Joyce Oates - Sourland

“ I think you’re brave, Leah. Giving this party you give every May at about now — opening this house — that shouldn’t become a mausoleum…”

And now — Woods was offering her a drink? — he’d slipped away from her party with not one but two wineglasses and a bottle of red wine? “If not a cigarette — you’re right, Leah, it’s a filthy habit — ‘genetics’ or not — how’s about a drink? This Burgundy is excellent.”

Leah was offended but heard herself laugh. When she told Harris about this encounter, Harris would laugh. It was not to be believed, this young man’s arrogance: “I have an extra glass here, Leah. I had a hunch that someone would come out here to join me — at large parties, that’s usually the case. Like I say, I’m an ‘emissary.’ I’m a ‘Uranian.’ I bring news, bulletins. I’d hoped you would step out here voluntarily, Mrs. Zalk — I mean, as if ‘of your own free will.’ So — let’s drink, shall we? A toast to — ”

Leah had no intention of drinking with Woods Gottschalk. But there was the glass held out to her — one of their very old wedding-present wineglasses — crystal, sparkling-clean — just washed that morning by Leah, by hand. Unable to sleep she’d risen early — anxious that the house wasn’t clean, glasses and china and silverware weren’t clean, though the Filipina cleaning woman had come just the day before.

Woods held his wineglass aloft. Leah lifted hers, reluctantly, as Woods intoned:

“‘The universe culminates in the present moment and will never be more perfect.’ Emerson, I think — or Thoreau. And who was it said — ‘Who has seen the past? The past is a mist, a mirage — no one can breathe in the past.’” Woods paused, drinking. “From the perspective of Uranus — though ‘Uranus’ is just the word, the actual planet is unfathomable — as all planets, all moons and stars and galaxies, are unfathomable — even the present isn’t exactly here . We behave as if it is, but that’s just expediency.”

Leah laughed. What was Woods saying! All that she could remember of Uranus is that it was — is? — unless it had been demoted, like Pluto — one of the remote ice-planets about which no romance had been spun, unlike Mars, Jupiter, and Venus. Or was she thinking of — Neptune? She lifted the wineglass, and drank. The wine was tart, darkly delicious. It had to be the last of the Burgundy wines her husband had purchased. Woods was saying, “These people — your friends — Dr. Zalk’s friends — and my parents’ friends — are wonderful people. Many of them — the men, at least — I mean, at the Institute — ‘extraordinary,’ like Hans Gottschalk and Harris Zalk. You’re very lucky to have one another. To ‘define’ one another in your Institute community. And the food, Leah — this isn’t the Institute catering service, is it? — but much, much better. What I’ve sampled is excellent.”

“The food is excellent. Yes.”

“ I could be a caterer, I think. The hell with being an ‘emissary.’ If things had gone otherwise.”

Leah was distracted by the deep back half-acre lawn that was more ragged, seedier than she remembered. Along the sagging redwood fence were lilac bushes grown leggy and spindly and clumps of sinewy-looking grasses, tall savage wildflowers with clusters of tough little bloodred berry-blossoms that had to be poisonous. And a sizable part of the enormous old oak tree in the back had fallen as if in a storm. This past winter, there had been such fierce storms! But Leah was sure that Harris had made arrangements for their annual spring cleanup…She felt a stab of hurt, as well as chagrin, that the beautiful old oak had been so badly wounded without her knowing.

“What do you do, Woods, since you’re not a caterer? I mean — what does an ‘emissary’ actually do for a living?”

“Oh, I do what I am doing — and when I’m not, I’m doing something else.”

Woods’s tone was enigmatic, teasing. His eyes, on Leah’s face, flitted about lightly as a bee, with a threat of stinging.

“I don’t understand. What is it you do. ”

“Strictly speaking, I’m a ‘dropout.’ I’ve ‘dropped out’ of time. Make that a capital letter T — ‘Time.’ I’ve ‘dropped out’ of Time to monitor eternity.” Woods laughed, and drank. “The crucial fact is — I am sober — these past eleven months — eleven months, nine days. I am not a caterer — not an ‘emissary’ — I just ‘bear witness’ — it’s this that propelled me here, to deliver to you. ”

Was he drunk? Deranged? High on drugs? (Halfway Leah remembered, she’d heard that the Gottschalks’ brilliant but unstable son had had a chronic drug problem — unless that was the Richters’ son, who’d dropped out of Yale and disappeared somewhere in northern Maine.)

“My news is — the Apocalypse has happened — in an eye-blink, it was accomplished.” Woods spoke excitedly, yet calmly. “Still we persevere as if we were alive, that’s the get of our species.”

“Really? And when was this ‘Apocalypse’?”

“For some, it was just yesterday. For others, tomorrow. There isn’t just a single Apocalypse of course, but many — as many as there are individuals. There is no way to speak of such things adequately. There is simply not the vocabulary. But make no mistake” — Woods shook his head gravely, with a pained little smile — “you will be punished.”

Now it was you . Leah shivered, she’d been thinking that Woods was speaking with cavalier magnanimity of we .

“But why? — ‘punished’?”

“‘Why’?” Woods bared big chunky damp teeth in a semblance of a grin. “Are you kidding, Mrs. Zalk?”

“I–I don’t think so. I’m asking you seriously.”

A rush of feeling came over her. Guilty excitement, apprehension. For Woods was right: why should she escape punishment? A Caucasian woman of a privileged class, the wife of a prominent scientist — long the youngest and one of the more attractive wives in any gathering — a loved woman — a cherished woman — how vain, to imagine that this condition could persevere!

“Global warming is just one of the imminent catastrophes. The seas will rise, the rivers will flood — the seashores will be washed away. Cities like New Orleans will be washed away. History itself will be washed away, into oblivion. It happened to the other planets — the ‘Ice Giants,’ long ago. No one laments the passing of those life-forms — none remain, to lament or to rejoice. In our soupy-warm Earth atmosphere there will arise super-bugs for which ‘medical science’ can devise no vaccines or antibiotics. There will arise genetic mutations, malformations. These are the ‘Devil’s frolicks’ — as it used to be said. Entire species will vanish — not just minuscule subspecies but major, mammalian species like our own. There will be as many catastrophes as there are individuals — for each is an individual ‘fate.’ But you will all be punished — when the knowledge catches up with you.”

“You’ve said that but — why? Why ‘punished’? By whom?”

Leah spoke with an uneasy lightness. This was the way of Harris — Harris and his scientist-friends — when confronted with the quasi-profound proclamations of non-scientists.

The pain between her eyes was throbbing now and her eyes blinked away tears. A kind of scrim separating her from the world — from the otherness of the world — and from invasive personalities like Woods’s — had seemed to be failing her, frayed and tearing. She’d been susceptible to headaches all her life but now pain came more readily, you could say intimately. Harris — who rarely had headaches — tried to be sympathetic with her stooping to brush his lips against her forehead. Poor Leah! Is it all better now?