and had been death all

along. But I thought, I could be working in the sanctuary of the vegetable

garden at the old ladies' home. Or I might even be sitting on the porch,

but I'd be alive if only for a little longer . . . not much, but a little bit.

"No," I said. But she kept nodding, and now I couldn't have turned away

even if I wanted to, and the clack, clack of stones was loud, and painful,

and right over my head.

"Why not later?"

"It's now or never."

I knew this was what I wanted, but suddenly it seemed too easy. I could

hear, by now, not only clacks, but also the rush and rustle of the great

river nearby. I even heard the sound of a boat, the bump of wood on

wood as a skiff came up to the dock. I heard the thump of stone tablets

being placed upon the shore, and I knew they were full of women's

thoughts . . . women's writings . . . women's good ideas. Even old

women's good ideas. Then the old women danced toward me with flowers,

and suddenly I was standing up on my white quilt and I was wearing my

old white nightgown, which I know I had not put on to come out here in.

(I know better than to walk around at night in nothing but that.) And I

worried because I wondered what had happened to my vest with all my

best finds in it. But the Venus read my mind. "If you give us up," she said,

"you have to give up those, too. You have to give up the proof that there

were some little germs of sanity to what you were doing." All the old

women came one by one and looked me right in the eye then and smiled;

and all their eyes were blue, every one of them, the exact same blue. I

could see that they wanted me as much or more than I wanted them and

that we would talk and it would be my kind of talk. I knew that my left

hand would write, then, many books on stones.

"And they will be found here," the Venus said, "and will be deciphered and

all in less than five years from now."

"Otherwise?" I said.

"Otherwise, nothing. No library, no books, no mirror, no Venus."

"I'll take nothing," I said, and the Swan swooped down and knocked me

over. I fell, clutching feathers, and I thought, They lied to me. I'm dying

right now. They lied to me and took me anyhow.

But it wasn't dying. I woke up to voices and to the sound of a van and

my daughters and two men. They don't have to say anything. I know

where they're taking me, and I know that I chose it myself. I will go

silently and with dignity. I will walk like a queen. I'm thinking that I'll find

something there to make an effort for. I'll find something so I can do. I'll

not just be.

Odd thing, though. I pick up my vest lying there all torn. It's as though it

had been attacked in anger. There's hardly an inch of it without a tear. I

check what's left of the pockets. Everything is gone, just as they said it

would be -- every single smooth, white stone and all the other things --

and I'm standing here like a crazy woman, bare feet, nightgown (I feel

sure I didn't come out here like this). And I am surrounded by feathers

. . . white feathers. When I move they float out all around me. When I

shake my head they flutter down.

first published in OMNI Magazine, February 1987

Reader Comments

Carol Emshwiller grew up in Michigan and in France. She lives in New York

City in the winter, where she teaches fiction writing at NYU Continuing

Education, and in Bishop, CA, in the summer, where she still climbs

mountains, though now with a cane. For more about her and her work,

see her Web page.

donate | download |

editor@strangehorizons.com webmaster@strangehorizons.com

Frames ON

Frames OFF

Poison (part 1 of

by Beth Bernobich

1/20/03 Our

keepers, the

scientists, had used

complicated words

like metamorphosis

and hormones and

camouflage to

explain us. We

could turn invisible,

they'd said. We

could change from

male to female and

back. Survival

adaptations, they'd

called it. I wondered

if what Yenny did

was for our

survival.

Rushes #1 of 12:

One Is All Alone

by Jay Lake

1/20/03 "So," says

a voice of rattling

leaves and creaking

branches. "At last

you return."

Interrupt

by Jeff Carlson

1/13/03 Whatever

happened to the sun

seems to be

intensifying. This

time I blacked out

for at least five

days.

L'Aquilone du

Estrellas (The

Kite of Stars)

by Dean Francis

Alfar, illustration by

Hal Hefner

1/6/03 He told her

that such a kite was

impossible, that

there was no

material

immediately

available for such

an absurd

undertaking, that

there was, in fact,

no design for a kite

that supported the

weight of a person.

Archived Fiction

Dating back to

9/1/00

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