January 1, 2000 (Otzchiim)More Fuel For The Aickman BonfireI hope I can be forgiven for posting something this long, but over the Christmas weekend, I dragged out my copy of THE WINE-DARK SEA to try to see what some of you people see in him, to see if I have changed since I bought the book and now could find something.
I read, I think for the first time, his "Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen" and was struck by the memory of another story with a similar situation, in some ways. I find the other superior in every way, and... Well, I understand less now than before.
THE ONE LEFT
by E. V. Lucas
I
He had become very ill -- could hardly move from where he lay; and she, who loved him, and was to have married him, and spent all her waking hours in thinking what she could do for him, persuaded him to have a telephone installed and brought to his bedside so that he and she could talk, and he could talk with others, too. Every night he rang her up and they had a long conversation; many times in the day also. Nothing, as it happened, could have saved his life, but this modern device lightened his last weeks.
His death, although it blasted her hopes, made no difference to her devotion. She merely installed his memory in the place of his rich personality and loved that. He, almost more than ever, was her standard. What he would have liked, she did; what he would have disliked, she left undone. Although dead, he swayed her utterly, and under his dominion she was equable and gentle, although broken at heart. She took all things as they came, since how could anything matter now that everything that mattered was over?
One perplexity only had power to trouble her, and that was the wonder, the amazement, the horror, not only that so much knowledge and kindliness and sympathy and all that made for the world's good and happiness should be so wantonly extinguished; but that no touch of the vanished hand should be permitted to the one soul (now left behind) with whom his soul had been fused. This she could neither understand nor forgive. Religious she had never been in the ordinary sense, although such religion as must sway a true idealistic lover was hers; but now she broke even from such slender ties as had held her to orthodoxy. She threw off the creed of her parents as naturally and simply as if it were a borrowed garment, and sank into her sorrow, which was also her joy, without another thought of here or hereafter.
So it went on for a year or so, during which time his house had remained empty, save for a caretaker,--for she (who was rich) could not bear that any one else should live there,--and his room exactly as he had died in it.
II
One evening she dined out. Her next neighbor on one side was a young American engineer, and in their conversation they came in time to the topic of invention and the curious aptitude for inventiveness shown by the American race. It was a case, said the engineer, of supply following demand; all Americans required time- and labor-saving appliances, and they obtained them. Where servants abounded and there was no servant problem, as in England and on the Continent, the need for such contrivances was not acute. And so on. The conversation thus begun reached at last specific inventions, and the engineer told of a remarkable one which had come under his notice just before he left New York.
'You will probably not believe me,' he said; 'the thing sounds incredible; but then who would have believed once that there could be a telegraph, and still less a telephone? Who would have believed that the camera would ever be anything but a dream? I will tell you what this is. It is a machine in which you insert a portion, no matter how small, of a telephone wire, and by turning a handle you compel this piece of wire to give back every message that has ever passed over it.'
She held her heart. 'This really exists?' she forced herself to ask.
'Actually,' said the engineer. 'But when I left home the inventor was in a difficulty. All the messages were coming out all right, but back- wards. Naturally the reproduction would be from the most recent to the less recent. By writing down the words and then reversing them the investigator could of course get at what he was wanting,--I may say that the invention is for the New York police--but my friend is convinced that he can devise some mechanical system of reversing at the time which will make the messages read forward as they should. Just think of the excitement of the detective, listening through all the voices and ordinary conversations on the wire for the one voice and the one sentence that will give him his long desired clue!--But are you ill?'
'No, no,' she said, although her face was a ghastly white, 'no, it is nothing. The room is a little hot. Tell me some more about your inventive friend. Is he wealthy?'
'Indeed, no,' said the engineer. 'That is his trouble. If he had more money, or if he had some rich backers who believed in him, he might do wonders.'
'I should like to help him,' she said. 'This kind of work interests me. Could you not cable him to come over and bring the thing with him? I would gladly finance him. I want some sporting outlet like that for my money.'
'Cable?'
'Yes, cable.’ There are things that one does by impulse or not at all. ‘The butler here will get you a form.'
III
She had been to the empty house that day with an employee of the telephone company, and they had extracted a foot of the precious wire. A few minutes ago she had held it in her trembling fingers and placed it in the machine. Now she carefully locked the door and drew that heavy curtain over it and carried the machine to the farthest corner of the room. There, with a sigh of relief and tense and almost terrible anticipation, she sat down and placed her ear to the reciever and began to turn the handle.
His voice sounded at once: 'Are you there?' It was quite clear, so clear and unmistakable and actual that her hand paused on the handle and she bowed her throbbing head. She turned on; 'Are you there?' the familiar tones repeated. And then the reply, 'Yes, who is it?' in a woman's voice. Then he spoke again: 'Ernest,' he said. 'Is it Helen?' Again her hand paused. Helen -- that rubbishy little woman he had known all his life and was on such good terms with. She remembered now, that she had been away when the telephone was installed and others had talked on it before her. It could not be helped; she had meant to be the first, but circumstances prevented. There must be many conversations before she came to her own; she would have to listen to them all. She turned one, and the laughing, chaffing conversation with this foolish little Helen person repeated itself out of the past now so tragic.
To other talks with other friends, and now and then with a tradesman, she had to listen; but at last came her hour.
'Is that you?' she heard her own voice saying, knowing it was her own rather by instinct than by hearing. 'Is that you? But I know it is. How distinctly you speak!'
'Yes, it's me'--and his soft vibrant laugh.
'How are you, dear?'
'Better, I hope.'
'Have you missed me?'
'Missed you!'
And then the endearments, the confidences, the hopes and fears, the plans for the morrow, the plans for all life. As she listened, the tears ran down her face, but still she turned on and on. Sometimes he was so hopeful and bright, and again so despairing.
She remembered the occasion of every word. Once she had dined out and had gone to the theatre. It was an engagement she could not well refuse. It was an amusing play and she was in good spirits. She rang him up between the acts and found him depressed. Hurrying home she had settled down to talk to him at her ease. How it all came back to her now!
'Are you there, my dearest?'
'Yes, but oh, so tired, so old!'
'It is a bad day. Every one has been complaining of tiredness to-day.'
'You say that because you are kind. Just to comfort me. It's no use. I can see so clearly, sometimes, I shall never get well -- to-night I know it.'
'My darling, no.'
And then silence,--complete, terrifying.
She had hung up without effect. He had fainted, she thought, and had dropped the receiver. She was in a fever of agony. She leaped into a cab and drove to his house. The nurse reassured her; he had begun to sob and did not want her to know it, and now he was asleep.
But there was no sleep for her that night. What if he were right -- if he really knew? In her heart she feared that he did; with the rest of her she fought that fear.
As she listened, the tears ran down her face, but still she turned on and on. She sat there for hours before the last words came, the last he was ever to speak over the wire.
It was to make an engagement. He had rallied wonderfully at the end and was confident of recovery. She was to bring her modiste to his room at eleven o'clock the next morning with her patterns, that he might help in choosing her new dress. He had insisted on it--the dress she was to wear on his first outing.
'At eleven,' he had said. 'Mind you don't forget. But then you never forget anything. Good-night once more, my sweet.'
'Good-night.'
She had never [seen?] him again alive. He died before the morning.
She put the machine away and looked out of the window. The sun had risen. The sky was on fire with the promise of a beautiful day. Worn out, she fell asleep; to wake -- to what? To such awakening as there is for those who never forget anything.
IV
Every night found her bending over the machine. She had learned now when not to listen. She had timed the reproduction absolutely, and watch in hand she waited until the other messages were done, and her own voice began. There was no condensing possible; one must either each time have every conversation or stop it. But how could she stop it before the end? Locking the door and drawing the heavy curtain, she would sit down in the far corner and begin to turn. She knew just how fast to turn for others; so slowly for herself. When the watch gave her the signal she would begin to listen.
'Is that you? Is that you? But I know it is. How distinctly you speak!'
'Yes, it's me.'--and the soft vibrant laugh.
'How are you, dear?'
'Better, I hope.'
'Have you missed me?'
'Missed you!'
oOo
rbadac (January 5, 2000)
This is a good story. Thanks for providing it, Mark !Without beating the Aickman horse too hard, I'd like to see some discussion on the comparative virtues of these two tales.
rbadac, taking his copy home to compare with 'Tiny Hand'
oOo
rbadac (January 10, 2000)
Lucas and Aickman On The TelephoneThe advent of the telephone must have seemed like a miracle. Nowadays, it's just annoying-- more than any sentient being could need, much more than most would deserve if quality of message content were a grading factor. Answering machines, cel phones and beepers promote the tyranny of capricious thought and murder patience, not in their useful or needed applications but in the incessant itch of some persons to reach out and touch someone, firmly, inescapably, by the short hairs. Listen to me. Listen to me. I have your ear. Respond to my haphazard cry for interaction. Do my will, or give me one good reason why not. Now.
Both Lucas' and Aickman's stories charmingly evoke a time when the wonder had not totally degenerated into ennui, and when the limitations of the medium created a capacity for unexpected fictional variations with a wonder of their own. Lucas' wire-reading invention could of course be replaced with the answering machine without great loss of effect if the story were to be updated, though there is a poignancy in the woman's having to listen to (or sit through) every conversation or none, which would be lost with a more modern contrivance.
E.V. Lucas (1868-1938), novelist, essayist, and authority on Charles Lamb, comes from an older, more noble school of English letters. 'The One Left' strives for a different agenda than 'Tiny Hand'. It contains much more genuine feeling, and achieves an invasive chill besides. The lack of any real supernatural forces at work put the waterline of plausibility much higher, and the reader is impelled to immerse on reality's terms, as in a non-genre story. A like one, in fact, might be mentioned: John Cheever's 'The Enormous Radio', in which another mildly fantastic device (in this case a radio which interacts with the elevator shafts to produce a monitor of every apartment in the building, as if one's neighbors were on speaker-phone without knowing it) is used to silhouette just how petty and prevaricative we all are in our supposedly unexamined lives.
'Tiny Hand', on the other tiny hand, unabashedly supernatural, is not looking for pathos of the usual sort, even the sort that Lucas transforms so expertly into horror. It is quite true that little of Aickman's fiction ever does. One would be hard put to find any romance in it which truly stands for its own sake, no Beauty without a fly on her cheek. His overview is often hyper-intellectual, and as a result can be rather arid, mostly head and precious little heart. I suspect any approach which overvalues one tends to appeal more to those who have been betrayed by the other. Lucas keeps his balance better than Aickman in this respect, but there is a sardonic wit here that Lucas does not evince.
The dissipation of Edmund over his seedy attraction to Nera Condamine's disembodied charms hardly inspires lyric poetry. It recalls, to name a phenomenon of modern vintage, the effete strokage of an Internet chatroom liason carried to the point of obsession. The higher sensibilities are not appealed to-- in fact lower ones are actively courted, but to entertaining ends, in much the same manner one sees in the early stories of Ramsey Campbell, whose characters snipe at each other constantly, and make poor work of their situations, being afflicted with basically rotten personalities. Naturally this is also a device; Campbell proposes to do them in, in the most appalling manner possible, and it would not be appropriate for the reader to fall in love with them overmuch.
Just as it would be impossible to winnow any lofty emotion from Aickman's story though, it would be just as impossible to extract any humor from Lucas'. Both authors are aware of this; they have achieved their objectives with the sacrifice in mind. The two diverge with similar cargo to very dissimilar destinations. But both are good stories nonetheless.
oOo
Robert Kunath (January 12, 2000)
Thanks to Mark for posting the Lucas story, and to rbadac for a very interesting comparison between stories of Lucas and Aickman. Having caught a few brickbats when I expressed some doubts about "The Visiting Star," I am glad to say that I quite like "Your Tiny Hand is Frozen" (and no brickbats for Mark who doesn't--there is no arguing with taste!).My sense is that the strength of Lucas's story is the pathos--the vision of the main character endlessly repeating the 'recording' of her dead lover is both horrible and pitiful. The emotion is authentic and, as rbadac quite rightly observes, there is no irony at all. It is, I think, a more straightforward story than "Tiny Hand," and I can see a number of ways in which it might be considered a stronger story than "Tiny Hand."
I don't see it that way--I'm with rbadac when he says that both stories accomplish their different objectives within their limitations. I don't quite see what rbadac calls the "seediness" of St. Jude's telephonic relationship with the not-quite-disembodied Ms. Condamine. I view it as the (fairly standard) Aickman portrayal of a weak male undone by the desire for a real connection with a female. It's not lyric poetry, but I do sense an authentic wistfulness in poor St. Jude's attempt to break out of his loneliness.
I suspect that Aickman would love rbadac's prologue on how the telephone has become a curse, and that is also one of the subtexts of the story. As I re-read it, I was struck by how prescient Aickman was about how the phone would bedevil us, and how our humanity would be elided in the modern world. As we know, Aickman was an anti-modern--he hated "the world's new littleness" (Never Visit Venice--quoted in Straub's introduction to *Wine Dark Sea*), and that was a part of what made him an unappealing personality to a number of people (Rosemary Pardoe kindly filled me in on some of his less attractive qualities). You get a sense of Aickman's elitism as St. Jude reflects how wonderful it is that Nera knows the 18th century poets so well (though I also sense Aickman portraying the weakness of that kind of hyper-refined intellectualism too). But poor St. Jude's struggle with the endless calls for extension 281 of the Chromium Supergloss Corporation reminded me a lot of our now-daily battle with the demonic telemarketers, and the telephonic relationship with Nera quite neatly stands for the way our technology offers us ever more--but inherently tenuous--contacts with others. Frankly, I think it's a heck of a story, but I've always had a taste for Aickman. I'd be interested in hearing more from Mark about why he thinks the story fails.
A final question (blushing with shame at my ignorance). The title-- "Your Tiny Hand is Frozen." A radio broadcast leads me to believe that "Your Tiny Hand is Frozen" is an aria sung by Rodolfo in *La Boheme.* Sadly, my copy of *The Opera Libretto Library* does not include *La Boheme*, so Aickman's allusion is still a closed book to me. Can anyone fill me in? (I suspect it's Rodolfo singing to the corpse of Mimi, not realizing she has made the big exit, but that's merely a surmise, since I don't know the opera).
oOo
Jim Rockhill (June 28, 2001)
The title does indeed refer to LA BOHEME. Rodolfo sings "Your tiny hand is frozen" ("Che gelida manina") when he and Mimi first meet in his garrett apartment in Act I. She is none too healthy even then, fainting after a coughing fit shortly after entering the room. The aria prefigures her death, and Mimi drives this home by quoting it minutes before her demise in Act IV.ooOoo