Hannah Höch
Hannah Höch (November 1 1889 – May 31 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is
best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the
originators of photomontage.
Photomontage, or fotomontage, is a type of
collage in which the pasted items are actual photographs, or photographic
reproductions pulled from the press and other widely produced media.
Höch's work was intended to
dismantle the fable and dichotomy that existed in the concept of the "New
Woman": an energetic, professional, and androgynous woman, who is ready to
take her place as man's equal. Her interest in the topic was in how the
dichotomy was structured, as well as in who structures social roles.
Other key themes in Höch's works
were androgyny, political discourse, and shifting gender roles. These themes
all interacted to create a feminist discourse surrounding Höch's works, which
encouraged the liberation and agency of women during the Weimar Republic
(1919–1933) and continuing through to today.
Dada was an artistic movement
formed in 1915 in Zurich, Switzerland. The movement rejected monarchy,
militarism, and conservatism and was enmeshed in an "anti-art"
sentiment. Dadaists felt that art should have no boundaries or restrictions and
that it can be whimsical and playful.
These sentiments arose after the Great
War, which caused society to question the role of government, and to reject
militarism after seeing the atrocities of war. Many Dada pieces were critical
of the Weimar Republic and its failed attempt at creating a democracy in
post-war (WWI) Germany.
The Dada movement had a tone of
fundamental negativity in regards to bourgeois society. The term
"dada" has no actual meaning – it is a childlike word used to
describe the lack of reason or logic in much of the artwork.
Höch is best known for her
photomontages. These collages, which borrowed images from popular culture and
utilized the dismemberment and reassembly of images, fit well with the Dada
aesthetic, though other Dadaists were hesitant to accept her work due to
inherent sexism in the movement.
Her work added "a wryly feminist
note" to the Dadaist philosophy of disdain towards bourgeois society, but
both her identity as a woman and her feminist subject matter contributed to her
never being fully accepted by the male Dadaists.
In the Laboratory by Henry Alexander
This is one of several interior
scenes in which Alexander showed people at work, surrounded by their equipment.
The portrait d’apparat—an image in which a figure appears along with objects
associated with his or her daily life—reflects Alexander’s training in the
Munich academy of fine arts and showcases his skills both as a portraitist and
as a still-life painter. His subject here is the chemist and assayer Thomas
Price (1837–1912), and the setting is Price’s San Francisco laboratory. A
consultant to international mining companies, Price was noted for his practical
and theoretical knowledge of metals and mines.
Henry Alexander (1860 – May 15,
1894) was a painter from California. Aside from a few trompe-l'oeil paintings,
his paintings generally depict individuals within highly detailed interiors. He
is especially known for his paintings of men in cluttered offices filled with
business furnishings or laboratory equipment, such as his several paintings of
the mineralogist Thomas Price. He also painted Chinese and Japanese subjects.
He left San Francisco for New
York City on April 15, 1887, in order to be at the center of the art world, but
he suffered from money troubles and alcoholism. He had a studio at 51 West
Tenth Street. The other artists in the building avoided him, because he was
always trying to borrow money.
Alexander's work attracted enough
notice that the New York Herald described him as one of the creators of the
modern school of art. On May 15, 1894, his money troubles led him to commit
suicide by swallowing oxalic acid in the Oriental Hotel at Broadway and
Thirty-Ninth Street. Many of his works were destroyed in the San Francisco
earthquake of 1906.
Lester Young
From Wikipedia (abbreviated)
Lester Willis Young (August 27,
1909 – March 15, 1959), "Pres" or "Prez", was a jazz tenor
saxophonist and occasional clarinetist. Young was born in Woodville,
Mississippi, on August 27, 1909.
His mother was Lizetta Young (née
Johnson), and his father was Willis Handy Young, originally from Louisiana. He
grew up in a musical family. His father was a teacher and band leader, and
several other relatives performed professionally.
While growing up in New Orleans,
he worked from the age of five to make money for the family. He sold newspapers
and shined shoes. By the time he was ten, he had learned the basics of trumpet,
violin, and drums, and joined the Young Family Band touring with carnivals and
playing in regional cities in the Southwest In his teens he and his father
clashed, and he often left home for long periods.
Young left the family band in
1927 at the age of 18 because he refused to tour in the Southern United States,
where Jim Crow laws were in effect and racial segregation was required in
public facilities.
He became a member of the Bostonians, led by
Art Bronson, and chose tenor saxophone over alto as his primary instrument. He
made a habit of leaving, working, then going home. He left home permanently in
1932 when he became a member of the Blue Devils led by Walter Page.
In 1933 Young settled in Kansas
City, where after playing briefly in several bands, he rose to prominence with
Count Basie. His playing in the Basie band was characterized by a relaxed style
which contrasted sharply with the more forceful approach of Coleman Hawkins,
the dominant tenor sax player of the day. One of Young's key influences was
Frank Trumbauer, who came to prominence in the 1920s with Paul Whiteman and
played the C-melody saxophone (between the alto and tenor in pitch).
Young left the Basie band to
replace Hawkins in Fletcher Henderson's orchestra. He soon left Henderson to
play in the Andy Kirk band (for six months) before returning to Basie. While
with Basie, Young made small-group recordings for Milt Gabler's Commodore
Records, The Kansas City Sessions. Although they were recorded in New York (in
1938, with a reunion in 1944), they are named after the group, the Kansas City
Seven, and comprised Buck Clayton, Dicky Wells, Basie, Young, Freddie Green,
Rodney Richardson, and Jo Jones. Young played clarinet as well as tenor in
these sessions. Young is described as playing the clarinet in a "liquid,
nervous style."
As well as the Kansas City Sessions, his
clarinet work from 1938–39 is documented on recordings with Basie, Billie
Holiday, Basie small groups, and the organist Glenn Hardman. Billie and Lester
met at a Harlem jam session in the early 30s and worked together in the Count
Basie band and in nightclubs on New York's 52nd St. At one point Lester moved
into the apartment Billie shared with her mother, Sadie Fagan. Holiday always
insisted their relationship was strictly platonic. She gave Lester the nickname
"Prez" after President Franklin Roosevelt, the "greatest man
around" in Billie's mind. Playing on her name, he would call her
"Lady Day." Their famously empathetic classic recordings with Teddy
Wilson date from this era.
After Young's clarinet was stolen
in 1939, he abandoned the instrument until about 1957. That year Norman Granz
gave him one and urged him to play it.
Young left the Basie band in late
1940. He is rumored to have refused to play with the band on Friday, December
13 of that year for superstitious reasons spurring his dismissal, although
Young and drummer Jo Jones would later state that his departure had been in the
works for months. He subsequently led a number of small groups that often
included his brother, drummer Lee Young, for the next couple of years; live and
broadcast recordings from this period exist.
During this period Young
accompanied the singer Billie Holiday in a couple of studio sessions (during
1937 - 1941 period) and also made a small set of recordings with Nat
"King" Cole (their first of several collaborations) in June 1942. His
studio recordings are relatively sparse during the 1942 to 1943 period, largely
due to the recording ban by the American Federation of Musicians. Small record
labels not bound by union contracts continued to record and he recorded some
sessions for Harry Lim's Keynote label in 1943.
In December 1943 Young returned
to the Basie fold for a 10-month stint, cut short by his being drafted into the
army during World War II. Recordings made during this and subsequent periods
suggest Young was beginning to make much greater use of a plastic reed, which
tended to give his playing a somewhat heavier, breathier tone (although still
quite smooth compared to that of many other players).
While he never abandoned the cane
reed, he used the plastic reed a significant share of the time from 1943 until
the end of his life. Another cause for the thickening of his tone around this
time was a change in saxophone mouthpiece from a metal Otto Link to an ebonite
Brilhart. In August 1944 Young appeared alongside drummer Jo Jones, trumpeter
Harry "Sweets" Edison, and fellow tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet
in Gjon Mili's short film Jammin' the Blues.
In September 1944 Young and Jo
Jones were in Los Angeles with the Basie Band when they were inducted into the
U.S. Army. Unlike many white musicians, who were placed in band outfits such as
the ones led by Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw, Young was assigned to the regular
army where he was not allowed to play his saxophone.
Based in Ft. McClellan, Alabama,
Young was found with marijuana and alcohol among his possessions. He was soon
court-martialed. Young did not fight the charges and was convicted. He served
one traumatic year in a detention barracks and was dishonorably discharged in
late 1945. His experience inspired his composition "D.B. Blues" (with
D.B. standing for detention barracks).
Young's career after World War II
was far more prolific and lucrative than in the pre-war years in terms of
recordings made, live performances, and annual income. Young joined Norman
Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) troupe in 1946, touring regularly with
them over the next 12 years. He made many studio recordings under Granz's
supervision as well, including more trio recordings with Nat King Cole. Young
also recorded extensively in the late 1940s for Aladdin Records (1946-7, where
he had made the Cole recordings in 1942) and for Savoy (1944, '49 and '50),
some sessions of which included Basie on piano.
While the quality and consistency
of his playing ebbed gradually in the latter half of the 1940s and into the
early 1950s, he also gave some brilliant performances during this stretch.
Especially noteworthy are his performances with JATP in 1946, 1949, and 1950.
With Young at the 1949 JATP
concert at Carnegie Hall were Charlie Parker and Roy Eldridge, and Young's solo
on "Lester Leaps In" at that concert is a particular standout among
his performances in the latter half of his career.
From around 1951, Young's level
of playing declined more precipitously as his drinking increased. His playing
showed reliance on a small number of clichéd phrases and reduced creativity and
originality, despite his claims that he did not want to be a "repeater
pencil" (Young coined this phrase to describe the act of repeating one's
own past ideas). Young's playing and health went into a crisis, culminating in
a November 1955 hospital admission following a nervous breakdown.
He emerged from this treatment
improved. In January 1956 he recorded two Granz-produced sessions including a
reunion with pianist Teddy Wilson, trumpet player Roy Eldridge, trombonist Vic
Dickenson, bassist Gene Ramey, and drummer Jo Jones – which were issued as The
Jazz Giants '56 and Pres and Teddy albums. 1956 was a relatively good year for
Lester Young, including a tour of Europe with Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz
Quartet and a successful residency at Olivia Davis' Patio Lounge in Washington,
DC, with the Bill Potts Trio. Live recording of Young and Potts in Washington
were issued later.
Throughout the 1940s and 50s,
Young had sat in on Count Basie Orchestra gigs from time to time. The
best-known of these is their July 1957 appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival,
the line-up including many of his colleagues: Jo Jones, Roy Eldridge, Illinois
Jacquet and Jimmy Rushing. In 1952 he was featured on Lester Young with the
Oscar Peterson Trio, released in 1954 on Norgran.
Lester married three times.
Young made his final studio
recordings and live performances in Paris in March 1959 with drummer Kenny
Clarke at the tail end of an abbreviated European tour during which he ate next
to nothing and drank heavily. He died in the early morning hours of March 15,
1959, only hours after arriving back in New York, at the age of 49.
According to jazz critic Leonard
Feather, who rode with Holiday in a taxi to Young's funeral, she said after the
services, "I'll be the next one to go." Holiday died four months
later on July 17, 1959 at age 44.
The Attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne
On March 20, 1974, an armed
madman named Ian Ball tried to kidnap Britain's
Ball, who had a history of psychiatric
problems and had been diagnosed a schizophrenic, thought Princess Anne would be
an easy target and, amazingly enough he had learned her movements simply by
telephoning the Buckingham Palace press office. He said: ‘I had thought about
it for years… She would have been the easiest. I have seen her riding with her
husband.”
That night, Ball who had been
following the royal’s in a Ford Escort, caught up with the royals car on the
Pall Mall and cut it off. Blocking the
road, Ball leaped out of the car, a pistol in his hand. He purchased them in
Spain a month before)
“I thought” said Police Inspector
Jim Beaton, the Princesses security officer “it was somebody who wanted to be a
pain in the neck. There was no hint of what was to happen.”
What happened was that Ian Ball
fired through the front windshield of the royals car hitting Inspector Beaton in
the shoulder. Beaton pulled his service
weapon a Walther PPK and tried to return fire, but the gun jammed.
Ian Ball called out for Beaton to
drop his weapon or he would shoot the princess. Ball then ran over to the car
and tried to force open the door. The chauffeur, Alex Callender, rushed Ball
and tried to disarm him but was shot.
Alex Callender
Brian McConnell, a tabloid journalist who
was standing on the Mall intervened and
said “Don’t be silly, old boy. “Put the gun down.” Ball shot him.
Brian McConnell
By then Officer Beaton leaped
into the back beside the royal couple. Ball fired again and this time Beaton
put up his own arm to obstruct the bullet. He was shot through the hand and
then shot in the abdomen.
With Inspector Beaton down, Ball
ran to the car’s back door and pulled it open, grabbed Anne’s forearm as her husband held onto her waist.
“Please, come out,” Ball said to
Anne. “You’ve got to come” to which she replied, “Not bloody likely.”
As the two men struggled over
Anne, her dress ripped, splitting down the back.
“I was frightened, I won’t mind
admitting it,” Captain Phillips later said.
When Police constable Michael
Hills ran to the scene, Ball shot him as well.
Hills
Ronnie Russell, a 6’4 amateur heavyweight
boxer, the father of three was driving from work in central London and took a
short cut near the Pall Mall when he noticed Ian Ball driving erratically
towards Buckingham Palace.
Sensing something was wrong, Russel
turned his car around and drove towards the palace, where, close to the gates
he saw Ian Ball’s four victims lying on
the ground, wounded, while Ball was wrestling Princess Anne.
Russell ran up to Ball and punched
him in the back of the head. Ball fired a shot at him but missed. Russell reached
for a fallen Constables nightstick and Ball, seeing an opening, returned his
attention to the Princess when Russell landed a punch squarely on Ball’s jaw.
“I hit Ball very hard.” Russell said “He was flat on the floor face down. I jumped
on his back for good measure. I could have died, yeah, but I knew what I was
doing. The only person I did not want to get shot was Princess Anne.”
Ball stood up and ran. Another Constable named Peter Edmonds, a
temporary detective constable, had heard Officer Hills’ calls and ran to the
scene just as Ball fled. Edmonds chased him and his coat over Ball’s head and
tackled him.
Once arrested, Ball, then 26, said
‘I suppose I’ll be locked up for the rest of my life. I am only sorry I
frightened Princess Anne. There is one good thing coming out of this: you will
have to improve on her protection.’
When he was searched, police found
close to $1,000 in the unemployed Ball’s pockets. They also learned that he had
recently rented an apartment five miles away from Sandhurst Military Academy, which
was also the home of Princess Anne and Captain Phillips.
Ball had rented the car under the
name of John Williams. Inside the vehicle, police found two pairs of handcuffs,
Valium tranquilizers, and a typed ransom letter addressed to the Queen that
demanded 2 million pounds for the Princesses ransom to be delivered in £5 sterling notes.
He
also wanted the loot stored in 20 unlocked suitcases and put on a plane
destined for Switzerland, and, as if that weren’t enough, he also wanted the Queen
herself to appear on the plane to confirm the authenticity of her signatures on
needed paperwork. He said later that he intended to give the money to the
National Health Service, to be used to improve the care and treatment of
psychiatric patients.
Ball
When asked if he was part of the
Irish Republican Army he said ‘I have
got no friends. I’m a loner. I put a lot of thought and work into it. ‘I can’t
expect people like you to understand or accept that I did it and planned it
alone. Do you think I am part of the IRA or something? If there had been anyone
else they would have helped me at the scene. I knew [Inspector Beaton] would be
armed. If his gun had not jammed, I would be dead.’
Princess Anne visiting her bodyguard, Inspector James Beaton, at Westminster Hospital in London
Officer Hills
Otherwise he had no remorse for
wounding the four men. ‘They were getting in my way, so I had to shoot them.
Well, the police, that’s their job. They expect to be shot. I took a chance of
getting shot so why shouldn’t they?’
Constables Hills and Edmond (cener)
“I am not surprised about the
lack of remorse” Inspector Beaton said “because he was mentally ill. But in a
sense his comments about Royal security were right. Nobody expected anything
like that to happen, not even with the IRA. We took precautions but nothing
like you have today.”
Ball, face covered
Ian Ball was charged with attempted
murder, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and attempting to
kidnap Princess Anne. He pleaded guilty to two of the attempted murder charges
and to the kidnapping charge. The Crown dropped the other charges. He was sentenced
to a life term in a mental health facility called Broadmoor, a high-security
psychiatric hospital. In 1983, Ball wrote
to a number of government officials that the attempted kidnapping was a hoax,
and that he was framed.
Queen Elizabeth awarded the George Cross, Britain’s highest
civilian award for courage, to Inspector Beaton. In 1983, Scotland Yard reorganized the Royalty
Protection Branch and placed Beaton as its superintendent.
The Queen also presented Police Constable Hills and
Ronald Russell, with the George Medal, the second-highest civilian honor for
bravery. Police Constable Edmonds, John Brian McConnell and Alexander Callender
were awarded the Queen’s Gallantry medal. Glenmore Martin received the Queen’s
Commendation for Brave Conduct. While handing Roland Russell his medal she whispered
“The medal is from the Queen of England. The thank you is from Anne’s mother”
When the Queen learned that Russel
was about to lose his home, she paid off his mortgage.
Princess Anne and Capt Mark Phillips (left) during the Mall kidnap attempt. Second left to right Royal Chauffeur Alexander Callender, Inspector James Beaton, Glanmore and Martin and Russell, far right
The Conway Cabal
Thomas Conway
Wilkinson (March 24, 1757 –
December 28, 1825) was a slippery fellow who would be tired into several
scandals and controversies in his lifetime. During the American Revolutionary
War, he was compelled to resign…..twice.
He was a highly paid spy in the service
of the Spanish Empire. (Which only recently came to light)
As an aide to General Horatio
Gates he was sent to Congress with official dispatches about the victory at the
Battle of Saratoga in 1777. Military custom called for Gates to send an official
report about the victory to General Washington, Gates immediate superior, and
not to the congress which he did anyway when he sent General James Wilkinson to
report to the Congress.
General Gates
Not only did the 20-year old Wilkinson
keep Congress waiting while he attended to personal affairs, when he showed up
he lied about his role in the victory, and lied so well, that he was brevetted
as a brigadier general and was appointed to the newly created Board of War
which caused a major uproar among Continental officers.
During the conversation, the
General relayed a story about a letter he had seen at headquarters which was
addressed to his commander, General Horatio Gage, from General Thomas Conway.
The officer said the letter
praised General Gage at George Washington's expense saying in part "Heaven
has determined to save your country or a weak General and bad counselors would
have ruined it"
The Officer who was told the
story hurried back to his camp and relied the tale to his commander and eventually
the story found its way back to General George Washington. The man who made the
remarks, General Thomas Conway, wanted George Washington's job as commander and
chief of the American forces. Although born in Ireland, Conway immigrated to
France with his parents as a teen and enrolled in the Irish Brigade of the
French Army and rose rapidly to colonel by 1772. Following the outbreak of the
American Revolution he volunteered to the Congress for service in 1777. Based
on an introduction from Silas Deane, the Congress appointed him a brigadier
general on May 13, and sent him on to George Washington.
An outspoken and ambitious,
Conway had fought brilliantly at the battle of Brandywine, under the command of
General John Sullivan, with such courage and skill was promoted (after
pestering John Hancock for weeks) to the rank of full Major General. However, George
Washington opposed his promotion to major general because he felt it would be
bad for moral that his American born officers with longer service records deserved
the rank. Conway saw it as a slap.
Conway told the members of the
American Congress that when he served with General George Washington at the
battle of Germantown, that Washington seemed befuddled and indecisive, a man
who let his junior officers over rule his almost every command, and, for good
measure, said that Washington's friend, General Lord Stirling, was ignorant and
of no use to anyone unless he was drunk.
There were some members of the
Congress who took the blowhard Conway seriously. Washington, to many in
Congress saw Washington as cold, stand-offish type, arrogant and condescending.
And he had made several military
blunders against the mightiest army on earth during the war and some of those
Congressmen wanted him gone. (Those loses included losing Philadelphia, the
seat of the Second Continental Congress, to the British in the fall of 1777 )
There was already a group in the Congress that
was pushing for Horatio Gates as commander-in-chief, so Conway, seeing an
opening pushed himself as Congresses kind of general and his supporters agreed,
seeing him as a man of great military insight, proven courage, experience and
what's more, he would tell them what they wanted to hear.
Conway was careful to leave the
Congress with his own personnel cheering section in the hands of Doctor
Benjamin Rush, the chief Surgeon General of the Army, who assured the Congressmen
that Conway was "the idol of his army" and that it was Conway, not
Washington, who saved the day at the Battle of Germantown.
Benjamin Rush, a signer of the United States Declaration of
Independence and a civic powerhouse in Philadelphia, was a wise choice for
Conway. Rush was a leader of the American Enlightenment, a reformer in
education, a known radical for American
independence. (He was a leader in Pennsylvania's ratification of the
Constitution in 1788) When Rush took
over the Army Medical Service it was in
near complete disarray. He turned around and his general order "Directions
for preserving the health of soldiers" became one of the foundations of
preventive military medicine and was repeatedly republished, including as late
as 1908.
Rush was a near constant critic
of George Washington who had penned two handwritten but unsigned letters that
badly criticized George Washington saying that if “not for God's grace the
ongoing war would have been lost” by Washington and his weak counselors, he
also repeated General John Sullivan's criticism that forces directly under
Washington were undisciplined and mob-like, and contrasted Gates' army as
"a well-regulated family". Rush also wrote a letter to influential John
Adams relaying complaints inside Washington's army, including about "bad
bread, no order, universal disgust" and praising Conway.
Up to this time, Washington had
kept himself above the fray of political back biting, considering it below the
dignity of a gentleman to respond to such scuttlebutt. But this time, Washington
felt obligated to respond to Conway's charges that the great man was not
capable of controlling his junior officers.
Washington composed a carefully
worded letter to the Congress outlining the fact that Conway's boasts of having
saved the battle of Germantown lived more in the imagination of Conway then in
reality and that any promotions for Conway that the Congress was considering
would be "as unfortunate a measure as was ever adapted"
The Congress answered
Washington's letter by promoting Conway to the rank of inspector General, thus
making both Washington and Conway happy, or so they thought. Conway saw the
promotion as an insult and tendered his resignation to Washington, in turn
Washington, in what only be described as an act of heavenly restraint, refused
to accept the Irishmen's resignation, on the shaky grounds that since the
Congress had promoted him, only the Congress could accept his resignation.
Congress too, refused the
resignation, citing the fact that Conway was a close personnel friend of
Frances Louis XVI, and should Conway return to France in a huff, the powerful
French Emperor might in turn take the resignation as an insult. At the same
time they could promote Conway as he had wished since this would have been a
slap in the face of General Washington who was venerated by his army and adored
by the public. The best they could hope for was that Conway would be killed in
action or captured.
In his new role as Inspector
General, Conway twice called on Washington and found his reception to be a cold
one. Conway complained to the Congress and added that the Officers throughout
the Army could not stand the sight of him. Washington did not deny the charges
that he had been unwelcoming to Conway but denied that he had instructed his
men to treat the General with anything other than the utmost respect. The
officers, Washington explained, were simply emulating their Generals point of
view.
Conway offered to resign again,
and this time the Congress gladly accepted the offer. Before he left for Europe,
Conway challenged General John Cadwalder,
a strong supporter of George Washington, to a duel, stating that Cadwalder had
insulted his honor. Cadwalder accepted Conway’s challenge and upon the field of
honor, shot the Irishmen through the mouth. The bullet exited through his head.
"I have stopped the damned rascal's lying
tongue at any rate" Cadwalder said.
Assuming that he was on his death
bed, Conway wrote a letter to Washington offering an apology for his past
behavior and called the General "a good and a great man"
But Conway did recover and in
1787 returned to France, joined their army was promoted to Maréchal-de-camp
(Major General) and an appointment as Governor of French colonies in India. In
1793 he fought with royalist forces in opposition to French Revolution in
southern France. The rebels later captured him and condemned him to death, but he somehow managed to flee to his
native Ireland, where British intelligence reported that he was living in dire straits.
He died there in or about 1800.
As for Doctor Rush, who would
eventually become known as the Father of American Psychiatry, his staff
reported to Congress that Rush rarely if ever toured the hospital under his
command, that there was enormous misappropriation of food and other supplies
intended for the wounded and pressure on the hospital staff to under-report
patient deaths. The Congress forced Rush to resign in 1778.
THE ABANDONED OF YAN
THE
ABANDONED OF YAN
BY DONALD
F. DALEY
From Worlds
of If Science Fiction, March 1963.
________________________________________
After her husband left her,
Marigold filed a protection-request form and an availability form.
She did not do this immediately.
She stayed up for the better part of the night, hoping that he would come back.
She could not bring herself to believe that he would really walk out on her and
leave her available for confiscation, or for the slavery pool. She also thought
for quite a while about the possibility of somehow getting back to Earth, where
she would not be available for either.
She even went to the fantastic
expense of televiewing there to talk with her father and mother. They had been
shocked and unfriendly. They had said good-by with a finality which left little
room for doubt as to what they thought of an Abandoned. They had never had one
in their family, they had pointed out, neither of them, and they did not intend
to have one in their family now. They had warned her that they intended to
report the call to the Beta III Protection People.
This did not worry her much. The
call almost certainly had been monitored anyway. If they wanted to go to the
considerable extra expense of reporting it, in order to impress the Protection
People with their loyalty, that was their own lookout. She understood that,
now, she had no family. She thought for a moment of going up-ramp to say
good-by to the children, but she knew that this would not help.
Besides, it was illegal. They
were no longer hers. She was an Abandoned.
She had never known what a
tremendously harrowing experience filling out an availability form could be.
Name, age, Sector, race, size-classification, beauty-index, fertility tests,
personality scores, aptitudes, psyche-rating and so on, and so on and so on. It
was like undressing for an auction. The protection-request form was much
simpler, except for that one question: STATUS? Her hand shook almost uncontrollably
as she wrote. Abandoned.
After that she did not know what
to do. She had stood for nearly twenty minutes before the document file,
listening, thinking desperately that he would come back; that if she only
waited a few minutes more he would come back. She had made herself refreshment.
She had sat with the filled-out documents on her lap looking, from time to
time, longingly at the entrance-ramp. But he had not come back. Finally, with a
low moaning sound, she had pushed the papers through the document file slot.
She made the deadline by a scant three minutes.
Now she knew that whatever else
happened, the Protection People would be there in the morning to pick up the
children. She knew that it could show in her favor if she were to get together
the things they would need to take with them. She could do this without seeing
them and without talking to them, which was forbidden, but she could not bring
herself to move.
The red light on the atmosphere
control blinked warningly. Soon it would let out a piercing scream. She was
tempted to just let it. Another of Clytia's suns must have set. She found that
she had no sense of time. She had only the conviction that this would be her
last night. The last night that mattered to her at all. She wanted it to be a
long one. She had adjusted the atmoset. She had done this every night for the
seven years of their marriage. She began to sob uncontrollably. She took her
Status Married card and tore it in half. Then she held the halves to her
cheeks, her face wet and wretched between them.
________________________________________
After a while she dialed the
credit balance at her account. The figures came back indicating a balance of
1300. He had left her quite a lot, when you considered that she had televiewed
to Earth. She cried hard again because she knew that he had not had to leave
her anything at all. This made her certain (although she had known it already)
that he was not coming back.
She sat for quite a while
studying the 1300 credit indicator. She thought about using the money to buy a
"pick-up-immediately advertisement" on the omnivision. She was not
sure of the rates, but she thought the amount might even stretch to include a
picture of her. She did not know. She did not even know if she would be expected
to be nude or dressed for the picture. In the end, she decided not to try an
advertisement because there would not be time enough to employ a
reply-receiving address. All that would be accomplished would be to put every
predator within miles in possession of the address of an Abandoned.
She took a dictator and said into
it: "Dear children, I am leaving you 1300 credit." She stopped then
and shook her head. The tears made it so that she could not see, and she did
not seem to be able to think. "Correction," she sobbed "Erase
preceding. Dear Children of Yan, I make you this gift of 1300. I am sure that
your excellence will continue to deserve much more than so small a gift. I send
love with this small gift."
There could, of course, be no
signature. An Abandoned had none.
She wished that she had not made
the Earth call. There would have been much more to leave them then. He had left
an astonishing amount in her account. It was almost as though he had expected
her to try to get away. She wished now that she had thought before taking
action. There might have been some way out.
She must have fallen asleep. The
morning announcements came on as usual, waking her. She listened to the
instructions for that day, and the areas announced as forbidden. She made no
effort, however, to indicate them on the day-map. She knew that, now, none of
this applied to her.
With a very great effort she got
up and shut off the children's ramp, so that they could not come down. She knew
how much this would count in her favor. Then she began, as hurriedly as she
could, to collect the things they would need. She knew that she could not
possibly get the things together in time, and that so late an effort was more
likely to count against her. She was not even close to finished when the
announcer flashed on.
Without asking who it was, she
pressed the admitter. She was glad that they had troubled to announce
themselves.
She offered to go into another
room while they removed the children. They did not answer. One of them threw a
sack over her. After a moment, they took it off again and, rather
apologetically, asked her to indicate where the child-ramp control was. She
showed them. Their leader said that perhaps it would be all right for her to go
into another room if one of them went with her. When she saw the one chosen,
she put the sack back on herself. They laughed so hard at this that she did not
hear the children leave.
________________________________________
When the children had been taken
out, the leader came back and removed the sack from around her. He asked if she
had applied for protection. She showed her card.
"Well, that's too bad,"
he said. "Do you have any refreshment left?"
She did not dare to lie to him.
She showed him. He helped himself.
"How about credits?" he
asked.
"I gave it all to the ones
who were here," she answered carefully. She felt quick panic because she
remembered that she had not so instructed her account. She had merely dictated
it to the children. If he didn't find out, though, that would be all right. The
dictation was proof enough. But while she was still in this house, the credits
were still in her control.
"My credit indicator is
here," she said, holding it out. He didn't take it.
"Thanks for the
refreshment," he said, getting up. "Make yourself comfortable. The
others will be here shortly."
She had nothing to do to make
herself ready. She could not take anything from this house. Sometimes they let
you wear what you were wearing, if it did not look as though you had put on
your best things. They did not always allow it, but they did sometimes. She
remembered that she had expressed strong disapproval of that to Yan, when they
were newly married. Then they both felt the same way about Abandoneds.
She indicated to her account how
she wanted the 1300 disposed. Then she waited. After a while, the Protection
People came and led her out of the house. They did not touch her or speak to
her, they merely formed a square in the center of which she walked. They led
her to a records room where an interview apparatus prepared a report on her.
"You have filed availability
papers?" it asked.
"Yes," she said, and
gave the file number.
"This is being
checked," the apparatus said. "Have you any claims upon the
State?"
She came very close to mentioning
the children. "None," she said in a very small voice. It was
difficult to remember that the interview apparatus was not at all sensitive.
"Have you credits in your
possession?" the machine asked.
"None," she said.
"You are eligible for
exclusion from the slave classification in what way?" That part of the
recording seemed a bit worn. At least she did not hear it very well.
"In no way," she
replied.
"You
will wait," said the machine, "until we have a report on the
availability petition which you have filed. Please take a seat."
________________________________________
There were no seats. This was an
older machine which they had not bothered to replace, or even to correct. She
stood in horror as the long minutes passed.
Her number was finally called.
"I am here," she said
as the machine hummed, and she gave her number.
"Your availability petition
has been taken up," said the machine. "You are however to receive
twenty-eight demerits for disposing of 6300 credit after having been abandoned.
Do you accept?"
"I accept," she said.
She was so dizzy that she could hardly stand. The machine whirred and produced
a reception-area card. She read it, and walked as in a daze to the indicated
reception area. Yan waited for her there.
"You look terrible," he
said as he put his arm around her. "I'm sorry. You made me do this to you.
I didn't want to. It's all over now, don't cry."
She thought that she was going to
faint.
"Thank you for receiving
me," she said, according to the formula. "I am the Abandoned of Yan,
of the Estate...."
"Stop it!" he said.
"I know who you are! Stop it!"
"Do you have children at
your estate?" She asked it as one asks a polite, social question.
"They'll be there when we
get home," he said. "Don't do this. I didn't know it would hurt that
much. I wouldn't have done it if I had. They're your children again now."
He held her shoulders as he looked at her.
"I came to you with
twenty-eight demerits," she said. "Shall I work them off before I
come to your estate?"
"Please, stop it!" he
said. "They were paid when you accepted. I waited here all night. No one
else could have claimed you. Please, come on home now?" He handed her a
brand-new wife-status card.
"Thank you," she said.
"I shall try to deserve the opportunity which you restore to me." He
smiled as she recited the formula and took his arm. Yet he did not look as if
he felt like smiling.
"Come home," he said.
"Come home now. I'll not hurt you again." He led her back to their
estate.
That night, feeling entirely
justified, she abandoned him.
________________________________________
"Mommy," the children
shouted. They ran to her and hugged her. They had missed her, and had resented
the disturbance in their routine. "Mommy!" They danced and shouted,
"Mommy! Mommy, Mommy!"
When it was their bed time, he left
her alone with them. He said good night to them himself, kissed them and
squeezed her shoulder. "It's good to have you home again!" he said.
His eyes filled with tears and he hurried from the room.
"Tell us a story,
Mommy." It was the custom of the household.
There were tears in her eyes and
her voice trembled a little, but she said in what seemed to them a perfect
narrative style:
"Once upon a time there were
two very good and loving children who found that it was their duty to denounce
their father to the state and to see him publicly flogged to death. You must
listen very carefully to this," she said, "both of you.
"At first, they thought that
this was a very sad duty...."