The Best of Science Fiction 12

"Tea ... a cake? ... Disturbing news of Cuba ... Yes, South America is so revolutionary ... Cold for fall ... an early frost ... I was wondering ... "

I remember best her feet (this is not unusual, considering my low position here upon my mattress) in little black pumps reflecting the squares of the window and reminding me of Number One's nose ... something classical about them both, I guess. I would have liked to press my tongue across the shine of the shoes ... well, yes and the nose too. (I still wonder what their flavors might have been, the nose, certainly vanilla or apple, the shoes a red-winy taste soured by the sidewalks.) (I do often wonder if they can appreciate flavors as I do, if they even know the real pleasures of eating. Certainly they have too many diversions and, though as babies they tested things as I test them, I am sure that, by now, they have forgotten the joys and understandings of tongue and lip.) Mother, pressing her dactyls into ladyfingers in a useless proliferation, had just said the view from my window was the best in the house and I had just said that I had been thinking about my future and would like to have her help, at least for some of the details, until I could get started on my own. "Future," Mother said, just at that moment glancing down, and then she saw it. She forgot the studied beauty of the classical smile, the corners of the mouth faintly Ionic but not yet Corinthian and she forgot to watch out for those knees under that tight skirt of hers. Her eyes saw a wound ... some horrible wound of the genitals, lustrous, blistered, purple. (And yet I suppose exposed genitals, pure and simple, healthily blooming and blushing, would do to describe her stunned and outraged look.) And my starfish was firm-bodied, beautifully turgid and a rosy, tan-pink colour.

"What is that thing?" The way she said thing, to flush it down the toilet was too good for it, though she would certainly want to dispose of it as quickly as one would dispose of a particularly hairy spider ... Still, nothing hairy here.

The starfish reclined (one might say) near the top of the jar, one finger hidden by the punctured lid, one stretched languidly sideways along the ridge where the glass curved, and three almost straight down. Infinitesimally, one of the lower fingers was edging upwards. I don't believe Mother could have noticed this movement and certainly she couldn't have had time to examine or understand the waving suckers, yet gall touched her tongue and even her knees paled. I saw she saw the world in that jar, caught in that abyss, sour sea water all over it, and she, without wanting to, drinking its juices ... or me. Was it me she thought she looked at? Opposites reflecting each other, he all digits and he of none, or rather one? Whichever it was, I saw, in the shape of her lips, that the taste of death (or life) was on them and I held my breath.

That's the last I ever saw of her; isn't that strange? Those rejecting lips and then the shoes departing in uneven clocks, for though she was hardly half as old as Number One (but I must admit Number One keeps up her strength extraordinarily well, rinses it in, I suppose, with the henna of her hair, or sucks it from me with that avid, other mouth. I do age fast) — for though she was hardly half — as I said — Mother, who refused ever after that to come into my room, died a year later. One could say that she faced her moment of truth with a starfish.

And so, after all, I have been forced into approaching Miss Number Two whom, as I've already mentioned, I really felt to be my only salvation from the beginning, but instead of photographs (I had started with Number Two in exactly the same way I started with Number One in spite of the mention of a censor) — not understanding what I had in mind at all, instead of photographs, Number Two brought me a mirror, a rather large hand mirror, round and with a blue cast to the glass.

I was surprised to find that I had a handsome, rather noble head. No reactions, no expressions on any of the faces of those that had appeared before me had ever led me to believe that this might be. In fact, I was sure of the opposite and I had only hoped I might be passable. Also I found that I did resemble, to a surprising degree, Miss Number Two, and was, in my own masculine way, quite as attractive as she was, my hair the same matt-black, my eyes, mysterious, my cheeks with a mute, aristocratic pallor, my nose, stark. I had a thick, muscular neck not exactly in keeping with my fine-featured face and, as she held the mirror farther from me, I saw a barrel-chested manatee-thing, certainly ichthyoid, with little wing shapes lumping under my clothes at hips and shoulders as though I could actually, as I've dreamed, swim into the air, and I saw the eyes of Number Two leaning to get the same view as I had of myself. I could see her thought reflecting my own! What a curious shape, and is it beautiful or ugly? Has it a meaning of its own? Is it a symbol of sloth or courage or of sex? Or is it a symbol at all?

"I had thought," I said to her eye as it floated languidly at the edge of the mirror — I could scarcely tell mine from hers, three haughty eyes there, moving slightly eastward about a foot under the watery surface, I would guess. I decided to speak to all three. "I had thought," I said, "that I might go on display." Two eyes remained immobile while the other contracted its lid a quarter of an inch. I could see I wasn't getting any sympathy from any of them.

One of them closed for a moment, as though, an eye could take a deep breath. Was it exasperated with me? Have you any concept at all, it seemed to be asking me, of what you really are? Does the fat lady, monstrous as she is, have anything to do with you? And the half-man, half-woman?

Ah, but I am certainly all male and perhaps nothing but male.

I see. Here, in other words, is the flying phallus at last, a truncated Hermes. Are you going on display for that? A little chicken Icarus (cut down, but winged, it is true) doing five o'clock drama in a different sort of back room?

But none of those eyes can know about that drama. They swim smugly in little back and forth motions, contracting their corners rhythmically in order to maintain their equilibrium. I see I have gone beyond the eyes. I'll tell them that fashions in freaks change; that, just as with sex, what was unacceptable last year is accepted this year. People always accept more as they become sophisticated, don't they? And isn't this equally desirable in freaks as in sex? Liberalise them, I say, and let me be one of those who struggle for this cause, this great opening-out of understanding, this acceptance without censure. The presentation will make such a difference, too. We'll do it with finesse and delicacy. To start, I will take the name Désiré. And certainly with my so unforeseen personal beauty ... I saw that the eyes thought not. The two, led by the one most energetic and most opinionated one, fell all over themselves trying to agree with each other. I could see they felt the mirror too small a place for any arguments.

Let me approach them, instead, from the point of view of love. I might ask them: Shouldn't people be taught to love? People don't realise, I will say, how hard it is to love and that it must be practiced daily with some difficult exercise. And I might provide that exercise.

But I'm sure I won't be that hard to love. Everyone loves a winner and I'll be the freak of freaks. They'll come to think of me as beautiful. The details of my body might even be, eventually, exposed on TV. My life story might be written, and surely, if I did have such a life, there would be something to write about, such as how I first decided to join the carnival and the difficulties I had, in the beginning, in doing so; how they all doubted that I would be accepted by the public, for I was, after all, a new concept in freaks. I had, it was felt, carried freakishness to its ultimate degree. I was wholly and utterly the freak, whereas people were used to half freaks. It was felt I might be too startling. I might upset people. They might be more than just disgusted, but shaken to their very bones. But, at last, in some small circus sideshow, someone had had the courage to take me on. At first reactions were mixed. There were letters of protest: This was going too far ... an insult to the public ... poor taste that I should be where others could see me at all, let alone be on public view. I was even banned in a few cities, but of course this helped in the long run. Still, it was an uphill fight. Other freaks were jealous of my purity, my authenticity. No rubber, no makeup, no mutilation necessary. Yet I had my champions, including the circus owners who had invested in me and also some freaks who were generously able to appreciate someone who was far beyond them. Still it will have taken me, let us suppose, about ten years to achieve any real acceptance. In any field one must certainly count on at least this much time, and I am not asking for a quick and easy success. And so, by then, people would have become used to me. Some would say I had a fish-like beauty, some that my movements were graceful and well adapted to my shape and to my needs. Some would argue that my achievements in rolling and flopping about had taken at least as much practice and concentration as would be needed by a concert pianist. Films would then be made to preserve my movements for posterity. Perhaps I might have had my body, by this time, tattooed with flowers and the faces of pretty girls. I would go on TV. The book on my life would be written, and in it, also, would be a description of how I came to be married and how I manage in my household with a little electric cart steered with my teeth, my children, normal or almost normal (there is no need for my sort of mistake twice), and there would be something about my beautiful sister who helped me from the very beginning, at the first mention that I might be put on display.