This chpt was finished before the other two were.
I heard an audio recording of Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose in high school, over forty years ago. I was entranced by its haunting beauty. I looked it up and reread it. And I knew I had to incorporate it into the story of Viv and Ned.
It is not a story that falls easily and smoothly into sequence. It has been garnered from many sources and from many people...
...there lived a lonely man. His body was warped, but his heart was filled with love for wild and hunted things. He was ugly to look upon, but he created great beauty. It is about him, and a child who came to know him and see beyond the grotesque form that housed him to what lay within, that this story is told.
Paul Gallico, The Snow Goose
Viv and Ned
chpt 3
Pen Pal
It began so small, like a seed sprouting into a seedling, then a sapling, then a tree.
They picked out each other almost at once.
Both had logged into the premier geek site on the internet, OtaKube, named after the disparaging Japanese designation for the computer-obsessed, otaku.
She came feeling accursed by her beauty. Men objectified her for it; they overlooked and trivialized her intellect because of it. Worse still, she came feeling used, abused, and discarded, for she was a victim of the monster whose appetite, like fairy tale dragons, consumed lovely maidens. This monster had two heads; she had been victimized by both sexual harassment in the workplace and attempted date rape in her personal life. She therefore came feeling fragile and lonely, as though journeying from a far place; hence her username, which she picked from her favorite story: thesnowgoose.
He came feeling beleaguered with demands and expectations. Endowed with an intellect that surpassed Nobel-prize-winning scientists, but saddled with an emotional fragility so profound that it bordered on mental disorder, he felt unequal to the hopes and anticipations of his parents and instructors. Paradoxically craving companionship while shunning it, he felt like Quasimodo, the disfigured bell ringer of the Parisian cathedral, so he abandoned everyone and everything he loved. Wracked with guilt, feeling like a pariah and a deserter, he retreated both physically and figuratively; hence his username, which he picked out from his favorite story. Rhayader.
They each came reluctantly, like shy kids urged by overeager mothers to a middle school dance…
"I don't wanna go!"
"But all your friends will be there!"
"I feel stupid all dressed up!"
"You'll meet someone special!"
…Or grieving survivors of a doomed romance, urged by well-meaning but overeager friends to attend a get-together.
"I'm not ready for this!"
"You need to get out! It'll be good for you!"
"What if I don't meet anyone?"
"Trust us! You'll have fun!"
She saw his username on the chat room roster of website members who were online: Rhayader.
He saw her name on the chat room roster of website members who were online: thesnowgoose.
She started to type.
thesnowgoose: I've read the story
But he typed first.
Rhayader: Paul Gallico.
She answered excitedly.
thesnowgoose: Yes! Yesyesyes! I've read it too!
That was all it took. For the next three hours, they chatted about their little likes, oblivious to everything else.
They carefully avoided further mention of their favorite story. They carefully avoided topics of loneliness and lovers' misfortune. There was no need to wear their hearts on their sleeves. They recognized each other as surely as mutual members of a secret society in enemy-occupied territory. They were in safe harbor. Each found sanctuary on the other's company.
Their favorite TV shows were Pals and Space Passage. They agreed on their favorite episode of Pals. It was the series finale…
thesnowgoose: …Where Raquel and Russ finally got together.
Rhayader: I knew they would.
thesnowgoose: But they kept us in suspense until the last possible second.
Rhayader: They always do.
But they disagreed on their fave episode of Space Passage.
Rhayader: It has to be The "Difficulty With Drabbles".
thesnowgoose: It was cute. But when they changed the appearance of the Corpulons in Space Passage The Movie, it sort of ruined all the previous episodes.
Rhayader: Hmm…that's too strong a word…maybe they just made it a little untidy. Or unrealistic.
thesnowgoose: I think my favorite episode was the two-parter in "Space Passage-The Succeeding Generation".
Rhayader: Come on! That was an entirely different series!
thesnowgoose: But it was the same franchise.
Rhayader: True.
They bantered each other good-naturedly.
thesnowgoose: Parts of that show was so sexist! Look at the uniforms they made the women of the crew wear on "Space Passage: The Original Series"!
Rhayader: Bear in mind that was back in the 1960's. And also bear in mind that fan service is a staple in sci fi and fantasy.
thesnowgoose: You have a point. But was there one female in the crew that Commander Caine didn't hit on? He was such a horndog!
Rhayader: Nah. He was just demonstrating his virile masculinity.
thesnowgoose: Virility? Hah! All the males on the bridge crew were virile! Commander Caine's problem was that he was a one-man sexual addiction encounter group!
They talked about the recent news in the scientific and academic community.
Dr. Amy Hall, the famed biogeneticist, had been recently terminated from her tenured position at the University of Upperton, for unethical genetic experimentation.
Lord Monty Fiske, the famed archeologist, had recently discovered the lost Khmer city of Ângkôr Pran.
The Middleton Space Center was preparing the Chen Probe for launch; it was an unmanned interplanetary spacecraft designed to explore the Kuiper Belt.
She finally disclosed that she had to call it a night.
thesnowgoose: I've got to turn in. I have to go to work in the morning.
He knew that sooner or later, their Cinderella night had to end. But, in desperation, he hoped that she would leave some kind of metaphoric glass slipper behind. And in his desperation, he posed the question.
Rhayader: What kind of work do you do?
And they both hesitated, he because he was afraid he had been too forward, and she because she was reluctant to compromise her anonymity.
She fudged somewhat.
thesnowgoose: I'm a lab technician.
She didn't tell him she was in Research and Development at the Middleton Space Center, a dream job for anyone with a doctorate in robotics.
And he felt the recrimination of conscience; here was someone who was actually making use of their interest vocationally, and not stuck in a dead-end fast food job.
She reciprocated.
thesnowgoose: What do you do?
He fudged somewhat.
Rhayader: I'm a manager.
He didn't tell her he was merely the assistant manager at the Middleton Bueno Nacho.
And she in turn felt the recrimination of conscience. Here was someone who was on a career fast track…someone advancing up through the ranks, not a mere research assistant…a black mark for someone with a doctorate in robotics.
But each shook off their nagging self-reproach. Each, having found the other, was loathe to relinquish this precious new acquaintance.
She broached the question:
thesnowgoose: Can we do this tomorrow?
And he answered, glad that his forwardness hadn't scared her away:
Rhayader: I would like that.
thesnowgoose: Midnight?
Rhayader: Same time, same place.
thesnowgoose: Oh, no.
Rhayader: What, you can't make it?
thesnowgoose: Oh, yes, I can make it. I was just wondering, what time zone?
Rhayader: Oops. Silly me. Now I feel sheepish. How about Mountain Time?
It simultaneously struck both communicants that here was another clue, broadly speaking, to their identities: the use of the term 'Mountain Time'; it indicated that they both resided in the United State or Canada, since that time zone was also known as the Chihuahua, La Paz, and Mazatlan Time Zone. And a moment later, they were both sheepish with the realization that they had been texting in colloquial Americanisms all along.
thesnowgoose: It's a date.
Rhayader: Looking forward.
thesnowgoose: Great. See you then.
Rhayader: Good night.
thesnowgoose: Good night.
So she did more than leave a glass slipper, like Cinderella fleeing the ball and her Prince's arms at the stroke of midnight. As ladies of nobility did in medieval times, favoring the knights who courted them with courtly love, she bestowed a token of her ardor, to be construed as a sign of equal mutual devotion, and the expectation of future trysts.
It was, of course, not a literal meeting, any more than an exchange of letters was a literal meeting. Yet an online meeting had all the immediacy of a real-time and real-life encounter. It was, in a way, a figurative intimate meeting at a small café, a corner table lit only by candlelight.
In her small but upscale Upperton condo, which she kept unearthily tidy, Vivian Frances Porter logged off. She impulsively blew a kiss at the monitor screen, dressed into her sleeping togs, brushed her teeth, set her alarm, and went to bed.
She giggled to herself like a schoolgirl. He was so sweet and self-effacing. There were no veiled invitations or sleazy suggestive comments. There was no pressure over who would call first after the first date. A second date was already planned. For her, this was unprecedented. The username of her new acquaintance bespoke volumes.
Drifting off to sleep, scenes from the story played and replayed in her imagination. She already pictured Rhayader like his literary namesake, the healer of injured geese and injured hearts, unsightly to look upon, but beautiful with tender strength for those who had the inner eyesight to see it.
...Philip Rhayader came to the abandoned lighthouse… He bought the light and many acres of marshland and salting surrounding it.
He lived and worked there alone the year round. He was a painter of birds and of nature, who, for reasons, had withdrawn from all human society. Some of the reasons were apparent on his fortnightly visits to the little village…for supplies, where the natives looked askance at his mis-shapen body and dark visage. For he was a hunchback and his left arm was crippled, thin and bent at the wrist, like the claw of a bird.
They soon became used to his queer figure, small but powerful, the massive, dark, bearded head set just slightly below the mysterious mound on his back, the glowing eyes and the clawed hand, and marked him off as 'that queer painter chap that lives down to lighthouse.'
Physical deformity often breeds hatred of humanity in men. Rhayader did not hate; he loved very greatly, man, the animal kingdom, and all nature.
His heart was filled with pity and understanding. He had mastered his handicap, but he could not master the rebuffs he suffered, due to his appearance. The thing that drove him into seclusion was his failure to find anywhere a return of the warmth that flowed from him. He repelled women. Men would have warmed to him had they got to know him. But the mere fact that an effort was being made hurt Rhayader and drove him to avoid the person making it.
He was twenty-seven when he came to the Great Marsh. He had travelled much and fought valiantly before he made the decision to withdraw from a world in which he could not take part as other men. For all the artist's sensitivity and woman's tenderness locked in his barrel breast, he was very much a man…
…He would sail the tidal creek and estuaries and out to sea, and would be gone for days at a time, looking for new species of birds to photograph or sketch…
He never shot over a bird, and wild-fowlers were not welcome near his premises. He was a friend to all things wild, and the wild things repaid him with their friendship…
…She was desperately frightened of the ugly man she had come to see, for legend had already begun to gather about Rhayader, and the native wild-fowlers hated him for interfering with their sport. But...locked in her child's heart was the knowledge, picked up somewhere in the swampland, that this ogre who lived in the lighthouse had magic that could heal injured things.
And in her heart, Vivian gave to her new pen pal Rhayader's given Christian name…"Philip".
In his squalid Lowerton welfare-motel room, which was unearthily cluttered with disparate stacks of various items consisting of fast food carryout containers, food-encrusted dishes, comics, sci fi and fantasy novels, fanzines, VHS tapes, and floppy disks, with an assortment of action figurines scattered about on the floor, Edward Estlin Esau Mundo, aka Ned, logged off.
He was filled with nervous energy, and paced around in his chaotic dwelling like a schoolboy on his first date…like a kid fidgeting in the unaccustomed suit, dress shirt, and tie, both dreading and anticipating dancing with the beautiful girl in the frilly frock…both of them exchanging shy glances, both of them waiting for the inevitable moment when he would muster his courage, cross the floor to where she sat, and haltingly ask her if he might 'have the honor of this dance.'
This first night of talk in the online chat room had been symbolically like walking home together from school. The next night would be like the chaperoned dance in the school gym.
He finished installing the new hard drive into a disassembled computer. He reassembled the computer and installed the new operating system and software drivers, all while listening to his remix of fantasy show and anime soundtracks.
He would stay awake until sunrise, finally collapsing with giddy exhaustion on his corner cot, fully clothed under his rumpled blanket.
It's a date, she had said. For him, this was unprecedented. For the first time in his life…a date.
She was so sweet, so demure, so warm, so vivacious, so serene, so wonderfully shy, so tolerant of his gawkiness…he ran out of adjectives and images. The username of his new acquaintance bespoke volumes.
He already pictured thesnowgoose like the waiflike Saxon sylph, demeaned and dingy, but possessed of a fragile fairylike grace.
…A child…slender,…nervous and timid as a bird, but beneath the grime as eerily beautiful as a' marsh faery. She was pure Saxon, large-boned, fair, with a head to which her body was yet to grow, and deep-set, violet-coloured eyes...
…'Will you come back tomorrow, or the next day…?' {he asked}
She paused, and again Rhayader must have thought of the wild water birds caught motionless in that split second of alarm before they took to flight.
But her thin voice came back to him: 'Ay!' {she said}
And then she was gone, with her fair hair streaming out behind her.
And in his heart, Ned gave to his new pen pal the girl's given Welsh name…"Fritha"
to be continued
A / N
Again with the annotations, like the 1st chpt.
First, the timing of this story is somewhere in the first couple seasons of the KP show. Hence the references to Dr. Amy Hall, aka DNAmy, Lord Monty Fiske, aka Monkey Fist, and Prof. Bob Chen.
Second, Ota-Kube, the networking website for geeks, is borrowed from my Life As A Teenage Robot fanfic, Berserker.
Third, a stark description of Ned's apartment is given by my man EM-C in chapt 5 of his fic, No Man Knows My Story
They were in the parking lot of one of those seedy once-upon-a-time motels that catered to travelers in the pre-Interstate and pre-Bypass days of yore that had long since become a set of decidedly low-class residences for people in who-knows-what sort of circumstances….combined odors of various species of mold and mildew that apparently had been left to grow unimpeded for some time.
The walls here and there sported crookedly placed posters—Einstein giving the raspberry was joined by gaudy and colorful fantasy posters of various kinds. Walking required precarious stepping amidst comic books, computer disks, and the packages and contents of various role playing games. The cot against the far wall looked as if it hadn't been made in months. Likewise the computer shared its desk not only with disks and books of various genres but a long-gone-stale cup of coffee and a hideous slice of pizza that had been there no telling how long. Against the wall adjacent to the computer desk, from where it could be watched, was an old nineteen-inch television, a cable box on top and a VCR/DVD recorder on the tray beneath it. The latter was covered with sloppily scattered disks in clear holders, magic marker writing being their only labeling….one of the books on the desk. Not surprisingly, it was a book of Escher prints. The book under it was on something called "Fermat's Last Theorem."
…Something under…foot—it was a plastic "action figure" of some kind, cloaked and bearded and holding a staff.
Fourth, the lost city of Ângkôr Pran is part of the mythos I've developed for Monkey Fist and the Mystical Monkey Power. The Khmer Empire dominated Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand from the 9th to the 13th centuries. The actual city of Ângkôr Thom was the administrative capital, and Ângkôr Wat was the aggregation of shrines and temples. It is an amazing city with fantastic architecture, and has been classified as a World Heritage Site.
I got the name "Pran" from Dith Pran, a Cambodian translator who worked with New York Times reporter Sidney Lumet in the 1970's during the Cambodian civil war. That is an amazing story in itself, and is portrayed in the motion picture, The Killing Fields. Dith Pran managed to survive the Kampuchean Holocaust precipitated by the dictator Pot Pol and the Khmer Rouge guerillas. They tried to remake Cambodia into a Communist Workers' Paradise, renaming it Kampuchea, and liquidating anybody who might *look like* a threat to the new regime. Kinda like the Bolsheviks did in the Stalinist era.
Fifth, the references to Pals and Space Passage are from the Dimension Twist episode. Pals is (I assume) the KP universe equivalent of the Friends sitcom. The on-again-off-again relationship of characters Rachel Green (played by Jennifer Aniston) and Ross Geller (played by David Schwimmer)…whom I refer to as "Raquel" and "Russ"…was resolved in the series finale.
Space Passage is the KP universe equivalent of Star Trek. And Commander Caine is the counterpart of Capt. Kirk…whose sexual prowess was the stuff of legend…at least until Commander Ryker came along. And the Corpulons are meant to represent the Klingons (plus being derived from the word "corpulent").
And when the first Star Trek movie came out, the reimagining of the appearance of the Klingons proved to be a hot potato among the diehard Trekkies, who were concerned with continuity.
The Space Passage episode, The Difficulty With Drabbles is meant to be the KP universe equivalent of the Star Trek episode, The Trouble With Tribbles.
And the most-watched episode in the whole Star Trek franchise was the concluding first-season episode of Star Trek; The Next Generation, the first of the two-parter show introducing the Borg; hence the reference to Space Passage, The Succeeding Generation.
A question might be asked; why go through all the trouble of making up names for the corresponding TV shows in the real world? It's how they do it on the KP show, both for reasons of 'possible' (play on words almost unavoidable) copyright infringement, and drollness…like the naming conventions for the show's characters.
Someday I might do a weblog entry or something about how the name puns of the KP chars are foreshadowed by William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Actually, I've no doubt it's already been done.
Sixth, the Chen Probe is another thing I dreamed up. It's named after Mr. Dr. P.'s old college roomie and member of the staff at the Mount Middleton Observatory, Prof. Robert Chen. He's portrayed in Attack Of The Killer Bebe's episode. The Kuiper Belt is the 2nd asteroid belt in the solar system, out beyond the planet Neptune. It contains the 'former planet' Pluto.
Whew; everything as clear as crystal? Or maybe as murky as mud?
And sixth, the fave story that draws our lovers together at the Ota-Kube chat room: Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose…
Paul Gallico (1897-1946) was a sportswriter for the New York Daily News. He also founded the Golden Gloves amateur boxing competition. He authored books that were made into movies. Lou Gehrig: Pride of the Yankees, written in 1941, was adapted in 1942 into the movie The Pride of the Yankees, starring Gary Cooper. Thomasina: The Cat Who Thought She Was God, written in 1957, was adapted by the Walt Disney Studios in 1964 as The Three Lives of Thomasina. The Poseidon Adventure, written in 1969, was adapted into the movie The Poseidon Adventure in 1972.
The Snow Goose was written in in 1940 as a short story for The Saturday Evening Post magazine and expanded into a sixty page novella, published in 1941. The British Broadcasting Company made a TV movie adaptation in 1971, starring Richard Harris and Jenny Agutter.
The story is about a painter, Philip Rhayader, afflicted with a hunched back and an atrophied arm, who settled in an abandoned lighthouse on the coast of Essex in 1930.
He sailed the coast and the English Channel in his sixteen-foot sailboat. He rescued injured birds and let them convalesce in a refuge near the lighthouse, and painted pictures of them. One day a twelve-year old girl brought a goose that had been shot. It was a Canadian snow goose, somehow blown across the Atlantic and the British Isles. Philip splinted the wing and leg. The girl, Frith, or Fritha, came back occasionally to see how the goose was faring.
Philip named the goose La Princesse Perdue, the Lost Princess. It was recovered by spring and left on a migration, and Fritha's visits ceased. The goose returned in the autumn, and Philip left word in the village for Fritha.
The years passed in this fashion, until the goose stayed permanently. Fritha had grown into womanhood. She and Philip both felt the difference between them. He fell in love, but was ashamed by his disfigurement. And she, frightened and confused by her feelings, stopped visiting.
It was several weeks later when she saw him on the docks outfitting his sailboat. The English government had issued an appeal to all boaters to help in the evacuation of the British army trapped by the German army at Dunkirk.
She offered to go with him, but he regretfully forbad it; he needed all the room on his vessel for the evacuated soldiers. He asked her to feed his geese, and she bade him Godspeed. As he departed, the Canadian snow goose took wing, following him.
Philip crossed the Channel many times, bearing a boatload of refugee soldiers each time. But he did not return to Fritha. Reports finally circulated that his body and the wreckage of his boat were seen floating, strafed by a German fighter plane. The goose was standing vigil over Philip before the boat sunk under the waves.
Fritha, waiting at the lighthouse, saw the goose return and circle once before ascending up beyond sight, as though it were Philip's soul saying farewell. Later, a German dive bomber destroyed the lighthouse, and all of Philip's paintings. Fritha managed to rescue one; a painting he had made depicting her as a girl bringing the injured snow goose to him.
The story won the O. Henry Award for short stories in 1941. The Guardian-dot-co-dot-uk website lists it among the 1000 novels that everyone must read. The review summarizes it: Sentimental? Undoubtedly. Heartbreaking? Absolutely.
Gallico was not defensive about the barefaced sentimentality. An article from the Guardian cited in the Wikipedia article on the book quotes him, as he refers to "slime" vs. "sentiment".
…sentiment remains so far out in front, as it always has and always will among ordinary humans that the calamity-howlers and porn merchants have to increase the decibels of their lamentations, the hideousness of their violence and the mountainous piles of their filth to keep in the race at all.