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Title: There was an old woman—
Author: Robert Silverberg
Illustrator: Ed Emshwiller
Release date: November 9, 2023 [eBook #72082]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1958
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN— ***
there was an old WOMAN--
By ROBERT SILVERBERG
_Miss Mitchell had ideas--and 31 identical sons!_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity November 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Since I was raised from earliest infancy to undertake the historian's
calling, and since it is now certain that I shall never claim that
profession as my own, it seems fitting that I perform my first and last
act as an historian.
I shall write the history of that strange and unique woman, the mother
of my thirty brothers and myself, Miss Donna Mitchell.
She was a person of extraordinary strength and vision, our mother. I
remember her vividly, seeing her with all her sons gathered 'round
her in our secluded Wisconsin farmhouse on the first night of summer,
after we had returned to her from every part of the country for our
summer's vacation. One-and-thirty strapping sons, each one of us six
feet one inch tall, with a shock of unruly yellow hair and keen, clear
blue eyes, each one of us healthy, strong, well-nourished, each one of
us twenty-one years and fourteen days old, one-and-thirty identical
brothers.
Oh, there were differences between us, but only we and she could
perceive them. To outsiders, we were identical; which was why, to
outsiders, we took care never to appear together in groups. We
ourselves knew the differences, for we had lived with them so long.
I knew my brother Leonard's cheekmole--the right cheek it was, setting
him off from Jonas, whose left cheek was marked with a flyspeck. I knew
the faint tilt of Peter's chin, the slight oversharpness of Dewey's
nose, the florid tint of Donald's skin, I recognized Paul by his
pendulous earlobes, Charles by his squint, Noel by the puckering of his
lowerlip. David had a blue-stubbled face, Mark flaring nostrils, Claude
thick brows.
Yes, there were differences. We rarely confused one with another. It
was second nature for me to distinguish Edward from Albert, George from
Philip, Frederick from Stephen. And Mother _never_ confused us.
She was a regal woman, nearly six feet in height, who even in middle
age had retained straightness of posture and majesty of bearing.
Her eyes, like ours, were blue; her hair, she told us, had once been
golden like ours. Her voice was a deep, mellow contralto; rich, firm,
commanding, the voice of a strong woman. She had been Professor of
Biochemistry at some Eastern university (she never told us which one,
hating its name so) and we all knew by heart the story of her bitter
life and of our own strange birth.
* * * * *
"I had a theory," she would say. "It wasn't an orthodox theory, and it
made people angry to think about it, so of course they threw me out.
But I didn't care. In many ways that was the most fortunate day of my
life."
"Tell us about it, Mother," Philip would invariably ask. He was
destined to be a playwright; he enjoyed the repetition of the story
whenever we were together.
She said:
"I had a theory. I believed that environment controlled personality,
that given the same set of healthy genes any number of different adults
could be shaped from the raw material. I had a plan for testing it--but
when I told them, they discharged me. Luckily I had married a wealthy
if superficial-minded executive, who had suffered a fatal coronary
attack the year before. I was independently wealthy, thanks to him, and
free to pursue independent research, thanks to my University discharge.
So I came to Wisconsin and began my great project."
We knew the rest of the story by heart, as a sort of litany.
We knew how she had bought a huge, rambling farm in the flat green
country of central Wisconsin, a farm far from prying eyes. Then, how on
a hot summer afternoon she had gone forth to the farmland nearby, and
found a fieldhand, tall and brawny, and to his great surprise seduced
him in the field where he worked.
And then, the story of that single miraculous zygote, which our mother
had extracted from her body and carefully nurtured in special nutrient
tanks, irradiating it and freezing it and irritating it and dosing it
with hormones until, exasperated, it sub-divided into thirty-two, each
one of which developed independently into a complete embryo.
Embryo grew into fetus, and fetus into child, in Mother's ingenious
artificial wombs. One of the thirty-two died before birth of accidental
narcosis; the remainder survived, thirty-one identical males sprung
from the same egg, to become us.
With the formidable energy that typified her, Mother single-handed
nursed thirty-one baby boys; we thrived, we grew. And then the most
crucial stage of the experiment began. We were differentiated at the
age of eighteen months, each given his own room, his own particular
toys, his own special books later on. Each of us was slated for
a different profession. It was the ultimate proof of her theory.
Genetically identical, physically identical except for the minor
changes time had worked on our individual bodies, we would nevertheless
seek out different fields of employ.
She worked out the assignments at random, she said. Philip was to be
a playwright, Noel a novelist, Donald a doctor. Astronomy was Allan's
goal, Barry's biology, Albert's the stage. George was to be a concert
pianist, Claude a composer, Leonard a member of the bar, Dewey a
dentist. Mark was to be an athlete; David, a diplomat. Journalism
waited for Jonas, poetry for Peter, painting for Paul. Edward would
become an engineer, Saul a soldier, Charles a statesman; Stephen would
go to sea. Martin was aimed for chemistry, Raymond for physics, James
for high finance. Ronald would be a librarian, Robert a bookkeeper,
John a priest, Douglas a teacher. Anthony was to be a literary critic,
William a librarian, Frederick an airplane pilot. For Richard was
reserved a life of crime; as for myself, Harold, I was to devote my
energies to the study and writing of history.
This was my mother's plan. Let me tell of my own childhood and
adolescence, to illustrate its workings.
* * * * *
My first recollections are of books. I had a room on the second floor
of our big house. Martin's room was to my left, and in later years I
would regret it, for the air was always heavy with the stink of his
chemical experiments. To my right was Noel, whose precocious typewriter
sometimes pounded all night as he worked on his endless first novel.
But those manifestations came later. I remember waking one morning to
find that during the night a bookcase had been placed in my room, and
in it a single book--Hendrik Willem van Loon's _Story of Mankind_. I
was four, almost five, then; thanks to Mother's intensive training
we were all capable readers by that age, and I puzzled over the
big type, learning of the exploits of Charlemagne and Richard the
Lionhearted and staring at the squiggly scratches that were van Loon's
illustrations.
Other books followed, in years to come. H.G. Wells' _Outline of
History_, which fascinated and repelled me at the same time.
Toynbee, in the Somervell abridgement, and later, when I had entered
adolescence, the complete and unabridged edition. Churchill, with his
flowing periods and ringing prose. Sandburg's poetic and massive life
of Lincoln; Wedgwood on the Thirty Years' War; Will Durant, in six or
seven block-like volumes.
I read these books, and where I did not understand I read on anyway,
knowing I would come back to that page in some year to come and bring
new understanding to it. Mother helped, and guided, and chivvied. A
sense of the panorama of man's vast achievement sprang up in me. To
join the roll of mankind's chroniclers seemed the only possible end for
my existence.
Each summer from my fourteenth to my seventeenth, I travelled--alone,
of course, since Mother wanted to build self-reliance in us. I visited
the great historical places of the United States: Washington, D.C.,
Mount Vernon, Williamsburg, Bull Run, Gettysburg. A sense of the past
rose in me.
Those summers were my only opportunities for contact with strangers,
since during the year and especially during the long snowbound winters
we stayed on the farm, a tight family unit. We never went to public
school; obviously, it was impossible to enroll us, en masse, without
arousing the curiosity my mother wished to avoid.
Instead, she tutored us privately, giving us care and attention that no
professional teacher could possibly have supplied. And we grew older,
diverging toward our professions like branching limbs of a tree.
As a future historian, of course, I took it upon myself to observe the
changes in my own society, which was bounded by the acreage of our
farm. I made notes on the progress of my brothers, keeping my notebooks
well hidden, and also on the changes time was working on Mother. She
stood up surprisingly well, considering the astonishing burden she had
taken upon herself. Formidable was the best word to use in describing
her.
We grew into adolescence. By this time Martin had an imposing chemical
laboratory in his room; Leonard harangued us all on legal fine points,
and Anthony pored over Proust and Kafka, delivering startling critical
interpretations. Our house was a beehive of industry constantly,
and I don't remember being bored for more than three consecutive
seconds, at any time. There were always distractions: Claude and
George jostling for room on the piano bench while they played Claude's
four-hand sonata, Mark hurling a baseball through a front window, Peter
declaiming a sequence of shocking sonnets during our communal dinner.
We fought, of course, since we were healthy individualists with sound
bodies. Mother encouraged it; Saturday afternoon was wrestling time,
and we pitted our growing strengths against one another.
Mother was always the dominant figure, striding tall and erect around
the farm, calling to us in her familiar boom, assigning us chores,
meeting with us privately. Somehow she had the knack of making each of
us think we were the favorite child, the one in whose future she was
most deeply interested of all. It was false, of course; though once
Jonas unkindly asserted that Barry must be her _real_ favorite, because
he, like her, was a biologist.
I doubted it. I had learned much about people through my constant
reading, and I knew that Mother was something extraordinary--a fanatic,
if you like, or merely a woman driven by an inner demon, but still
and all a person of overwhelming intellectual drive and conviction,
whose will to know the truth had led her to undertake this fantastic
experiment in biology and human breeding.
I knew that no woman of that sort could stoop to petty favoritism.
Mother was unique. Perhaps, had she been born a man, she would have
changed the entire course of human development.
When we were seventeen, she called us all together round the big table
in the common room of our rambling home. She waited, needing to clear
her throat only once in order to cut the hum of conversation.
"Sons," she said, and the echo rang through the entire first floor of
the house. "Sons, the time has come for you to leave the farm."
* * * * *
We were stunned, even those of us who were expecting it. But she
explained, and we understood, and we did not quarrel.
One could not become a doctor or a chemist or a novelist or even an
historian in a total vacuum. One had to enter the world. And one needed
certain professional qualifications.
We were going to college.
Not all of us, of course. Robert was to be a bookkeeper; he would go
to a business school. Mark had developed, through years of practice,
into a superb right-handed pitcher, and he was to go to Milwaukee for a
major-league tryout. Claude and George, aspiring composer and aspiring
pianist, would attend an eastern conservatory together, posing as twins.
The rest of us were to attend colleges, and those who were to go on
to professions such as medicine or chemistry would plan to attend
professional schools afterward. Mother believed the college education
was essential, even to a poet or a painter or a novelist.
Only one of us was not sent to any accredited institution. He was
Richard, who was to be our criminal. Already he had made several
sallies into the surrounding towns and cities, returning a few days or
a few weeks later with money or jewels and with a guilty grin on his
face. He was simply to be turned loose into the school of Life, and
Mother warned him never to get caught.
As for me, I was sent to Princeton and enrolled as a liberal-arts
student. Since, like my brothers, I was privately educated, I had no
diplomas or similar records to show them, and they had to give me an
equivalency examination in their place. Evidently I did quite well,
for I was immediately accepted. I wired Mother, who sent a check for
$3,000 to cover my first year's tuition and expenses.
I enrolled as a History major; among my first-year courses were
Medieval English Constitutional History and the Survey of Western
Historical Currents; naturally, my marks were the highest in the class
in both cases. I worked diligently and even with a sort of frenzied
fury. My other courses, in the sciences or in the arts, I devoted no
more nor no less time to than was necessary, but history was my ruling
passion.
At least, through my first two semesters of college.
* * * * *
June came, and final exam, and then I returned to Wisconsin, where
Mother was waiting. It was June 21 when I returned; since not all
colleges end their spring semester simultaneously, some of my brothers
had been home for more than a week, others had not yet arrived. Richard
had sent word that he was in Los Angeles, and would be with us after
the first of July. Mark had signed a baseball contract and was pitching
for a team in New Mexico, and he, too, would not be with us.
The summer passed rapidly. We spent it as we had in the old days
before college, sharing our individual specialties, talking, meeting
regularly and privately with Mother to discuss the goals that still
lay ahead. Except for Claude and George, we had scattered in different
directions, no two of us at the same school.
I returned to Princeton that fall, for my sophomore year. It passed,
and I made the homeward journey again, and in the fall travelled once
more eastward. The junior year went by likewise.
And I began to detect signs of a curious change in my inward self.
It was a change I did not dare mention to Mother, on those July days
when I met with her in her room near the library. I did not tell my
brothers, either. I kept my knowledge to myself, brooding over it,
wondering why it was that this thing should happen to me, why I should
be singled out.
For I was discovering that the study of history bored me utterly and
completely.
The spirit of rebellion grew in me during my final year in college. My
marks had been excellent; I had achieved Phi Beta Kappa and several
graduate schools were interested in having me continue my studies with
them. But I had been speaking to a few chosen friends (none of whom
knew my bizarre family background, of course) and my values had been
slowly shifting.
I realized that I had mined history as deeply as I ever cared to.
Waking and sleeping, for more than fifteen years, I had pondered
Waterloo and Bunker Hill, considered the personalities of Cromwell and
James II, held imaginary conversations with Jefferson and Augustus
Caesar and Charles Martel.
And I was bored with it.
It began to become evident to others, eventually. One day during my
final semester a friend asked me, "Is there something worrying you,
Harry?"
I shook my head quickly--_too_ quickly. "No," I said. "Why? Do I look
worried?"
"You look worse than worried. You look obsessed."
We laughed about it, and finally we went down to the student center and
had a few beers, and before long my tongue had loosened a little.
I said, "There _is_ something worrying me. And you know what it is? I'm
afraid I won't live up to the standards my family set for me."
Guffaws greeted me. "Come off it, Harry! Phi Bete in your junior year,
top class standing, a brilliant career in history ahead of you--what do
they want from you, blood?"
I chuckled and gulped my beer and mumbled something innocuous, but
inside I was curdling.
Everything I was, I owed to Mother. She made me what I am. But I was
played out, as a student of history; I was the family failure, the
goat, the rotten egg. Raymond still wrestled gleefully with nuclear
physics, with Heisenberg and Schrodinger and the others. Mark gloried
in his fastball and his slider and his curve. Paul daubed canvas
merrily in his Greenwich Village flat near N.Y.U., and even Robert
seemed to take delight in keeping books.
Only I had failed. History had become repugnant to me. I was in
rebellion against it. I would disappoint my mother, become the butt
of my brothers' scorn, and live in despair, hating the profession of
historian and fitted by training for nothing else.
I was graduated from Princeton summa cum laude, a few days after my
twenty-first birthday. I wired Mother that I was on my way home, and
bought train-tickets.
It was a long and grueling journey to Wisconsin. I spent my time
thinking, trying to choose between the unpleasant alternatives that
faced me.
I could attempt duplicity, telling my mother I was still studying
history, while actually preparing myself for some more attractive
profession--the law, perhaps.
I could confess to her at once my failure of purpose, ask her
forgiveness, for disappointing her and flawing her grand scheme, and
try to begin afresh in another field.
Or I could forge ahead with history, compelling myself grimly to take
an interest, cramping and paining myself so that my mother's design
would be complete.
None of them seemed desirable paths to take. I brooded over it, and was
weary and apprehensive by the time I arrived at our farm.
* * * * *
The first of my brothers I saw was Mark. He sat on the front porch of
the big house, reading a book which I recognized at once and with some
surprise as Volume I of Churchill. He looked up at me and smiled feebly.
I frowned. "I didn't expect to find _you_ here, Mark. According to the
local sports pages the Braves are playing on the Coast this week. How
come you're not with them?"
His voice was a low murmur. "Because they gave me my release," he said.
"What?"
He nodded. "I'm washed up at 21. They made me a free agent; that means
I can hook up with any team that wants me."
"And you're just taking a little rest before offering yourself around?"
He shook his head. "I'm through. Kaput. Harry, I just can't stand
baseball. It's a silly, stupid game. You know how many times I had to
stand out there in baggy knickers and throw a bit of horsehide at some
jerk with a club in his paws? A hundred, hundred-fifty times a game,
every four days. For what? What the hell does it all mean? Why should I
bother?"
There was a strange gleam in his eyes. I said, "Have you told Mother?"
"I don't dare! She thinks I'm on leave, or something. Harry, how can I
tell her--"
"I know." Briefly, I told him of my own disenchantment with history.
We were mutually delighted to learn that we were not alone in our
affliction. I picked up my suitcases, scrambled up the steps, and went
inside.
Dewey was cleaning up the common room as I passed through. He nodded
hello glumly. I said, "How's the tooth trade?"
He whirled and glared at me viciously.
"Something wrong?" I asked.
"I've been accepted by four dental schools, Harry."
"Is that any cause for misery?"
He let the broom drop, walked over to me, and whispered, "I'll murder
you if you tell Mother this. But the thought of spending my life poking
around in foul-smelling oral cavities sickens me. _Sickens._"
"But I thought--"
"Yeah. You thought. You've got it soft; you just need to dig books out
of the library and rearrange what they say and call it new research. I
have to drill and clean and fill and plug and--" He stopped. "Harry,
I'll kill you if you breathe a word of this. I don't want Mother to
know that I didn't come out the way she wanted."
I repeated what I had said to Mark--and told him about Mark, for good
measure. Then I made my way upstairs to my old room. I felt a burden
lifting from me; I was not alone. At least two of my brothers felt the
same way. I wondered how many more were at last rebelling against the
disciplines of a lifetime.
Poor Mother, I thought! Poor Mother!
* * * * *
Our first family council of the summer was held that night. Stephen
and Saul were the last to arrive, Stephen resplendent in his Annapolis
garb, Saul crisp-looking and stiff-backed from West Point. Mother had
worked hard to wangle appointments for those two.
We sat around the big table and chatted. The first phase of our
lives, Mother told us, had ended. Now, our preliminary educations
were complete, and we would undertake the final step towards our
professions, those of us who had not already entered them.
Mother looked radiant that evening, tall, energetic, her white hair
cropped mannishly short, as she sat about the table with her thirty-one
strapping sons. I envied and pitied her: envied her for the sweet
serenity of her life, which had proceeded so inexorably and without
swerve toward the goal of her experiment, and pitied her for the
disillusioning that awaited her.
For Mark and Dewey and I were not the only failures in the crop.
I had made discreet enquiries, during the day. I learned that Anthony
found literary criticism to be a fraud and a sham, that Paul knew
clearly he had no talent as a painter (and, also, that very few of his
contemporaries did either), that Robert bitterly resented a career of
bookkeeping, that piano-playing hurt George's fingers, that Claude had
had difficulty with his composing because he was tone-deaf, that the
journalistic grind was too strenuous for Jonas, that John longed to
quit the seminarial life because he had no calling, that Albert hated
the uncertain bohemianism of an actor's life--
We circulated, all of us raising for the first time the question that
had sprouted in our minds during the past several years. I made the
astonishing discovery that not one of Donna Mitchell's sons cared for
the career that had been chosen for him.
The experiment had been a resounding flop.
Late that evening, after Mother had gone to bed, we remained together,
discussing our predicament. How could we tell her? How could we destroy
her life's work? And yet, how could we compel ourselves to lives of
unending drudgery?
Robert wanted to study engineering; Barry, to write. I realized I cared
much more for law than for history, while Leonard longed to exchange
law for the physical sciences. James, our banker-manque, much preferred
politics. And so it went, with Richard (who claimed five robberies, a
rape, and innumerable picked pockets) pouring out his desire to settle
down and live within the law as an honest farmer.
It was pathetic.
Summing up the problem in his neat forensic way, Leonard said, "Here's
our dilemma: do we all keep quiet about this and ruin our lives, or do
we speak up and ruin Mother's experiment?"
"I think we ought to continue as is, for the time being," Saul said.
"Perhaps Mother will die in the next year or two. We can start over
then."
"Perhaps she _doesn't_ die?" Edward wanted to know. "She's tough as
nails. She may last another twenty or thirty or even forty years."
"And we're past twenty-one already," remarked Raymond. "If we hang on
too long at what we're doing, it'll be too late to change. You can't
start studying for a new profession when you're thirty-five."
"Maybe we'll get to _like_ what we're doing, by then," suggested David
hopefully. "Diplomatic service isn't as bad as all that, and I'd say--"
"What about me?" Paul yelped. "I can't paint and I know I can't paint.
I've got nothing but starvation ahead of me unless I wise up and get
into business in a hurry. You want me to keep messing up good white
canvas the rest of my life?"
"It won't work," said Barry, in a doleful voice, "We'll have to tell
her."
Douglas shook his head. "We can't do that. You know just what she'll
do. She'll bring down the umpteen volumes of notes she's made on this
experiment, and ask us if we're going to let it all come to naught."
"He's right," Albert said. "I can picture the scene now. The big
organ-pipe voice blasting us for our lack of faith, the accusations of
ingratitude--"
"Ingratitude?" William shouted. "She twisted us and pushed us and
molded us without asking our permission. Hell, she _created_ us with
her laboratory tricks. But that didn't give her the right to make
zombies out of us."
"Still," Martin said, "we can't just go to her and tell her that it's
all over. The shock would kill her."
"Well?" Richard asked in the silence that followed. "What's wrong with
that?"
For a moment, no one spoke. The house was quiet; we heard footsteps
descending the stairs. We froze.
Mother appeared, an imperial figure even in her old housecoat. "You
boys are kicking up too much of a racket down here," she boomed. "I
know you're glad to see each other again after a year, but I need my
sleep."
She turned and strode upstairs again. We heard her bedroom door slam
shut. For an instant we were all ten-year-olds again, diligently
studying our books for fear of Mother's displeasure.
I moistened my lips. "Well?" I asked. "I call for a vote on Richard's
suggestion."
* * * * *
Martin, as a chemist, prepared the drink, using Donald's medical advice
as his guide. Saul, Stephen, and Raymond dug a grave, in the woods at
the back of our property. Douglas and Mark built the coffin.
Richard, ending his criminal career with a murder to which we were all
accessories before the fact, carried the fatal beverage upstairs to
Mother the next morning, and persuaded her to sip it. One sip was all
that was necessary; Martin had done his work well.
Leonard offered us a legal opinion: it was justifiable homicide. We
placed the body in its coffin and carried it out across the fields.
Richard, Peter, Jonas, and Charles were her pallbearers; the others of
us followed in their path.
We lowered the body into the ground and John said a few words over her.
Then, slowly, we closed over the grave and replaced the sod, and began
the walk back to the house.
"She died happy," Anthony said. "She never suspected the size of her
failure." It was her epitaph.
As our banker, James supervised the division of her assets, which
were considerable, into thirty-one equal parts. Noel composed a short
fragment of prose which we agreed summed up our sentiments.
We left the farm that night, scattering in every direction, anxious
to begin life. All that went before was a dream from which we now
awakened. We agreed to meet at the farm each year, on the anniversary
of her death, in memory of the woman who had so painstakingly divided
a zygote into thirty-two viable cells, and who had spent a score of
years conducting an experiment based on a theory that had proven to be
utterly false.
We felt no regret, no qualm. We had done what needed to be done, and on
that last day some of us had finally functioned in the professions for
which Mother had intended us.
I, too. My first and last work of history will be this, an account of
Mother and her experiment, which records the beginning and the end of
her work. And now it is complete.
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