The following passage is adapted from a short story by Cynthia Ozick entitled “What Happened to the Baby?” (2006 by Cynthia Ozick).
- When I was a child, I was
- often taken to meetings of
- my uncle Simon’s society,
- the League for a Unified
- Humanity. I could not be
- left alone at night, and my
- father, who was a detail man
- for a pharmaceutical
- company, was often away
- from home. He had recently
- been assigned to the
- Southwest. To our ears, places
- like Arizona and New Mexico
- might as well have been far-
- off planets. Yet Uncle Simon,
- my mother told me proudly,
- had been to even stranger
- regions. Sometimes a neighbor
- would be called in to look after
- me while my mother went off
- alone to one of Uncle Simon’s
- meetings. Going was important,
- she explained, if only to supply
- another body. The hall was likely
- to be half empty. Like all
- geniuses, Uncle Simon was—“so
- far,” she emphasized—
- unappreciated.
- Uncle Simon was not really my
- uncle. He was my mother’s first
- cousin, but out of respect, and
- because he belonged to an older
- generation, I was made to call
- him uncle. My mother revered
- him. “Uncle Simon,” she said, “is
- the smartest man you’ll ever
- know.” He was an inventor,
- though not of mundane things,
- and he had founded the League
- for a Unified Humanity.
- What Uncle Simon had invented
- was a wholly new language, one
- that could be spoken and
- understood by everyone alive. He
- had named it GNU, after the
- African antelope that sports two
- curved horns, each one turned
- toward the other. He had traveled
- all over the world, picking up
- roots and discarding the less-
- common vowels. He had gone to
- many countries in South
- America, where he interviewed
- Indians and wrote down, in his
- cryptic homemade notation, the
- sounds they spoke. And still,
- with all this elevated foreign
- experience, he lived, just as we
- did, in a six-story walkup in the
- East Bronx, in a neighborhood
- of small stores, many of them
- vacant. In the autumn, the
- windows of one of these stores
- would all at once be shrouded
- in dense curtains. Gypsies had
- come to settle in for the winter.
- My mother said it was the times
- that had emptied the stores. My
- father said it was the Depression.
- I understood it was the
- Depression that made him work
- for a firm cruel enough to send
- him away from my mother and
- me.
- Unlike my mother, my father did
- not admire Uncle Simon. “That
- panhandler,” he said. “God only
- knows where he finds these
- suckers to put the touch on.”
- “They’re cultured Park Avenue
- people,” my mother protested.
- “They’ve always felt privileged to
- fund Simon’s expeditions.”
- “Simon’s expeditions! If you ask
- me, in the last fifteen years he’s
- never gotten any farther than
- down the street to the public
- library to poke his nose in the
- National Geographic.”
- “Nobody’s asking, and since when
- are you so interested? Anyhow,”
- my mother said, “it’s not Simon
- who runs after the money, it’s her.”
- “Her,” I knew, was Uncle Simon’s
- wife, Essie. I was not required to
- call her aunt.
- She dresses up to beat the band
- and flatters their heads off,” my
- mother went on. “Well, someone’s
- got to beg, and Simon’s not the
- one for that sort of thing. Who’s
- going to pay for the hall? Not to
- mention his research.”
- “Research,” my father mocked.
- “What’re you calling research?
- Collecting old noises in order to
- scramble them into new noises.
- Why doesn’t he go out and get a
- regular job? A piece of work, those
- two—zealots! Not another penny,
- Lily, I’m warning you.”
- “It’s only for the annual dues—”
- “‘The League for Scrambling
- Noises. Ten bucks down the sewer.”
- He put on his brown felt fedora,
- patted his vest pocket to check for
- his train ticket, and left us.
- “Look how he goes away angry,”
- my mother said, “and all in front
- of a child. Vivian dear, you have to
- understand. Uncle Simon is ahead
- of his time, and not everyone can
- recognize that. Daddy doesn’t know,
- but someday he surely will. In the
- meantime, if we don’t want him
- to come home angry, let’s not tell
- that we’ve been to a meeting.”