Дэймон Найт - Orbit 7

But I’m going back. (I don’t call it home anymore since I’ve been here so long.) I’m going back, but once I get up in that plane I don’t think anything will matter. I’ll see the world as it really is then and I won’t mind not ever coming down at all.

I have a seat here by this wall of glass and I don’t think anyone is noticing me. I have been here quite some time, but others come and go. They don’t keep track of how long I’ve been sitting here. And, as I glance down at myself, I think again that I look quite as ordinary as anyone else. Why should they notice me with either criticism or admiration? I don’t think it is at all evident that all my clothes are new.

I have a little black satchel on the floor beside me. In it I have my glasses, my newspaper, a cantaloupe, and a little bag of peanuts. The cantaloupe is certainly very ripe. I think I can smell it now and then, a sweet, good smell.

Just now I noticed a woman who came up near me and then moved away to take a seat farther on. I think I know why that was. It could have been the cantaloupe, that strange (to her) pungent sweetness, but I think not. In my haste to come here in time (it’s true I arrived unnecessarily early) I put on all my new clothes without washing. I might say that washing in my apartment was never easy, and I may not really have washed very well for quite some time. I might as well have feet like a fat man, a very fat man, I should say. My feet are not fat, I mean, but they have a certain fat quality. That woman has found me out, and that is why she is sitting over across the way.

So I am not really at all like the others under all my nice clothes.

Yet is it a crime to be dirty? I can see very well that it is in a place like this though I never noticed back in my own room. Here it is certainly a crime, or certainly outstanding in one way or another, different, eccentric, extraordinary, and, I do think, a crime. Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now, though it makes me feel quite shrunken, new clothes or not. How will it be in the plane, how will it be to be shrunken and expanded at the same time, for surely in the plane someone will have to sit next to me whether they like it or not. Perhaps the cantaloupe will help. Perhaps I will keep my satchel on my lap.

Think if I should drop it somehow up there and this elephantine cantaloupe, still swollen with altitude, should squash down on some tiny building, covering it with its cantaloupe-colored pulp, spreading its rich, sweet smell over everything, a cantaloupe large as the moon, ripe and ready, squashing them all in too much sweetness and too much juice. Too much, they would cry. It’s too much.

Flight 350, Flight 321, Flight 235, Flight 216. I wonder if my feet together with my cantaloupe are capable of permeating the air of this whole interior as that voice does. Perhaps they already have and I am completely unaware of it. Wondering, I almost do not hear my own flight number, 216, even though I have memorized it, rechecked and rememorized it a dozen times. Flight 216 has been, the voice tells everyone in the whole airport without a tremble or change of quality, everyone, it tells, not seeking us, the passengers, out, to impart its private information, Flight 216 has been (I should have guessed) postponed.

Well, so that is the way it is, and now, immediately after, I’m not sure if the voice said just postponed or postponed indefinitely. I wonder if there’s any sense in asking why or when. I wonder if there’s any sense in waiting.

There goes another plane, I have not noticed where to this time. All the other people’s planes are coming and going but I don’t know why I ever thought mine would, even with my new clothes and my ticket.

Senseless or not, I am going to wait exactly as I waited before I knew my flight was postponed, but already I see there is a difference in my feelings as I watch the other planes rise. I am quite shrunken. I am shrinking as they rise up. I am growing too small for my new clothes. They will hang upon me in a most noticeable way, I am sure. I will be a spectacle. I will make a spectacle of myself just walking from here to the door. Everyone will notice.

But why am I disappointed in Flight 216? I have not even been sure I wanted to go back at all. In truth, I do not want to go back, not really. What did I want then? And the three hundred dollars? If I can get that back will it make up for what I wanted, whatever that was? I wonder if I can get it back for it certainly would be something to have. I wonder should I try now? But the flight was just postponed, not canceled.

I see a man at the desk who seems to be asking something. He is quite out of place there. He is wearing a homemade coat made out of an Army blanket, and he has a tangled, olive-drab beard. If he is asking about Flight 216, and he certainly must be, then I don’t believe that I should at all. I don’t believe that I should put myself in the company of such people. They might even think we were together, going off to the same destination. Still, I would like to have that money. Perhaps if I wait a half hour or so and ask then, they will not connect me with him.

So, here am I, a woman waiting. I wish I had some greater meaning at this time of disappointment. Were I a man, I could even be humanity waiting, all humanity, whose flight is indefinitely postponed, but I am woman waiting. Rather a cliché. It doesn’t matter. Let her wait.

If I sit very still I feel a tiny sliding movement, a tiny, snaky motion of withdrawal inwards. My feet just barely touch the ground. Away goes another plane and I feel my heart lurch.

But the three hundred dollars. Has it been a half an hour yet? I forgot to check the clock at the start. I will have to wait for another to go by. My feet dangle. I am like a girl in woman’s clothes. Anyone glancing this way will wonder who has dressed me in these woman-sized things and why. Have I lost my own clothes somewhere? they wonder. Was I in some sort of accident? Did I soil myself? Was I sick on myself and did I have to wear my mother’s grown-up things? I do not think, if I went to the desk in my present condition, that they would give me the three hundred dollars at all. And even if I did have the money, would they serve me in the coffee shop? If I wait much longer I will have difficulty climbing up on their stools and it would be quite embarrassing for everyone if I continued to shrink right before their eyes as I sat there with my coffee and my sandwich. They would all know I wasn’t a bit like them then. Just as we suspected when we first saw her sitting down and watching the planes, they would all say. Just as we suspected all along.

By now I don’t even mean woman anymore. I am midget, waiting. I represent all midgets (there can’t be so very many) waiting for their midget life to turn into real life, which is, of course, indefinitely postponed. (I am becoming quite sure that they did say “indefinitely” now.)

This slithering sensation, minute as it is, makes me itch, but, here in this huge, public place (there is room for quite a few airplanes in here, should they ever wish to pull away the glass walls and wheel them in upon these polished floors), here, I do not believe I should scratch myself.

My feet no longer dangle. I must slide off this chair before the drop becomes too steep. This I can manage easily within my clothes. By now people must think someone has just left a new brown coat on the chair. I squat, wrapped in a stocking, under the overhanging edge of it, and in a few minutes more I am small enough to step into my satchel. There it is comfortable and dark. I curl up next to the cantaloupe and newspaper and nibble on a peanut. I had not realized it, but I am quite exhausted. I roll my stocking into a pillow and lean back upon it. Smallness, I am thinking, must be quite as comfortable as largeness. They each have advantages. Here, snug as … as anyone might be in a soft and dark, black satchel, I fall asleep quickly.