Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“No.”

“You didn’t? All right then. — but their writings have been preserved and are available to anyone who will simply take the trouble to look for them in our great public libraries. Working then from their original formulas, Sylvia and me have been able to duplicate their results in our lab. The three piles in front of me are various forms of crude, or secondary ectopl—”

“Stop.”

“George?”

“They’re not.”

“Not what?”

“Ectoplasm.”

“What are they?”

“I don’t know. They’re not crude ectoplasm.”

“Cobwebs! They’re cobwebs, George! Ordinary cobwebs! All scrunched and rolled like a fine, thin dough. Do you remember, Sylvia, how we collected this stuff?”

“Oh, those filthy rooms!” Mrs. Imolatty said.

“They were dirty.”

“The rubbish was all over my dress, in my hair, everywhere.”

“It was a mess all right,” Imolatty admitted. He turned back to George. “Good for you, George!” he congratulated him. “You’re not letting me get away with a thing. You’re a clever boy. The alchemists never experimented with ectoplasm. No, they were too greedy. I doubt if they gave a thought to ectoplasm.

“That low box on your right, the object rather like a foot bath at a public swimming pool, is a sort of ‘planter’ for ectoplasm. The woolly, grayish substance you see there — just a minute, George — is not itself ectoplasm, but is latent with a dormant form of ectoplasm which may sometimes be released through the process of agitation or ‘bruising’. Watch the planter. Look closely now.”

Imolatty stepped into the box and began a silent shuffle in place.

“Stop.” George said.

“Are you watching closely?” Imolatty said. “Can you see what’s happening?” he asked breathlessly.

A silverish froth had begun to bubble up in the ectoplasm planter, a queer chalk brew.

“Stop!” George cried. “ Stop! ”

“There,” Imolatty said. “You may try it yourselves, ladies and gentlemen.”

“I told you to stop,” George said.

“So you did. Why?”

“Because it’s not true.”

“What’s not true, George?”

“Everything. It’s not true that stuff’s ectoplasm.”

“Brillo pads, George! Soaped Brillo pads! I wear crepe soles moistened beforehand. That’s very good, George. The folks on the tour never catch on.”

“What if they touch it?” George Mills asked angrily. “Supposing they touch it?”

“Isn’t he smart, Sylvia? He’s smart as a whip. ‘Better let it calm down, folks,’ I say. ‘Agitated ectoplasm’s dangerous, too hot to handle.’ ”

“Stop!” George said.

“Caught out again, by golly!” Imolatty said. “Right you are, George. It isn’t too hot. All right, ladies and gentlemen, suppose we turn our attention to some of the museum’s major acquisitions.”

He led George and the woman through the black, hot room, not a guide now, a curator, with the curator’s furious pride, his curious, almost fanlike, supportive stake, his enthusiasm intimate reciprocity between speaker and topic, scholar and subject. He revealed background, rattled off commentary, footnote, marginalia, joyous gloss — all enthusiasm’s inside information, George Mills all the while muttering then practically shouting, “Stop, Stop! Stop! ”

“Yes? Was there a question, George?”

“That glass case is empty. There’s nothing in it.”

“Yes?” Imolatty said.

“You said it’s pure ectoplasm.”

“Pure primary ectoplasm. Yes?”

“It’s empty.”

“No, George. I’m afraid you shouldn’t have stopped me that time. I get that one.”

“There’s nothing there.”

“Nothing but pure primary ectoplasm, no.”

“I can’t see it.”

“That’s right. Because it’s pure. It doesn’t have that faint yellowish cast primary ectoplasm sometimes gets. Do you remember, Sylvia, that batch we had once?” He turned back to George. “We’d gone after some stuff — incidentally, ‘stuff’ isn’t slang in this instance but a perfectly acceptable, even scientific, term for primary ectoplasm — to bring back to the museum. This was in the early days and we didn’t always understand what we were doing. We set out before breakfast and had gathered the ectoplasm before noon—”

“Oh, Clement,” the woman said, “you’re not going to tell that story, are you? The boy will think we’re fools. I declare, whenever Clement wants to embarrass me he trots this story out.”

“We were kids, Sylvia. What did we know? Besides, I was as much the goat as you were. Anyway, to make a long story short, we’d collected all that we needed—”

“More than we needed.”

“All right,” Imolatty said. “More than we needed. As it turned out more than we needed. Our mistake, you see, was to gather the stuff while it was still light. You can’t see the yellow cast of impure primary during the day. It just looks like more sunlight.”

“Stop,” George said lamely.

“It’s true,” Imolatty said. “It just bleeds into the sunshine. It’s like trying to show movies outdoors on a bright afternoon.”

“Stop,” he said mechanically.

“I’ll never forget it,” Mrs. Imolatty said.

“Stop,” George told the woman.

“Sylvia trying to drain off that yellow cast,” Imolatty said, “running it through her sifter like it was a cup of flour.”

“My hands cramped,” she said.

“ ‘You think it’s any paler now, Clement?’ ” Imolatty mocked his wife.

“Well, you were the one thought that maybe if we washed it,” Mrs. Imolatty said. She looked at George. “You know what Mr. Imolatty did?” she said. “Just went and carried all five bushels and dumped them into the tub one at a time and filled it to the top with piping hot water every time he emptied a bushel, that’s all.”

“Stop.”

“Well, not piping hot every time he filled the tub. After the first two times the water was tepid. The fourth and fifth times it was outright cool.”

“I thought if I let it soak a spell. We were kids,” Imolatty said.

“What do kids know?” Mrs. Imolatty said.

“Stop,” George said. “Stop. Stop. Stop. ”

“Not at all,” Imolatty said. “I’m telling you about ectoplasm. That’s what you want to know about, isn’t it? Because it isn’t all brick in the world, it isn’t all mortar or bulk or whatever it is that’s material reality’s equivalent of fundament, firmament. The heart has its atoms, too. Its monads and molecules, its units and particles. Soul has its nutshell grain of integer morsel. Instinct does, will. And ectoplasm is only the lovely ounce and pennyweight of God.

“You’re not as smart as I thought, George,” Imolatty said. “You should have called me more often. My wife’s name is Sonia, not Sylvia. The Mortons constantly interrupted.”

Imolatty turned away, moved to another part of the room to stand beside a neat mound of earth like a stack of cordwood. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is pure unprocessed primary. Me and Sonia thought you’d like to see what first-quality ectoplasm looks like before it’s been treated. This high-grade ore comes directly from ectoplasm mines in extreme northern Florida. You’re welcome to take a handful with you as a souvenir of your visit to the ectoplasm museum. We’re sorry that we have no bags for you to put it in, but you’ll find that it keeps just as well in your pocket or purse. This concludes our tour, folks. Sonia and me thank you very much. Sonia?”

She flicked off the wall switch.

“Stop!” George shouted. “ Lie! ” he screamed. “ Cheat! Fake! ” he called in the dark.