The Cockroaches of Stay More Read online

  “Peanut brittle?” he offered. She tasted. He offered her tastes of several of his select little snacks. The crumb of dark Oreo, in particular, seemed to transport her.

  “I never had any of that before,” she said, sighing with pleasure.

  He led her down the aisles of the neatly arranged foodstuffs, pointing out and describing each, and offering her tastes. She was so appreciative. He was surprised at himself, the volubility of his own voice, talking to a female. Alas, if only he could have heard her random comments of appreciation, her sighs of pleasure, her purrs of delight, but just to see the expressions on her face was reward enough.

  The Clock announced the twelfth and final hour: “TUTTIFRUTTI!” Then it was silent. “Midnight,” Sam announced, feeling inane, at a loss.

  She wished she could talk to him. Squire Sam, she realized, although he was a mortal creature no greater than she, had something in common with the Fate-Thing: both were deaf. The Fate-Thing could not hear her requests or supplications; it was totally indifferent to her needs. Maybe, she realized, Squire Sam wasn’t actually deaf but only indifferent, like the Fate-Thing. She wished she could ask him, at least, if he believed in anything like the Fate-Thing.

  For want of other words, he offered, “Would you like to see the clockworks?” and without waiting for the nod of her head, he commanded, “Here, climb up,” and started her on a hike upward through the intricate innards of the Clock, cautioning her not to catch her gitalongs in any of the gears. “This,” he pointed out, “is the Great Wheel, whose ratchets are regulated by the mainspring, over yonder, which is wound up every eighth day by the Woman of Parthenon. Do you know Her? Now here we have the pinion which turns with the Great Wheel and thrusts through the clock face yonder to join the long, or minute, hand of the dial, which completes a circuit of the dial each hour and thus measures the sixty minutes in the hour. This pinion has only one-twelfth as many teeth as the Great Wheel, see? Do you know fractions?” He attempted to explain to her the mathematical ratios of the sundry pinions and wheels, although math was clearly over her head, as were the pinions and wheels. As they ascended upward through the Clock, he said, “Now this is called the ‘dead escapement,’ or ‘deadbeat escapement.’ Do you know ‘dead’? Humans use it as a euphemism for ‘west.’ Of course this thingumajig is neither east nor west, but its true function is to convert the energy from the spring to the swinging of the pendulum down below, and to ‘fall dead’ after each jerk—that is, go west after each jerk—watch closely there, see?—click, click, dead, click, click, west—you get the idea?” How can I actually be talking so much to a female? he asked himself, astounded at himself, and realized it must be the effect of the ginseng.

  Why is he telling me all of this? she wondered, flattered that a handsome feller so painfully shy was actually opening up to her. Maybe, she realized, he is making me familiar with the place so that I can live here! Would he really ask her to live here? But would she really want to live in such a noisy place?

  “The idea of the deadbeat escapement,” he said, “is an almost poetic metaphor suggestive of escape through death, or escape by westering, which is getting us into eschatology and leading us dangerously close to the concept of Rapture espoused by your Crustian minister, the Reverend Tichborne. But you don’t know eschatology, do you, Tish? I’ll have to tell you all about it, but not tonight. Step up there, a bit more, we’re almost to the top of the Clock. Yes, this bracket we’re standing upon here—see how it overhangs yonder—is attached to the plate, there, to support the very tiptop of the end of the pendulum. This bracket is called the…the cock.” He studied her closely for any blush or twinge, but there was none, so he bravely asked, “Have you ever heard the word ‘cock’ before?” But her face was blank, as if “eschatology” and “cock” were all the same to her. He wanted to explain how the cock hovers above the deadbeat escapement, and how the cock symbolizes or is a metaphor suggestive of The Bomb. Didn’t she know about The Bomb? “Haven’t you ever heard of The Bomb?” he asked. But again the blank, expressionless, innocent look. “You know, you could sort of nod your head yes or shake your head no when I ask you something.”

  She nodded her head. But then she shook her head, no, she had never heard of The Bomb, nor Cock, nor any of it.

  He led her down from the clockworks, back to his loafing space, where he offered her a taste of crust of apple fritter, his favorite of foods. Her eyes gleamed in rapture as she devoured it. Rapture? he said to himself, and thought to try to explain to her the complicated distinction between the artificial concept of Rapture as the Crustians saw it and the actuality of the holocaust of The Bomb. She had difficulty grasping the explanation, especially the part about why Man would do it, in the first place, why Man would set off The Bomb, which, she at least understood, was zillions of times more powerful than Man’s bullets, which were awful enough.

  She hazarded a word: “Why?”

  “Did you speak?” he asked, surprised.

  She nodded her head again, and said, right at his tailprongs: “WHY?”

  “I have an idea,” he suggested, having a fine idea: he and she could devise a kind of sign language between themselves, a system of gestures, signals, using their sniffwhips, touchers, even tailprongs. “For example, if you wish to ask ‘Why?’ you put a sniffwhip to your forehead and then spread your sniffwhips to make the letter ‘Y,’ like so.” He demonstrated, then waited to see if she could do it. It was much easier, she found, than merely nodding or shaking her head.

  She signed, “Why?” A second time, she signed “Why?” It was almost like a game.

  “That’s good,” he said. “Your first word. Now, let’s devise the rest of the alphabet. How would you make a V?”

  She held her sniffwhips close together, but spread to form a V.

  “Very good!” he exclaimed. He touched the tips of his sniffwhips together and slowly spread them into a V, saying, “This slow spreading of my sniffwhips, the slow drawing apart of them, could represent ‘very’ as our first V-word. For ‘good,’ just touch your sniffwhip to your mouth and then place it across your other sniffwhip.”

  “Very good,” she signed.

  “Very good!” he signed and said. “This is fun.” He flicked the base of one sniffwhip with the tip of the other. “Fun.”

  “Fun,” she signed. “Very good fun,” she signed.

  He laughed. “This is easier than I thought it would be.” He brushed a sniffwhip upward against another several times in quick succession. “Easy.”

  “Easy,” she signed.

  “Your turn to make up a sign for a word,” he offered. “How would you do ‘I,’ meaning yourself but also the letter I?”

  She needed only a moment to come up with the idea of the tip of a sniffwhip pulled down close to her face and held up in a vertical position like a little i. He signed it after her.

  “And ‘you’?” he asked.

  “Even easier,” she signed, and simply pointed the same sniffwhip at him for “you.”

  He crossed the lengths of his sniffwhips and drew them to his chest as in an embrace. She was transported by apple fritter, he by ginseng. “This is the sign for ‘love,’” he said. Quickly, without thinking, she imitated the sign for “love.” He made the sign for “I,” he made the sign for “love,” he made the sign for “you.”

  “I,” she signed. “Love,” she signed. She hesitated. “Not very easy,” she signed.

  He blushed, abashed at himself for his audacity. They made up new words, new letters, tried them out, created sample sentences of safer declarations and questions. A question mark is easy: a crooking of the tip of the sniffwhip to describe the figure of the question mark, or both sniffwhips to be emphatic: “??” An exclamation mark is even easier, a stiffening and straightening of the sniffwhip high overhead: “!” Double sniffwhips are twice as exclamatory: “Watch out, there’s a scorpion behind you!!” He was only kidding, and frightened her, but she forgave him, and, entering into the spi
rit, became the inventor of the combined question and exclamation: “Now why would you have scared me so?!”

  Their communication became articulate, their gestural statements prolonged and increasingly complicated. They even reached the point where she could tell him about her belief in Fate-Thing. The sign devised for “thing” was a mere shifting and dropping of one extended sniffwhip, but “fate” was so difficult that, like many of their words, it required not the sniffwhips and touchers alone but also a gitalong or two, a shifting of the body, a semaphoring of the tailprongs.

  Tish “talked.” Sam “listened.” The night passed. Their conversation was slowed by the need for stopping to invent a new sign for a word here and there. They were so caught up in their dialogue that neither of them noticed the Clock strike “BUN” or even “TART.” When they had nearly exhausted the subject of the Fate-Thing, she asked him again her original question, “Why The Bomb?” and he attempted as best he could to explain it to her in signs. He even seized upon her conception of the Fate-Thing to support his own theory: that someone or something, perhaps the Fate-Thing, would prevent Man from destroying the earth with The Bomb.

  “TRIFLE,” said the Clock.

  Sam and Tish “talked” so much their sniffwhips began to ache, a rare occurrence for their species, who keep their sniffwhips in motion anyway all the live-long night, and even, often, during the day, in their sleep.

  Tish realized she had “talked” more with Sam than with anyone in her whole life, and when the Clock said “FUDGE,” Tish used her new sign language to express astonishment and dismay and to sign, “Yellow fireball will rise up any minute now.”

  “Yellow fireball,” Sam repeated the sign after her. He realized he had not spoken for hours; although she could easily hear him, he was talking only in the language they had invented for him to “hear” her.

  “I must go,” Tish signed, “or I shall get caught in daylight.”

  “You will get caught in daylight anyway if you try to go now,” he pointed out to her. “Stay more and spend the whole day.”

  She thought he was making the polite but insincere formality, the traditional ritual of dialogue translated into signs, and she returned these signs: “Best be getting on down back. Come go home with me.” She realized how ridiculous the invitation was, to ask a Squire Ingledew to come to her rotten log, but she knew he knew she didn’t mean the invitation.

  “Better not,” he signed. “You just make yourself pleasant and stay the whole day.”

  “Time to light out for home,” she signed. “Come and keep me company.”

  “Not this morning, thank you, Tish. Why don’t you just move in here and have you some vittles?”

  Oh, if only he meant it! “Can’t do that, I reckon,” she formally signed, reluctantly. “I am a mind to get on home.”

  “No, you are not,” he signed. He was breaking the rhythm! He was interpolating! “You are a mind to stay more, and you are going to do it.”

  “Huh?” she signed, surprised at his extemporizing the formalities. “What?!”

  “You heard me,” he signed.

  “But,” she signed. She wondered what to sign next. She tried signing “but” once more, and yet again. She felt she was stuttering in sign language. “But my forty-three brothers and sisters will fear that I have been westered by a bird, chicken, or other fowl.”

  “If you leave now,” he pointed out, “you will be westered by a bird, chicken, or other fowl.”

  The yellow fireball rose above Dinsmore Mountain, not yellow but orange and huge and hot. Through the screen door of the Woman’s bedroom came the sound of the lifting of the morning breeze and then of birds, chickens, and other fowls reciting their matinals. Through the glass of the face of the Clock, Tish could see the Woman Herself turn over in Her bed and waken, then slowly swing Her feet off the bed to the floor.

  “Behold,” signed Tish. “The Woman, goddess of Parthenon, awakes and rises up.”

  “Yes,” signed Sam. “Notice how she touches the flat surface beneath her bed with her left gitalong first.”

  “Why does she do that?”

  “Maybe,” Sam signed, smiling, “it is a superstitious propitiation—” the big words gave him trouble “—to the Fate-Thing.” Then he finger-spelled, or, rather, sniffwhip-and-toucher-spelled, the Woman’s name. “Her name is Sharon. S-H-A-R-O-N.”

  “Sharon,” repeated Tish. “I have heard Man call out to Her.” She watched as the Woman removed her nightgown and put on the red flower-print shirt and blue jeans that she would wear that day. “She is so beautiful, pretty, lovely,” signed Tish.

  “And lonely,” signed Sam. The sign for “lonely” is to draw the very tip of the right sniffwhip down over the lips, almost as in making the “Shhh” sign for silence, implying “silent and alone.” Sam offered, “Shall I tell you a story about Sharon?” Their sign for “story” had begun as a linking and pulling apart in quick succession several times the tips of the sniffwhips, but now that they had used the word several times between them they found that unconsciously they were joining the tips of one another’s sniffwhips in order to sign it.

  “Oh, please do tell me a story!” Tish requested, grabbing at the tips of his sniffwhips with her own.

  Sharon, Sam explained, was the granddaughter of a demigoddess named Latha, who once had lived here but now lived east of Stay More. Latha was very old but even more beautiful than Sharon, and during the time of her life that she had dwelt in Parthenon, eons ago, she had lived alone too, and had been lonely, and yearning, and Parthenon had been filled with the luck-bringing scents of yearning. A Man from out of her past, whose name was Every, as in each and every, a different Man not related to the present Man of Stay More, whose name is Larry, had returned to town and become involved in the most fabulous of stories, which Tish must remind Sam to tell her, but not now.

  This is the story of Sharon, who decided to move back to Stay More, where She had spent most of Her adolescent years, and not only to move back but to move into the very Parthenon. Was Sharon also expecting a Man from out of Her past to come to Her? If so, was that Man the same who now lived here, Larry? If this was true, why did Sharon refuse to have anything further to do with Larry?

  “Yes? Yes?” signed Tish. “Go on. Go on!?”

  “That’s all we know, right now,” Sam signed. “The story is continuing. Like the story of you and me.”

  If Tish caught the insinuation of this series of gestures, she did not let on. She seemed to sign to herself, “So ‘Larry’ is the name of our Man?” Having an actual name for Him seemed somehow to belittle Him, although thinking of the Woman as Sharon did not belittle Her. Tish watched Sharon, who had entered a small room leading off Her bedroom and sat upon a stool of gleaming white porcelain.

  “What does She do?” Tish signed a question.

  “She sits upon what is called a toilet,” Sam explained in signs, with some hesitancy, as if the process bothered him. “Listen,” he told her. Although he was deaf, he could remember when his hearing was good and he could hear the sound. Tish listened and heard it: a tinkling, as of rain. She looked at Sam in puzzlement, and Sam signed, “She is making water.”

  “Oh, water!?” Tish exclaimed in signs. Then Tish signed a question, “Has She ever had a rock-a-bye?”

  Sam mulled the possibility. Although he had once thought of Sharon as his own mother, he had long ago given up the possibility that he had hatched from an ootheca laid by Her. “I don’t think so,” he answered. “If she had rock-a-byes, none of them have ever come to Parthenon.”

  “How,” Tish wondered aloud, signing absently, “do Man and Woman twist and pound rock-a-byes?”

  Sam was charmed by her question and the artless gestures she used to ask it. How, indeed, did humans make babies? He remembered the one night, or rather early morning, when he had observed the Woman with Larry in Her bed. Had they been engaged in a baby-making thing? If so, the Woman had not had a baby as a result of it. “I suppose,�
�� he signed, “it is not too awfully different—” he crossed and uncrossed his sniffwhips, for different “—from the way that roosterroaches do it.”

  She laughed uproariously. Perhaps her embarrassment contributed to the excessiveness of her laughter, he thought.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked, speaking aloud for the first time in hours, but then he signed it: “What’s so funny??”

  She signed: “Just the way you sign ‘roosterroach.’ I recognized the sign, although we have not used it before. I never thought of roosterroaches that way before. I guess you have to see everything in a different language to understand it.”

  It was his turn to laugh. He repeated the signs after her: You have to see everything in a different language to understand it. Then he signed, “I love that.” He loved this girl. He loved her so much that his tergal gland began to leak a drop of affy-dizzy. He backed away from her, but not quickly enough, not far enough. She sniffed the heady male aroma. No vanilla custard, no apple fritter on earth, can equal it in attraction. She was tantalized, and involuntarily made a step in his direction, causing him to back into a corner of the Clock.

  The Woman left Her toilet room, recrossed Her bedroom to another door. From another room came the sounds of pots and pans rattling.

  Sam realized his back, all along the underside of his wings, was lathered with affy-dizzy.

  Had hours passed since Tish had stuffed herself on fritter? She felt her appetite returning with a gush and whispered with timid signs (if signs can whisper), “Just a taste.”

  Now, there is no such thing as “just a taste” of the irresistible nectar of love which is called affy-dizzy. Like a bee drawn to a flower, a female is held by it, is lured to climb the male’s back so that she can reach the fount of the affy-dizzy and greedily lap it up, the taste of which, unlike even the finest crumb fallen from Man’s (or Woman’s) table, is the most delectable substance ever to reach her touchers and her lips, and it stimulates her appetite to consume all of it, every droplet, and each taste of it excites her more.