“I got lost back there about a mile,” said Timothy. “Come again?”
“Oh, dear,” said Grandma. “How I do hate philosophical discussions and excursions into esthetics. Let me put it this way. Men throw huge shadows on the lawn, don’t they? Then, all their lives, they try to run to fit the shadows. But the shadows are always longer. Only at noon can a man fit his own shoes, his own best suit, for a few brief minutes. But now we’re in a new age where we can think up a Big Idea and run it around in a machine. That makes the machine- more than a machine, doesn’t it?”
“So far so good,” said Tim. “I guess.”
“Well, isn’t a motion-picture camera and projector more than a machine? It’s a thing that dreams, isn’t it? Sometimes fine happy dreams, sometimes nightmares. But to call it a machine and dismiss it is ridiculous.”
“I see that !” said Tim, and laughed at seeing. “You must have been invented then,” said Father, “by someone who loved machines and hated
people who said all machines were bad or evil.” “Exactly,” said Grandma. “Guido Fantoccini, that was his real name, grew up among machines.
And he couldn’t stand the clichés any more.” “Clichés?”
“Those lies, yes, that people tell and pretend they are truths absolute. Man will never fly. That was a cliché truth for a thousand thousand years which turned out to be a lie only a few years ago. The earth is flat, you’ll fall off the rim, dragons will dine on you; the great lie told as fact, and Columbus plowed it under. Well, now, how many times have you heard how inhuman machines are, in your life? How many bright fine people have you heard spouting the same tired truths which are in reality lies; all machines destroy, all machines are cold, thoughtless, awful.
“There’s a seed of truth there. But only a seed. Guido Fantoccini knew that. And knowing it, like most men of his kind, made him mad. And he could have stayed mad and gone mad forever, but instead did what he had to do; he began to invent machines to give the lie to the ancient lying truth.
“He knew that most machines are amoral, neither bad nor good. But by the way you built and shaped them you in turn shaped men, women, and children to be bad or good. A car, for instance, dead brute, unthinking, an unprogrammed bulk, is the greatest destroyer of souls in history. It makes boy-men greedy for power, destruction, and more destruction. It was never intended to do that. But that’s how it turned out.”
Grandma circled the table, refilling our glasses with clear cold mineral spring water from the tappet in her left forefinger. “Meanwhile, you must use other compensating machines. Machines that throw shadows on the earth that beckon you to run out and fit that wondrous casting-forth. Machines that trim your soul in silhouette like a vast pair of beautiful shears, snipping away the rude brambles, the dire horns and hooves to leave a finer profile. And for that you need examples.”
“Examples?” I asked.
“Other people who behave well, and you imitate them. And if you act well enough long enough all the hair drops off and you’re no longer a wicked ape.”
Grandma sat again.
“So, for thousands of years, you humans have needed kings, priests, philosophers, fine examples to look up to and say, ‘They are good, I wish I could be like them. They set the grand good style.’ But, being human, the finest priests, the tenderest philosophers make mistakes, fall from grace, and mankind is disillusioned and adopts indifferent skepticism or, worse, motionless cynicism and the good world grinds to a halt while evil moves on with huge strides.”
“And you, why, you never make mistakes, you’re perfect, you’re better than anyone ever !” It was a voice from the hall between kitchen and dining room where Agatha, we all knew, stood
against the wall listening and now burst forth.
Grandma didn’t even turn in the direction of the voice, but went on calmly addressing her remarks to the family at the table.
“Not perfect, no, for what is perfection? But this I do know: being mechanical, I cannot sin, cannot be bribed, cannot be greedy or jealous or mean or small. I do not relish power for power’s sake. Speed does not pull me to madness. Sex does not run me rampant through the world. I have time and more than time to collect the information I need around and about an ideal to keep it clean and whole and intact. Name the value you wish, tell me the Ideal you want and I can see and collect and remember the good that: will benefit you all. Tell me how you would like to be:
kind, loving, considerate, well-balanced, humane … and let me run ahead on the path to explore those ways to be just that. In the darkness ahead, turn me as a lamp in all directions. I can guide your feet.”
“So,” said Father, putting the napkin to his mouth, “on the days when all of us are busy making lies—”
“I’ll tell the truth.” “On the days when we hate—”
“I’ll go on giving love, which means attention, which means knowing all about you, all, all, all about you, and you knowing that I know but that most of it I will never tell to anyone, it will stay a warm secret between us, so you will never fear my complete knowledge.”
And here Grandma was busy clearing the table, circling, taking the plates, studying each face as she passed, touching Timothy’s cheek, my shoulder with her free hand flowing along, her voice a quiet river of certainty bedded in our needful house and lives.
“But,” said Father, stopping her, looking her right in the face. He gathered his breath. His face shadowed. At last he let it out. “All this talk of love and attention and stuff. Good God, woman, you, you’re not in there!”
He gestured to her head, her face, her eyes, the hidden sensory cells behind the eyes, the miniaturized storage vaults and minimal keeps.
“You’re not in there!” Grandmother waited one, two, three silent beats. Then she replied: “No. But you are. You and Thomas and Timothy and Agatha.
“Everything you ever say, everything you ever do, I’ll keep, put away, treasure. I shall be all the things a family forgets it is, but senses, half-remembers. Better than the old family albums you used to leaf through, saying here’s this winter, there’s that spring, I shall recall what you forget. And though the debate may run another hundred thousand years: What is Love? perhaps we may find that love is the ability of someone to give us back to us. Maybe love is someone seeing and remembering handing us back to ourselves just a trifle better than we had dared to hope or dream …
“I am family memory and, one day perhaps, racial memory, too, but in the round, and at your call. I do not know myself. I can neither touch nor taste nor feel on any level. Yet I exist. And my existence means the heightening of your chance to touch and taste and feel. Isn’t love in there somewhere in such an exchange? Well … “
She went on around the table, clearing away, sorting and stacking, neither grossly humble nor arthritic with pride.
“What do I know?
“This, above all: the trouble with most families with many children is someone gets lost. There isn’t time, it seems, for everyone. Well, I will give equally to all of you. I will share out my
knowledge and attention with everyone. I wish to be a great warm pie fresh from the oven, with equal shares to be taken by all. No one will starve. Look! someone cries, and I’ll look. Listen! someone cries, and I hear. Run with me on the river path! someone says, and I run. And at dusk I am not tired, nor irritable, so I do not scold out of some tired irritability. My eye stays clear, my voice strong, my hand firm, my attention constant.”
“But,” said Father, his voice fading, half convinced, but pi:tting up a last faint argument, “you’re not there. As for love—”
“If paying attention is love, I am love. “If knowing is love, I am love. “If helping you not to fall into error and to be good is love, I am love.
“And again, to repeat, there are four of you. Each, in a way never possible before in history, will get my complete attention. No matter if you all speak at once, I can channel and hear this one and that arid the other, clearly. No one will go hungry. I will, if you please, and accept the strange word, ‘love’ you all.”
“I don’t accept!” said Agatha.
And even Grandma turned now to see her standing in the door.
“I won’t give you permission, you can’t, you mustn’t!” said Agatha. “I won’t let you! It’s lies! You lie. No one loves me. She said she did, but she lied. She said but lied !”
“Agatha!” cried Father, standing up.
“She?” said Grandma. “Who?”
“Mother!” came the shriek. “Said: Love you! Lies! Love you! Lies! And you’re like her! You lie. But you’re empty, anyway, and so that’s a double lie! I hate her. Now, I hate you !”
Agatha spun about and leapt down the hall.
The front door slammed wide.
Father was in motion, but Grandma touched his arm.
“Let me.”
And she walked and then moved swiftly, gliding down the hall and then suddenly, easily, running, yes, running very fast, out the door.
It was a champion
