Is That What People Do? Read online

  “But Charles—those things you just spoke about—”

  “I made them up.”

  “Then who were you with last night’”

  “I was home, alone.”

  Elaine thought about that for a few moments. Then she said, “I’m afraid I have a confession to make.”

  I folded my arms and waited.

  “I too was home alone last night.”

  I raised one eyebrow. “And the other nights?”

  She took a deep breath. “Charles, I can no longer deceive you. I really had wanted an old-fashioned courtship. But when the time came, I couldn’t seem to fit it into my schedule. You see, it was finals time in my Aztec pottery class, and I had just been elected chairwoman of the Aleutian Assistance League, and my new boutique needed special attention—”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Well—I simply couldn’t say to you, ‘Look, let’s drop the courtship and just get married.’ After all, I hardly knew you.”

  “What did you do?”

  She sighed. “I knew several girls who had gotten themselves into this kind of a spot. They went to this really clever robot-maker named Snaithe...Why are you laughing?”

  I said, “I too have a confession to make. I have used Mr. Snaithe, too.”

  “Charles! You actually sent a robot here to court me? How could you! Suppose I had really been me?”

  “I don’t think either of us is in a position to express much indignation. Did your robot come home last night?”

  “No. I thought that Elaine II and you—”

  I shook my head. “I have never met Elaine II, and you have never met Charles II. What happened, apparently, is that our robots met, courted and now have run away together.”

  “But robots can’t do that!”

  “Ours did. I suppose they managed to reprogram each other.”

  “Or maybe they just fell in love,” Elaine said wistfully.

  I said, “I will find out what happened. But now, Elaine, let us think of ourselves. I propose that at our earliest possible convenience we get married.”

  “Yes, Charles,” she murmured. We kissed. And then, gently, lovingly, we began to coordinate our schedules.

  I was able to trace the runaway robots to Kennedy Spaceport. They had taken the shuttle to Space Platform 5, and changed there for the Centauri Express. I didn’t bother trying to investigate any further. They could be on any one of a dozen worlds.

  Elaine and I were deeply affected by the experience. We realized that we had become overspecialized, too intent upon productivity, too neglectful of the simple, ancient pleasures. We acted upon this insight, taking an additional hour out of every day—seven hours a week—in which simply to be with each other. Our friends consider us romantic fools, but we don’t care. We know that Charles II and Elaine II, our alter egos, would approve.

  There is only this to add. One night Elaine woke up in a state of hysteria. She had had a nightmare. In it she had become aware that Charles II and Elaine II were the real people who had escaped the inhumanity of Earth to some simpler and more rewarding world. And we were the robots they had left in their places, programmed to believe that we were human.

  I told Elaine how ridiculous that was. It took me a long time to convince her, but at last I did. We are happy now and we lead good, productive, loving lives. Now I must stop writing this and get back to work.

  THE MNEMONE

  It was a great day for our village when the Mnemone arrived. But we did not know him at first, because he concealed his identity from us. He said that his name was Edgar Smith, and that he was a repairer of furniture. We accepted both statements at face value, as we receive all statements. Until then, we had never known anyone who had anything to conceal.

  He came into our village on foot, carrying a knapsack and a battered suitcase. He looked at our stores and houses. He walked up to me and asked, “Where is the police station?”

  “We have none,” I told him.

  “Indeed? Then where is the local constable or sheriff?”

  “Luke Johnson was constable here for nineteen years,” I told him. “But Luke died two years ago. We reported this to the county seat as the law requires. But no one has been sent yet to take his place.”

  “So you police yourselves?”

  “We live quietly,” I said. “There’s no crime in this village. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I wanted to know,” Smith said, not very helpfully. “A little knowledge is not as dangerous as a lot of ignorance, eh? Never mind, my blank-faced young friend. I like the look of your village. I like the wooden frame buildings and the stately elms. I like—”

  “The stately what?” I asked him.

  “Elms,” he said, gesturing at the tall trees that lined Main Street. “Didn’t you know their name?”

  “It was forgotten,” I said, embarrassed.

  “No matter. Many things have been lost, and some have been hidden. Still, there’s no harm in the name of a tree. Or is there?”

  “No harm at all,” I said. “Elm trees.”

  “Keep that to yourself,” he said, winking. “It’s only a morsel, but there’s no telling when it might prove useful. I shall stay for a time in this village.”

  “You are most welcome,” I said. “Especially now, at harvest-time.”

  Smith looked at me sharply. “I have nothing to do with that. Did you take me for an itinerant apple-picker?”

  “I didn’t think about it one way or another. What will you do here?”

  “I repair furniture,” Smith said.

  “Not much call for that in a village this size,” I told him.

  “Then maybe I’ll find something else to turn my hand to.” He grinned at me suddenly. “For the moment, however, I require lodgings.”

  I took him to the Widow Marsini’s house, and there he rented her large back bedroom with porch and separate entrance. He arranged to take all of his meals there, too.

  His arrival let loose a flood of gossip and speculation. Mrs. Marsini felt that Smith’s questions about the police went to show that he himself was a policeman. “They work like that,” she said. “Or they used to. Back fifty years ago, every third person you met was some kind of a policeman. Sometimes even your own children were policemen, and they’d be as quick to arrest you as they would a stranger. Quicker!”

  But others pointed out that all of that had happened long ago, that life was quiet now, that policemen were rarely seen, even though they were still believed to exist.

  But why had Smith come? Some felt that he was here to take something from us. “What other reason is there for a stranger to come to a village like this?” And others felt that he had come to give us something, citing the same argument.

  But we didn’t know. We simply had to wait until Smith chose to reveal himself.

  He moved among us as other men do. He had knowledge of the outside world; he seemed to us a far-traveling man. And slowly, he began to give us clues as to his identity.

  One day I took him to a rise which looks out over our valley. This was at midautumn, a pretty time. Smith looked out and declared it a fine sight. “It puts me in mind of that famous tag from William James,” he said. “How does it go? ‘Scenery seems to wear in one’s consciousness better than any other element in life.’ Eh? Apt, don’t you think?”

  “Who is or was this William James?” I asked.

  Smith winked at me. “Did I mention that name? Slip of the tongue, my lad.”

  But that was not the last “slip of the tongue.” A few days later I pointed out an ugly hillside covered with second-growth pine, low coarse shrubbery, and weeds. “This burned five years ago,” I told him. “Now it serves no purpose at all.”

  “Yes, I see,” Smith said. “And yet—as Montaigne tells us—there is nothing useless in nature, not even uselessness itself.”

  And still later, walking through the village, he paused to admire Mrs. Vogel’s late-blooming peonies. He said, “Flowers do ind
eed have the glances of children and the mouths of old men...Just as Chazal pointed out.”

  Toward the end of the week, a few of us got together in the back of Edmonds’s store and began to discuss Mr. Edgar Smith. I mentioned the things he had said to me. Bill Edmonds remembered that Smith had cited a man named Emerson, to the effect that solitude was impractical, and society fatal. Billy Foreclough told us that Smith had quoted Ion of Chios to him: that Luck differs greatly from Art, yet creates many things that are like it. And Mrs. Gordon suddenly came up with the best of the lot; a statement Smith told her was made by the great Leonardo da Vinci: vows begin when hope dies.

  We looked at each other and were silent. It was evident to everyone that Mr. Edgar Smith—or whatever his real name might be—was no simple repairer of furniture.

  At last I put into words what we were all thinking. “Friends,” I said, “this man appears to be a Mnemone.”

  Mnemones as a distinct class came into prominence during the last year of the War Which Ended All Wars. Their self-proclaimed function was to remember works of literature which were in danger of being lost, destroyed, or suppressed.

  At first, the government welcomed their efforts, encouraged them, even rewarded them with pensions and grants. But when the war ended and the reign of the Police Presidents began, government policy changed. A general decision was made to jettison the unhappy past, to build a new world in and of the present. Disturbing influences were to be struck down without mercy.

  Right-thinking men agreed that most literature was superfluous at best, subversive at worst. After all, was it necessary to preserve the mouthings of a thief like Villon, a homosexual like Genet, a schizophrenic like Kafka? Did we need to retain a thousand divergent opinions, and then to explain why they were false? Under such a bombardment of influences, how could anyone be expected to respond in an appropriate and approved manner? How would one ever get people to obey orders?

  The government knew that if everyone obeyed orders, everything would be all right.

  But to achieve this blessed state, divergent and ambiguous inputs had to be abolished. The biggest single source of confusing inputs came from historical and artistic verbiage. Therefore, history was to be rewritten, and literature was to be regularized, pruned, tamed, made orderly or abolished entirely.

  The Mnemones were ordered to leave the past strictly alone. They objected to this most vehemently, of course. Discussions continued until the government lost patience. A final order was issued, with heavy penalties for those who would not comply.

  Most of the Mnemones gave up their work. A few only pretended to, however. These few became an elusive, persecuted minority of itinerant teachers, endlessly on the move, selling their knowledge where and when they could.

  We questioned the man who called himself Edgar Smith, and he revealed himself to us as a Mnemone. He gave immediate and lavish gifts to our village:

  Two sonnets by William Shakespeare.

  Job’s Lament to God.

  One entire act of a play by Aristophanes.

  This done, he set himself up in business, offering his wares for sale to the villagers.

  He drove a hard bargain with Mr. Ogden, forcing him to exchange an entire pig for two lines of Simonides.

  Mr. Bellington, the recluse, gave up his gold watch for a saying by Heraclitus. He considered it a fair exchange.

  Old Mrs. Heath exchanged a pound of goosefeathers for three stanzas from a poem entitled “Atalanta in Calydon,” by a man named Swinburne.

  Mr. Mervin, who owns the restaurant, purchased an entire short ode by Catullus, a description of Cicero by Tacitus, and ten lines from Homer’s Catalog of Ships. This cost his entire savings.

  I had little in the way of money or property. But for services rendered, I received a paragraph of Montaigne, a saying ascribed to Socrates, and ten fragmentary lines by Anacreon.

  An unexpected customer was Mr. Lind, who came stomping into the Mnemone’s office one crisp winter morning. Mr. Lind was short, red-faced, and easily moved to anger. He was the most successful farmer in the area, a man of no-nonsense who believed only in what he could see and touch. He was the last man whom you’d ever expect to buy the Mnemone’s wares. Even a policeman would have been a more likely prospect.

  “Well, well,” Lind began, rubbing his hands briskly together. “I’ve heard about you and your invisible merchandise.”

  “And I’ve heard about you,” the Mnemone said, with a touch of malice to his voice. “Do you have business with me?”

  “Yes, by God, I do!” Lind cried. “I want to buy some of your fancy old words.”

  “I am genuinely surprised,” the Mnemone said. “Who would ever have dreamed of finding a law-abiding citizen like yourself in a situation like this, buying goods which are not only invisible, but illegal as well!”

  “It’s not my choice,” Lind said. “I have come here only to please my wife, who is not well these days.”

  “Not well? I’m not surprised,” the Mnemone said. “An ox would sicken under the workload you give her.”

  “Man, that’s no concern of yours!” Lind said furiously.

  “But it is,” the Mnemone said. “In my profession we do not give out words at random. We fit our lines to the recipient. Sometimes we find nothing appropriate, and therefore sell nothing at all.”

  “I thought you sold your wares to all buyers.”

  “You have been misinformed. I know a Pindaric ode I would not sell to you for any price.”

  “Man, you can’t talk to me that way!”

  “I speak as I please. You are free to take your business somewhere else.”

  Mr. Lind glowered and pouted and sulked, but there was nothing he could do. At last he said, “I didn’t mean to lose my temper. Will you sell me something for my wife? Last week was her birthday, but I didn’t remember it until just now.”

  “You are a pretty fellow,” the Mnemone said. “As sentimental as a mink, and almost as loving as a shark! Why come to me for her present? Wouldn’t a sturdy butter churn be more suitable?”

  “No, not so,” Lind said, his voice flat and quiet. “She lies in bed this past month and barely eats. I think she is dying.”

  “And she asked for words of mine?”

  “She asked me to bring her something pretty.”

  The Mnemone nodded. “Dying! Well, I’ll offer no condolences to the man who drove her to the grave, and I’ve not much sympathy for the woman who picked a creature like you. But I do have something she will like, a gaudy thing that will ease her passing. It’ll cost you a mere thousand dollars.”

  “God in heaven, man! Have you nothing cheaper?”

  “Of course I have,” the Mnemone said. “I have a decent little comic poem in Scots dialect with the middle gone from it; yours for two hundred dollars. And I have one stanza of a commemorative ode to General Kitchener which you can have for ten dollars.”

  “Is there nothing else?”

  “Not for you.”

  “Well…I’ll take the thousand dollar item,” Lind said. “Yes, by God, I will! Sara is worth every penny of it!”

  “Handsomely said, albeit tardily. Now pay attention. Here it is.”

  The Mnemone leaned back, closed his eyes, and began to recite. Lind listened, his face tense with concentration. And I also listened, cursing my untrained memory and praying that I would not be ordered from the room.

  It was a long poem, and very strange and beautiful. I still possess it all. But what comes most often to my mind are the lines

  Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

  Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

  We are men: queer beasts with strange appetites. Who would have imagined us to possess a thirst for the ineffable? What was the hunger that could lead a man to exchange three bushels of corn for a single saying of the Gnostics? To feast on the spiritual—this seems to be what men must do; but who could have imagined it of us? Who would have thought us sufferers of malnutrit
ion because we had no Plato? Can a man grow sickly from lack of Plutarch, or die from an Aristotle deficiency?

  I cannot deny it. I myself have seen the results of abruptly withdrawing an addict from Strindberg.

  Our past is a necessary part of us, and to take away that part is to mutilate us irreparably. I know a man who achieved courage only after he was told of Epaminondas, and a woman who became beautiful only after she heard of Aphrodite.

  The Mnemone had a natural enemy in our schoolteacher, Mr. Vich, who taught the authorized version of all things. The Mnemone also had an enemy in Father Dulces, who ministered to our spiritual needs in the Universal Patriotic Church of America.

  The Mnemone defied both of our authorities. He told us that many of the things they taught us were false, both in content and in ascription, or were perversions of famous sayings, rephrased to say the opposite of the original author’s intention. The Mnemone struck at the very foundations of our civilization when he denied the validity of the following sayings:

  —Most men lead lives of quiet aspiration.

  —The unexamined life is most worth living.

  —Know thyself within approved limits.

  We listened to the Mnemone, we considered what he told us. Slowly, painfully, we began to think again, to reason, to examine things for ourselves. And when we did this, we also began to hope.

  And then one day, quite suddenly, the end came. Three men entered our village. They wore gray uniforms with brass insignia. Their faces were blank and broad, and they walked stiffly in heavy black boots. They went everywhere together, and they always stood very close to one another. They asked no questions. They spoke to no one. They knew exactly where the Mnemone lived, and they consulted a map and then walked directly there.

  They were in Smith’s room for perhaps ten minutes.

  Then the three policemen came out again into the street, all three of them walking together like one man. Their eyes darted right and left; they seemed frightened. They left our village quickly.

  We buried Smith on a rise of land overlooking the valley, near the place where he had first quoted William James, among late-blooming flowers which had the glances of children and the mouths of old men.