{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_62900/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_62900","id":"gutenberg_62900","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62900","summary":null,"tags":["Authors -- Fiction","Category: American Literature","Category: Novels","New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction","Patients -- Fiction","Philosophy -- Fiction"],"text":"_Opus 21_\n\n\n\n\nBOOKS BY _Philip Wylie_\n\n\n HEAVY LADEN \u00b7 BABES AND SUCKLINGS \u00b7 GLADIATOR\n FOOTPRINT OF CINDERELLA \u00b7 THE SAVAGE GENTLEMAN\n FINNLEY WREN: HIS NOTIONS AND OPINIONS\n AS THEY REVELED \u00b7 AN APRIL AFTERNOON\n THE BIG ONES GET AWAY \u00b7 SALT WATER DAFFY\n THE OTHER HORSEMAN \u00b7 GENERATION OF VIPERS\n CORPSES AT INDIAN STONES\n FISH AND TIN FISH \u00b7 NIGHT UNTO NIGHT\n AN ESSAY ON MORALS \u00b7 TOO MUCH OF EVERYTHING\n CRUNCH AND DES: STORIES OF FLORIDA FISHING\n OPUS 21\n\n\n_By Philip Wylie and William W. Muir_\n\nTHE ARMY WAY\n\n\n\n\n OPUS 21\n\n _Descriptive Music_\n\n FOR THE LOWER KINSEY EPOCH\n OF THE ATOMIC AGE\n\n _a Concerto for a One-Man Band_\n\n SIX ARIAS FOR SOAP OPERAS\n\n _Fugues, Anthems, & Barrelhouse_\n\n BY\n PHILIP WYLIE\n\n RINEHART & COMPANY, INC.\n _New York and Toronto_\n\n\n\n\n _First Printing, April 1949_\n _Second Printing, June 1949_\n _Third Printing, September 1949_\n _Fourth Printing, November 1951_\n _Fifth Printing, October 1953_\n _Sixth Printing, September 1956_\n _Seventh Printing, October 1959_\n\n\n COPYRIGHT, 1949, BY PHILIP WYLIE\n\n PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA\n\n ALL RIGHTS RESERVED\n\n\n\n\n TO MY WIFE\n _Ricky_\n AND MY DAUGHTER\n _Karen_\n I LOVINGLY DEDICATE\n THIS ROMANCE\n\n\n\n\nWARNING\n\n\nMost of the characters in this book are unreal--and that is\nparticularly true of the author.... Few of the events recorded here\never took place--exactly.... Even the time is somewhat out of joint,\nso purists are advised not to bother to compare the meteorology with\nthe obituaries.... I never had (for instance) an elder sister named\nGeorgianna, that I know of.... The difference between what is Real (or\nTruth) and what is Illusion (or Fiction) is left to such judgment as\nthe reader may own--just as it is in all the other experiences of life.\n\n _P.W._\n\n\n\n\n PART ONE: _Scherzo_:           3\n\n   PART TWO: _Tarantella_:       79\n\n     PART THREE: _Andante_:       124\n\n       PART FOUR: _Rondo_:          225\n\n         PART FIVE: _Coda_:           361\n\n\n\n\n _Opus 21_\n\n\n\n\nPART ONE\n\n _Scherzo_\n\n\n1\n\nIt happens to millions.\n\nThey sit in doctors' offices trying to hide nervousness in the pages of\nmagazines. Wondering what germs their predecessors have deposited in\n_Life_ and _Harper's Bazaar_ or _Action Comics_.\n\nThe nurse calls:\n\nMr. So-and-so. Mrs. So-and-so. Miss So-and-so.\n\nThey go in.\n\n\"Doctor,\" they say, \"just lately I've begun to notice....\"\n\nThey have begun to notice Death.\n\nAnd now the doctor notices, too.\n\nMillions of us, in this century, find out before angina curls us like\ninsects in flame. Before the stone is lodged in its screaming cavity.\nBefore the final, involuntary issue of bowel or bladder or foamy lungs.\n\nIt is one of the marvels of science.\n\n\"Tom,\" I said, for the doctor is an old friend, \"lately I've noticed\na feeling of fullness in my nasal passages. And this morning, before\nI flew down from the country, I looked at the back of my throat. Up\nbehind the uvula. Something is--growing there.\"\n\n\"Let's take a squint.\"\n\nTom was calm. He hadn't spent his forenoon staring from an airplane\nwindow at the landscapes of New York and New Jersey, but seeing only\na reflection in a bathroom mirror. A reflection of his face, yawning\nunpleasantly in the lavender fluorescence, the vertical tubes of light,\nand there, on his throat's arch, a foreign tissue like a clot of paint\nscraped from a bright palette.\n\nHe had merely shaved, as the rest of us had shaved on thousands of\nmornings, thinking of this and that.\n\nNow he switched on a light, tilted the circular reflector above his\nforehead and removed his gold spectacles. I yawned.\n\nHe said, \"Hunh.\"\n\nSo I knew.\n\nWe'd been friends, after all, for thirty-four years; by the inflection\nof a syllable, we could make lucid assertions. He thought--what I\nthought.\n\n\"Phil,\" he said, \"we better get a biopsy right away.\"\n\n\"It's in a bad spot.\"\n\nHis instruments gagged me for a minute or two, brought tears in my\neyes, probed at revolted mucosae. \"Yes, Phil. And there's a lot of it.\nYou didn't notice--anything--?\"\n\n\"Earlier? Nope. This morning. I was flying down anyhow. I have a serial\nto correct.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Tom said, \"I'm not sure. It could be one of those rank\nlymphoid things. Radium blots them out. X-ray. Radioactive cobalt,\nthese days, perhaps. But--\"\n\nBut.\n\nWe looked at each other for a while. He said a kind thing: \"We're\nboth--forty-six.\"\n\nHe meant that we shared the hazards of time together. He also intended\nto start me thinking of all I had been and done, seen and known, felt\nand expressed, in four and a half decades of life.\n\nHis clock ticked.\n\nHis phone rang.\n\nThe receiver brought to my age-dulled ears the emery of a woman's\nvoice. And Tom, with the cultivated patience that masks a physician's\nirritation, told her to take the \"pink medicine\" every two hours\ninstead of every four.\n\nThe elixir alurate, I thought.\n\nThat brickbat on the safety valve of America: barbital.\n\nI would soon be on morphine myself....\n\n\"How long?\" I asked, when Tom hung up.\n\nHis pale eyes peered affectionately from behind his spectacles. I felt\nsorry for him. \"Let's get that biopsy, first.\"\n\n\"No fooling, Tom. You're nine-tenths convinced. The learned goons in\nyour profession have told me my number was up, several times, before\nthis. Sooner or later, one of you is bound to be right. And I don't\nfeel lucky today. How long?\"\n\nHe picked up a letter he had dictated, read it, and put it in a tray.\nHe straightened his prescription pad so it was square with the tooled\nleather corner of his desk blotter. He glanced at the photograph of\nAileen, his wife, Joy and Lee, his daughters. \"If it's malignant--it's\nwhere you can't operate.\"\n\n\"How long will I be--able to write?\"\n\n\"Month. Two. Three. Maybe more. No way to tell.\"\n\n\"Radiation--won't slow it down?\"\n\n\"Can't use strong doses that near your brain, Phil.\" He grasped his\ntelephone again. He told his nurse to arrange the biopsy. Immediately.\nHe wrote an address.\n\n\"I'm busy tonight,\" he told me. \"Can't get out of it. What about\ntomorrow--for dinner?\"\n\nI said, \"Swell. When will I have the report?\"\n\n\"Monday.\"\n\n\"Be quite a long weekend.\"\n\nHe commenced writing a prescription.\n\nI had told him how well he seemed, when the nurse had ushered me in.\nHe didn't seem well any more. The vestige of his White Mountain tan\nwas saffron. In fifteen minutes, circles had come under his eyes. He\nhanded me two little rectangles of paper. \"No--pain?\"\n\n\"Not yet.\" It was a cruelty.\n\nHe flinched minutely. \"That's for pb. Quarters. If you spook yourself\nup. And sodium amytal. Grain and a half. Sleep. You can take the whole\nbottle, if you want to. Then the biopsy will surely be negative and\nyou'll have thrown away your other six lives.\" He put his arm around my\nshoulder. \"See you tomorrow--at your hotel--around seven.\"\n\nI walked through the patients--through people who had nothing more\nserious than hypertension, or gastric ulcer, or diabetes. Or perhaps\nthey did have fatal afflictions, though. Cancer, for example. You\ncouldn't say what they had--sitting there, tremulously thumbing the\nmagazines. They looked at me. They looked at the fat girl who rose\nbecause her turn was next.\n\nI lit a cigarette when I got outdoors.\n\nCoal tar, I thought.\n\nToo late not to light a cigarette.\n\nI stepped down in the gutter--in gum wrappers, glittering bits of\ncellophane, the blanched drift of horse manure, a swatch of blue cloth,\na letter that had been rained on, fresh Pekinese sign, and a little\ndry mud. All around me midday, midtown Manhattan soaked up August in\nits brick pores, its limestone pores--flashed back August from glass,\nfrom polished granite, and from all its million metal fixtures. The sky\nwas bluely vague. An air-liner shoved up through it from La Guardia--a\ngrinding abnormality.\n\nI hailed a cab.\n\nFor the ordeal of biopsy, whatever it might be, I summoned my meager\ncontempt. A long experience of surgery is a poor indoctrination for\neach new need of it. Ringed about with sadists in white suits, with\nsterile techniques, with inquisitional steel, I have been too often the\nExposed Nerve. I do not hope much, any more--and only defy so long as\nI am able. This artificial pose, garnished with calm and with smiling,\nis what some men call courage, and others dignity, but no man in his\nright mind evokes without cost: _we are the hateful survivors of our\nsciences_.\n\nIt was a little thing.\n\nA needle's prick in an alabastrine clinic. A numb diddling above the\ntonsil. Some blood to spit out.\n\nThe one sharp experience was the slight widening of the surgeon's eyes\nwhen first he saw my throat.\n\nGo on, I thought. Tell me that the cure of cancer depends upon its\nearly recognition! Ask me if I haven't read the advertisements of the\nSociety! And ask yourself, you smooth-faced blue-eyed son-of-a-bitch,\nif you have checked the area behind your own uvula lately!\n\nWhat I said was, \"Just noticed it today.\"\n\nI came, I meant, as soon as I could. I wasn't a dumbbell. I didn't let\nthat gob grow inside my neck, week after week, in secret fear. I did\nwhat you told me to do.\n\nHe said, \"Well, well,\" and injected me and clipped off a hunk and told\nme to come back on Monday at twelve o'clock. I went onto the street\nagain.\n\nIt wasn't bothering me any.\n\nNobody could catch it from me.\n\nAnother cab slid to a stop on another pile of metropolitan offal. I got\nin. The radio was talking about Babe Ruth, who had recently died of\nthroat cancer. And metastases.\n\nI thought of telling the driver to turn off the lush woe.\n\nLife's ironies amuse cynical people--who are, after all,\nsentimentalists, for only sentimental people would bother themselves to\nbeget so foolish a self-defense as cynicism.\n\n\"Terrible loss,\" the driver said, waiting for the Madison Avenue light.\n\nI chose this better opportunity. \"Loss, hell! A baseball player. A\ntough guy. Somebody with trick reflexes who could bat a ball farther\nthan anybody else, oftener. And the whole damned United States\ngets choked up and goes into mourning. Double-page spreads in the\nnewspapers. When a really great man dies, he's lucky to get one\nsnapshot and a column.\" I looked quickly at his framed license. Saul\nKaufman. \"Will the American people go on a morbid spree when Einstein\ndies?\" I asked.\n\nIt got him. He glanced back appreciatively. \"You said it!\"\n\nIf his name had been Angelo Utrillo, I would have suggested Fermi. He\nwouldn't have known who Fermi was, but my explanation would have filled\nhim with pride. And if it had been Michael Riority, I would have tried\nDe Valera.\n\n\"Babe Ruth,\" I repeated when I paid my fare. \"Did the _Mirror_ and\nthe _News_ give Freud a double-page spread? The greatest mind in the\ntwentieth century. Greatest Jew since Jesus. We should be proud to\nlive in the same age. But what are we proud of? Babe Ruth. Baseball's\nokay--but the way people act about it certainly shows what's wrong with\npeople.\"\n\n\"You're right, Mac.\"\n\nI tipped him a quarter. Money wasn't going to be useful to me much\nlonger.\n\nThen I felt sick.\n\nThe money I possessed--the insurance--the money that might come from\nmy books and perhaps from the posthumous sale of a few stories to the\nmovies--would be all there was\n\nfor my wife\ndaughter\nmy wife's mother\nand some others.\n\nI had two rooms--a bedroom and parlor. Sleep and reading in bed were\nthus kept separate from work, from the two hundred and eighteen pages\nof my serial which had to be cut sheet by sheet, line by line, to fit\nthe precise requirements of a weekly magazine. This small suite was on\nthe sixteenth floor. Here, the street sounds became boogie-woogie--set\nto rhythm by bouncing back and forth between the walls of Madison\nAvenue. Here the smell of the city was less toxic. And here the eye\nranged over rooftops. My draperies, flowered and lined with sateen,\nmoved now against the dark-green embrasures of the window--not in a\nbreeze but in the upward eddy of diurnal heat. The yellow roses with\nwhich the management had greeted me dangled in their vase. I wondered\nwhether to cut their stems or throw them out. If Ricky, my wife, had\naccompanied me, there would have been two dozen roses--and she would\nhave known about the stems. I propped open the door to the hall with a\nbook. Air sucked through the crack.\n\nIn a big mirror, over the mantel, over the chunks of topaz glass that\nrepresented coals in the artificial fireplace, I could see myself.\nStrained and pallid, sweat showing at the armpits of my dark-blue\ngabardine jacket.\n\nI took it off.\n\nMy shirt was wet.\n\nI took that off.\n\nThe man in the mirror was naked from the waist up. A man with a little\nfold of belly showing over his belt. A man whose back, when he turned,\nwas well muscled at the shoulders and ridged with parallel sinews that\nmade a valley of the spine. A man whose strength had come through\neffort and application, rather late. A man who stepped closer to the\nmirror and opened his mouth to study, inside it, a small, fresh wound.\n\nHe sat down on the divan, presently, and took a cigarette from the\ncoffee table. Lighted it. Reached for the telephone.\n\nAnd identified with himself again.\n\nI wanted to call Ricky--in the country.\n\nTo call her from the vegetable garden, where she might be weeding, or\nfrom the rock garden, when she might be replanting the daffodil bulbs,\nto call her from a book, or from washing the cocker pups, or from\npainting shelves, or from anything that she was doing. I wanted, with\noverwhelming urgency to tell her to come down to New York and share\nthis weekend. Carry it with me and for me.\n\nShe would. She has the grit and the amenability to Nature. Besides, she\nknows me.\n\nBut I sat there, my fingers growing slippery on the phone.\n\nIf it proved to be harmless--then the consummate hours, the pain, the\nanxiety, and the quiet planning would be a mere excess.\n\nIf it proved malignant--what purpose would be served by destroying her\ntranquillity, by adding her dread to my own, until the hour when the\nfact was established?\n\nShe would willingly, wantingly, accept the burden--to ease my share of\nit.\n\nBut why should she?\n\nMonday would be soon enough--win, lose, or get some cursed clinical\ndraw. Radiation. Surgery. Artificial larynx. _Gueules cass\u00e9es_, I\nthought. I'd seen friends. Getting their throats cut inchmeal. Burping\nto make speech. Shedding their chins.\n\nThe hell with it! I called the bookstore, instead, and ordered a tome\non carcinoma of the throat.\n\nI put the phone back on the table.\n\nClean shirt. The jacket of a ribbed, cotton suit, blue and white. I\nhadn't sweated through my trousers--yet. They'd do as slacks.\n\nI rang for the elevator.\n\n\n2\n\nOne of the two restaurants in the Astolat Hotel, where we stay whenever\nwe are in New York, is called the Knight's Bar. It has been extended\nand refurbished recently. King Arthur's retinue, armed, armored,\ngaudily caparisoned, and mounted on some of the most unlikely steeds\nin mural art, charge, joust and canter on the walls. The place has\nindirect lighting, banquettes and chairs upholstered in red leather,\nand air conditioning. The food is excellent.\n\nA pre-chilled atmosphere enveloped me when I came in and I felt it\nwithout gratitude. I like hot weather.\n\nJay, the headwaiter, saw me, glanced about at the tables--which were by\nnow less than a third occupied--and beckoned me toward a place near the\nbar with a definitiveness unwarranted by the wide choice. I wondered\nwhy as I came forward--obediently, and hardly aware of the trifling\ninquiry in my mind.\n\nThen I saw, around to the right, a pretty girl, sitting alone, reading\na book. On each side of her were empty tables. Did Jay, out of\nsubconscious loyalty to my wife, intend to rush me past this pitfall?\nOr had the girl asked for solitude? She wasn't one of the Knight's Bar\nregulars--or one of the hotel residents. I knew all of them, at least\nby sight.\n\nOrdinarily, I would have meekly followed Jay to the table he had\nselected. But now I thought--why should I? Rather, I thought, there is\nvery little time left for me on this earth. Why shouldn't I use it as I\nplease?\n\nSo I nodded at a table beside the girl. She would be something to look\nat besides my thoughts.\n\nJay is an American. But what he did now was European. He smiled\nslightly in understanding; he raised his eyebrows minutely in\ncoappreciation of the young lady's good looks; and he shrugged one\nshoulder--in patient recognition of the fact that a male is a male and\nthe firmest marriage vows are warrants of mere intent.\n\nI grinned back--and sat on the bench beside the young lady as soon\nas Jay pulled out the table. She looked at me--turning her head\nslowly--and afterward went on reading her book. Her eyes were gray,\nstained with some unguessable, dark residue of emotion. Her hair was\npale blonde, not quite ashen--parted in the middle and clipped at the\nback like a schoolgirl's--with a wide gold barrette. She had small,\nsmooth hands. She wore a square engagement ring and a wedding ring set\nwith many diamonds. From time to time, too, she sipped a Martini. Her\ndress was a gray and white print--not fancy but fitted by somebody who\nknew the tricks. Bonwit's, maybe, or Bergdorf's. Her shoulders were\nfairly broad, for a girl's. But she had large, firm breasts--or the\nsynthetic equivalent thereof. I noticed, too, that the perfume she\nused was not right for her appearance--though perhaps it suited the\nself-estimate of her soul. It was one of the musky varieties--animal,\nnocturnal, full of erotic business.\n\nIn a restaurant where you have enjoyed a thousand meals, you look\ndesultorily at the menu because, as a rule, you know what you are going\nto order. I took the fried sole, a boiled, parsley potato, and apple\nsauce.\n\nThen, for a while, I forgot the girl.\n\nI must plan, I thought.\n\nFirst, the money.\n\nFifty thousand dollars' worth of insurance. Several thousand dollars\nin war bonds. I had about ten thousand in the bank. Ricky had a few\nthousand. We owed a steep mortgage on the house we were building in\nFlorida--in the country south of Miami, among live oaks and cabbage\npalms. It would be too big a home for Ricky and her mother and Karen,\nby themselves. Too big--and too expensive to keep up, without my\nincome. They could sell it as soon as it was finished, and undoubtedly\nmake a small profit. Or they could rent it each year for a much larger\nsum than the interest, amortization and upkeep--thus bringing to my\nestate an income of one or two annual thousands.\n\nI would be paid twenty-four thousand dollars for the serial upstairs,\nwhen I had cut it.\n\nUnfortunately, half of that would be turned over to the government, as\nincome tax. Most of the balance was ear-marked for furniture which\nRicky now might or might not buy. I thought about the tax....\n\nBusiness is the lone God of our Congress. Let a man open a pie factory\nor begin to mold cement blocks and he becomes Privileged. His property\nis taxed as a sacred, eternal entity. His costs are deductible. Only\nthe profit he pockets is thought of by our Congress as income; his\nevery barrel of flour or bag of cement is capital. But let a man\ncreate books or serials in his head and Congress sees him as a social\ninferior, a mere wage earner.\n\nThe accumulation of intellectual property for a book may require\nthree-quarters of a life. Its sale, for a year or two, may be\nconsiderable. After that one book--or after two or three--an author\nmay return to pittances. What he has written may become the mental and\nemotional capital of his countrymen, or of the world, for generations.\nYet Congress does not deem it equal to pies or bricks and sometimes\nskims away in a year the whole capital of an author--as if it were\nbut annual income. America bounteously provides for the makers of\nbricks and pies; it short-changes book-makers and the winners of Nobel\nPrizes. Indeed, such is the unconscious hostility of the mob toward the\nfruits of intelligence that, not long ago, a group of representatives,\ncommercial he-whores and contumelious morons, endeavored to do away\nwith copyright altogether on the grounds that what a man thought and\nwrote down, or what he felt and painted, belonged free of charge to the\nwhole people: noneconomic, since it was Art. To such men as these, only\njunk fabricators, gadgeteers, tram operators, pop bottlers and the like\nare entitled to the best profit for their contribution to life. History\nwill note the fact when history writes how American avarice held in\nopen contempt all culture and all thought, decerebrated itself and so\ndied headless.\n\nAs a man about to perish I could not but think bitterly of this. Had my\nlabors, my work, my business, my investment of skill and thought and\nsweat been deemed equivalent, by my government, to the activities of a\nmanufacturer of flea powder, I could have left the people I loved far\nbetter off.\n\nA relative complaint, under the circumstances and in my case. But when\nI thought of the \"successful\" writers I knew who had been taxed into\npoverty for their genius, and when I thought of the potbellied yuts I'd\nmet who turned up fortunes in sewer pipes, cemetery lots and toilet\npaper, my sentiments toward the people and their politicians were\nrude....\n\nThey would get along--Karen and Ricky and Ricky's mother and those\nwho would now depend on them. My death might even accelerate the\nsale of my books for a while. There might be movie sales. Plays.\nPosthumous editions. Anthologies. If I had led Ricky to be careless and\nextravagant, she would nonetheless be capable, under necessity, of good\nmanagement. The hundred-year-old house in the country would continue\nto fend off the winters and to doze through the summers in its great\nlawns. Karen would attend Swarthmore. If Ricky wished, she could work\nagain; she was well enough now. Marry again.\n\nThe thought jarred and I considered that sensation. Marry? Of course\nshe would. She should. What is wickeder than inhibiting sentiment, than\nmemory turned prison?\n\nI am not a jealous man and even my envies are of an obscure sort.\nThe momentary shock came from the fact that, never before, had I\nthought of Ricky as married to another man. Romantic about another\nman--perhaps. (Hadn't I said, in fun and also meaning it, that if, in\nour seventies, she were to swear she had been faithful, I would regard\nit as sad? No man desires a wanton for a wife. But a great many men\nlove their wives in such a fashion as to consider them people--human,\ncurious, imaginative, subject to sensations of staleness, capable of\ndiscretion, and not intended to be--through every hour of all that is\na life--belled, balled and chained, hobbled and kept like cattle. An\nacademic point--now. We might never see those seventies--note the\nenvisaged smiles--or hear the candlelit confidence.) She would marry\nagain. Karen would marry. The bonds I'd bought, the real estate, the\ninsurance I'd purchased down the years--flush or borrowing--would\nprovide a measure of security.\n\n_Come war? Come vast inflation? Costly sickness?_\n\nThere is no security on our planet. There is no way, by money, wills,\ninvestments, legal instruments, or other means, to carry even the\nsmallest wish or the most minimal responsibility beyond crematory\nand urn. Such is the aching truth--the irony we try to avoid. No one\nunderstands it better than I--but I had done what I could to avoid it,\ntoo. Done it--in spite of a national tax philosophy that evaluates\nauthorship as a meaner trade than pawnbroking.\n\nIn all America are only five thousand of us who make our whole\nlivelihood by writing, anyway. To Congress--a scattered,\ninconsequential number--vote-voiceless and therefore impotent. It\nis a figure--five thousand in one hundred and fifty millions--which\nthe aspiring writer should bear in mind. And some are communists, or\nleftists, besides--which, in the miserable eyes of Congress these days,\nno doubt makes our whole profession suspect. Freedom is sick. Freedom\nis dying.\n\nWhy not?\n\nEverything is sick and doomed.\n\nIncluding me--now, I thought jeeringly.\n\nMy plate came--the toast-brown fish, the green-speckled potato, a salad\nI hadn't ordered, tartar sauce in a dish, and the applesauce in another.\n\nI pushed Congress out of my mind.\n\nMore accurately, the girl did.\n\nShe cleared her throat. A little sound, with faint annoyance clinging\nto it.\n\nI had been sitting there, smoking two cigarettes, oblivious to her for\nten minutes. She must have assumed that I had chosen to sit beside her\nbecause she was attractive--which was true. But now, owing to the\nabsence of sidewise glances, of self-conscious bread-buttering, of any\naura of awareness, she had irritatedly cleared her throat. If I had\nspoken to her forthwith she would, perhaps, have made a short, polite,\nbut discouraging reply. Since, however, I had broken off even the\nperipheral touching of consciousness, she coughed vexedly, exploringly.\n\nSo I glanced at her book. I had already noticed the jacket. It was\n_Ape and Essence_ by Aldous Huxley. She had been reading with a slight\nfrown. But now I saw that the jacket did not fit the book, which was\nthicker than Mr. Huxley's post-atomic predictions. The jacket, then,\nwas camouflage--for a larger book with maroon binding. What sort of\nreading, I wondered, would a glamorous young woman hide behind Aldous\nHuxley? And, abruptly, I knew: the Kinsey Report.\n\nI leaned back and verified it.\n\nThis amused me.\n\nThe people of Miami Beach, where I had lived in the winter, and the\npeople of New York, whom I had encountered in the spring, had been busy\nfor both seasons with Dr. Kinsey's refreshing work.\n\nIt was, at least, refreshing to me....\n\nI am interested in psychology. For a quarter of a century I have known,\nby way of Freud, Krafft-Ebing, Stekel, Ellis, and many others, the same\nfacts, in comparable orders of magnitude as those which Dr. Kinsey\nelicited by his scientific cross-questioning of cross sections. My own\nexperience of life, taken with the confidences of my associates, has\nmerely confirmed what others have noted. I have published such data\nin my books, years before Kinsey. And all that time I have reflected\nwith a hooting pique upon the unconquerable illusions of Americans.\nWhat I have long known to be true, and often written down, they have\nrefused to consider as real. Until the first of the Kinsey Reports,\nall erotic activity except that mechanical minimum permitted by state\nlegislatures has been regarded, even by most enlightened citizens,\neither as an accident carefully hidden in their own lives, or else as\nthe perverted behavior of persons who, eventually, would land on the\ncouches of psychiatrists--if not in prison. It is the most depraved\ntruth about us.\n\nKinsey--with the august reputation of Rockefeller money to give his\nfindings the one sort of credibility acceptable to Americans--had\naccomplished what hundreds of psychologists and scores of writers like\nmyself had been unable to do: he had convinced multitudes that the\nsexual behavior of people is mammalian in every respect. He had shown,\nwhere we had failed, that erotic activity of some sort is universal,\nthat the earlier and more vigorously such activities are commenced,\nthe more potent and sexually capable its practitioners become--that\nuse, not restraint (as the \"pure\" have decreed), develops the nerves,\ncapillaries and muscles of the sexual organs precisely as it does those\nof other organs and that what we call sins and perversions are as\nubiquitous as what we call normal sex acts. He had made an ass of the\nlaw and a fool of the church and held up an odious society in such a\nlight that its heathen taboos and wholehearted hypocrisies were at long\nlast more visible than the foul rags covering them.\n\nI had seen, that winter, numbers of men relieved (and not always\nbothering to hide the fact) by the realization that some homosexual\nexperience in their past was not a blot upon their lives without\nprecedent or parallel. And I had seen other numbers of men--older\nmen--stare back at the bereavement of their youth, hating themselves\nfor that which barbaric fear (translated as noble character) had\nprevented them from doing, knowing, sensing, or enjoying. Often,\nthese had turned their irreversible disappointment into a mockery of\nKinsey, thus exposing the near-vacuum in which they had endured their\ndecades--without being aware of the exposure. Americans are not mature\nenough, intelligent enough, discerning or well enough educated to\nlearn from psychology; but it is evident they are, in many cases, of\nan adequate spiritual development to learn from a Rockefeller-endorsed\nzoologist.\n\nIt didn't matter to me where the facts came from--so long as people\nbegan to perceive they were facts--facts that made a far truer\npicture of man and sex than all the utterances of priests, preachers,\nlegislators, and other sick-minded slobs put together.\n\nWe behave sexually like other mammals--apes, horses, dogs. Centuries of\nsuppression alter us not a jot. It is a sterling proof that instinct,\nnot vanity-calling-itself-reason, is our guide. It is the hardest blow\nyet struck against the bishops. In our time, they and their sickly\nminions will prevail. But after us, and them, some decent men may rise\nin the debris and put to a proper use what we all know and nearly all\ndeny....\n\nShe was reading the Kinsey Report.\n\n\"What for?\" I asked.\n\nThe question startled her, although the introduction itself did not.\nShe was obliged to feign a social surprise. Her inward gray eyes met\nmine and moved away. She drew part of an annoyed breath. She shut\nthe book. She made up her mind to say, \"I beg your pardon. Were you\nspeaking to me?\"\n\nShe had a musical voice, pitched low but not husky.\n\n\"I wondered why you were reading the Kinsey Report so avidly--and my\ncuriosity started talking. I usually do ask people things, when I want\nto know. It's discourteous. But sometimes they tell me.\"\n\nThat made her smile a little. \"You might be asking quite a question.\"\n\n\"Any question is quite a question. If I merely asked you how to get to\nFifth Avenue, you would be telling me, in answering, where to take my\nlife. I might be run over, doing it. I might get into a street fight.\nOr meet a blonde. If I asked you why you've been crying so much--that\nwould be quite a question, too. If I were a woman, I might ask,\nsimply--what you wore under what, and where you bought it. The answer\nto that one would describe dozens of your attitudes toward dozens of\nimportant matters.\"\n\nShe didn't say anything. If she nodded, it was the smallest of her\nnods. She twirled her cocktail glass, sipped the last of the amber\ndrink, and returned to her reading.\n\nShe wanted me to know that she didn't flirt. I expressed my\napperception by ordering lemon pie, which I didn't want, and coffee,\nwhich I did--and further, by leaving my table and the restaurant while\nmy place was being cleared and my dessert brought. I went across the\nhot street to the newsstand and bought _Time_ magazine--which I used to\nread for information and read now to keep abreast of the Biases--and\nthe _Telegram_. When I came back to the bar I found the girl had also\nordered coffee--and brandy. That settled it.\n\n\"My name,\" I said immediately, \"is Philip Wylie. I'm a writer. The\nwaiters will vouch for me. I live here.\"\n\nThe strain left her eyes and they widened slightly. \"I've read lots of\nthings you've written! For _heaven's sake_!\"\n\nMost Americans who get around have read lots of the things I've\nwritten. This is a great instant advantage--though often a present\nhandicap--in picking up strangers. They are at first agreeably\nsurprised; but they generally expect writers to \"be like\" the\ncharacters in their books--from God alone knows what an abysmal lack of\nimagination--and are therefore eventually disappointed.\n\nSince I said nothing, she went on, \"You're the author who hates women!\"\nThere was shine in her eyes, then--challenge--amusement. Spite, too.\n\n\"Only moms,\" I answered. \"And not 'hate'--deplore.\"\n\n\"And Cinderellas, too!\"\n\n\"Oh, yes. I'd forgotten the Cinderellas. I deplore them, also.\"\n\n\"Maybe I'm one.\"\n\n\"A superior specimen--if true.\" I am semigallant.\n\n\"What made you hate women so violently? Did your mother beat you?\nAnd why do you blame everything that goes wrong on women?\" Two hard\nlines showed the muscles around her teeth. \"Don't you realize that for\neverything you've written against women--you could say the same--and a\nhundred times as much--against men?\"\n\n\"Lookie,\" I said. \"Many years ago, when I was younger and foolish, I\nwrote a book about a few of the more conspicuous and lethal flaws in\nour fair nation. The book was some three hundred and seventy pages\nlong. I devoted all but about twenty pages to the calamitous follies\nof males. Men, as you call them. But I did, for some twenty pages of\nlight blast, violate the ironclad altar of femininity and point out\nmom's big mouth and little brain, her puffed crop and shaky pins. A\nfew things. I hardly thought I had loaded the dice--inasmuch as half\nthe people are female and I gave females only about a fifteenth of my\nslightly caustic attention. But ever since that book came out, almost\nevery woman I've met has accused me of outrageously laying the blame\nfor a manifestly hell-bound society on females. In the first place,\nthis is not true. In the second place, such statements--the hundreds\nI've collected--tend to show that American women positively refuse to\ntake any blame for anything whatever. They have no conscience and no\nsense of responsibility. They believe themselves to be as spotless as\nUnited States senators say they are, in campaign orations. They lack\nthe capacity for admitting guilt. They are nearly all--I have thus\nfound--psychologically far, far, far more destitute than I claimed only\ncertain kinds of them to be.\"\n\nShe laughed. \"You're _still_ mad! Someday you'll break down and write\na wonderful novel about the woman who really poisoned you against them\nall.\"\n\n\"I'll break down,\" I agreed. \"But I'll never write the novel! One\nreason is--there's no such novel. Women have always been good to\nme--with a few exceptions I can tolerate. Women have made love to me\nand they have been generous with me, and taught me, and they have been\nsensitive toward me. My daughter--who is sixteen--adores me. My first\nwife tried every combination she could think of to make me happy--and\nput up with me for ten years, when I was a drunkard. My second wife\nhas gone even further. Past ten years--for one thing. And I quit\ndrinking altogether, after we'd been married for a while. I--to repeat\nthe most readily understandable expression--adore her. And I adore my\ndaughter. I adore women, as a matter of fact. Such vexation as I have\nshown represented an aspect of that reverence: a good many women are\nfundamentally disappointing to anybody who cares much for women. And\nI resent the general damage such women do. A man\"--I looked at her as\nloftily as I could--\"has a curious faculty for resenting human sabotage\neven when he is not, himself, directly involved in the matter. A woman,\nas a rule, sees harm in the ruinous excursion of a nitwit only if she\nsees it as a real or potential menace to herself, loved ones, and\nassigns. It is a comfortingly personal outlook toward which I am hotly\nantipathetic.\"\n\n\"You talk like your books,\" she said.\n\n\"Why not? I wrote the damned things!\"\n\nShe poured her brandy into her coffee and drank a little.\n\n\"Men,\" I went on, \"in this century, are deeply imbued with just that\npersonal, feminine attitude. They refuse to meddle with evils that do\nnot immediately threaten them. They have sold out their duty toward\nthe whole species, for local, temporal advantages. They no longer\nlive lives but merely cadge existences. If a guy is successful and\nwell fixed, the ordinary American does not and cannot see that he has\nthe reason or the right--let alone the need!--to take a dim view of\nanything on earth.\" I picked up my copy of _Time_ magazine and waved\nit at her. \"Whenever one of my morally indignant volumes appears, this\nself-righteous periodical, for instance, usually begins its reviews\nby saying that I own a palatial residence in Florida, earn big money\nwriting commendable hack stories for the magazines, fish all the time,\nand yet--blackguard!--I have the gall to gripe! The inference is that\nI am a lunatic. Indeed, it has become more than an inference. This\ncarburetor of the news called my latest effort a 'whiff into midnight.'\nWho is nearer the witching hour--the well-heeled gent who still sees\nimperfections in the planet and says so or the editor who unconsciously\nimagines that prosperity and criticism are incongruent? That is the\nIvy League philosophy--suitable to cover the ruins it soon will bring\nabout.\"\n\n\"You're mad at Clare Luce,\" the girl said.\n\n\"There you go! Personal again! See here, ma'am. A man can get as\nintense feelings from statistical tables as a woman can from Sinatra's\nbrow wave. Vital statistics give them to me. I had such sensations\nwhen, after the publication of the Smythe Report, I pensively ran over\nthe Periodic Table. Many other charts and graphs deeply affect me. I\nhardly know Clare Luce. I had cocktails with her once--though. Very\nattractive. Very--not bright--ardent. That's the important thing in\nwomen, too. We disagreed about everything we discussed. But a woman\nwho enters the field of ideas is obliged, naturally, to follow some\nman or men. Women have never left any ideas around for men or women\nto follow. Clare said she follows Monseigneur Fulton Sheen--another\nglitteringly ardent soul. I'm not mad at Clare Luce. In my situation I\nfind it impossible to be mad at anybody on earth. And it was generally\ndifficult for me, even before now.\"\n\n\"What's happened that made you change?\"\n\n\"God has sent for me,\" I said sarcastically.\n\n\"You mean--you've been converted?\"\n\n\"If I am ever converted--in the common sense--it will be the hard way:\nposthumously and in the Presence. No. The change in me, what little I\nhave so far discovered, probably comes from atrophy. The peace and\nmellowness that men mistake for wisdom--that is in fact the result of\ncalcium deposits, excess urea in the cells, and so on.\"\n\n\"You're forty!\"\n\n\"And you're twenty--instead of twenty-six.\"\n\n\"You don't look it.\"\n\n\"You do. And as you well know, it's a damn good age for a woman to\nlook.\"\n\nShe thought awhile. \"You meet a lot of woman.\"\n\n\"I meet a few.\"\n\n\"Famous ones, I mean. What's your wife like? Blonde? Brunette?\"\n\n\"You know a movie actress named Maureen O'Sullivan?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"Ricky--my wife--gets mistaken for her. We go into night clubs and\nsometimes they give us a swell table and people begin asking each other\nwho the hell I am--thinking they've identified Ricky.\"\n\n\"She's sweet--Miss O'Sullivan.\"\n\n\"Ricky is, too.\"\n\n\"Who's the most beautiful one you ever met?\"\n\n\"The most beautiful one--I never met. Hedy Lamarr.\"\n\n\"You could, though. Celebrities can meet each other.\"\n\n\"I'm only about a Class D celebrity.\"\n\n\"Suppose--?\" She eyed me speculatively. \"Suppose some glamorous dame\nand you met. Suppose you got a yen for her? What would you do?\"\n\n\"God knows.\"\n\n\"I'm serious. After all, you've written enough articles and books and\nstories about it. Do you mean what you say? Or are you just trying to\nbe sensational?\"\n\n\"Would I, in other words, after meeting the gorgeous Miss or Mrs.\nSo-and-so, invite her to take a long drive in the country--or to picnic\non a beach--to look at etchings? Would I, personally? I might. Sure.\"\n\n\"What would Mrs. Wylie say?\" The gray eyes were troubled--perhaps\nafraid.\n\n\"Maybe nothing. She would never hear of it. Does marriage have to end\nprivacy entirely--every hour of it in a life? If she did hear--she\nmight still say nothing. She might laugh at me. She might be hurt. She\nmight be angry. It would depend on her mood at the moment.\"\n\n\"Her mood just at the moment!\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"Isn't that--pretty\"--she sought a term--\"unstable?\"\n\n\"Extremely stable. It would show that she regarded what we have been\nled to call infidelity a matter of so superficial a nature as to be\ncolored by a superficial mood. This, in turn, would indicate that\nher more profound attitude toward me--and my feelings for her--was\nunshaken. Stable, as you would say. If, on the other hand, I knew she\nwould have only one, single conceivable reaction--whether noncommittal\nor aggrieved--I could be certain that her feelings for me, and her\ndeepest sense of my feelings, had become absolutist, rigid, probably\ndominating and demanding, certainly doctrinaire. I could deduce that\nshe was in a most unstable situation--since people resort to the\nprojection of absolutes on other people only when they are torn by\nuncertainty of themselves. Notice this in religions. The absolutes are\ndefined to a hair--with different sorts of steeples, doorways, fonts\nand crucifixes marking infinitesimal splits over dogma--but with no\ncommensurate variation in the effect on human conduct whatever. Is a\nBaptist nobler than a Methodist? Kinder? Wiser? No. So the different\nabsolutes of both, seen detachedly, represent nothing more than the\nuncertainty, instability, self-doubt, inconfidence, distrust, and lack\nof magnanimity of both. Their passion to lay down the law, taken with\nthe minuscule variants that ensue, is proof that Christians have no\nstability whatever. Sex follows the same rule--and so does everything\nelse.\"\n\n\"I would have been furious, though.\"\n\nShe referred, still, to my hypothetical infidelity. And her reference\nwas interesting. Without thinking, she had used the past perfect\nsubjunctive. If, that is to say, her husband--the apparent supplier\nof the opulent rings--had trifled with a strange brunette at some\nlodge convention, this young lady's reaction _would have been_\nfury. It apparently would not be, now. The assured presumption was,\ntherefore, a rift between herself and her spouse. Coupled with her\nway of drinking cocktails while eating a sandwich, the brandy in her\ncoffee, her reading matter, and, particularly, the blur of suffering I\nhad seen in her eyes, this presumption led to further inference: the\nrift was recent and she was in flight from it, while yet attempting to\nunderstand its causes.\n\nShe was, that is to say, no habitual Martini drinker; these do not mix\ntheir cocktails with their viands. She was reading Kinsey not from the\nstarved cupidity of hundreds of thousands of other women (for if she\nhad been even that uninhibited she would have read it sooner) but in\nthe effort to discover something. She was drinking not to drown her\nsorrow but to take away its edge: she had mixed her latest drink with\nthe antidote of coffee. And, inasmuch as I had never seen her with\nher husband at the Astolat, it was a good guess, at least, that she\nwas here as part of an act of abandonment rather than as a result of\nbeing abandoned by him. Her accent was vaguely eastern--but eastern\nrubbed against, and somewhat eradicated by, the flatter tones of the\nWest. Like numberless other such women, she had fled to New York for\nrefuge--and from a considerable distance. Texas, perhaps, or Arizona.\nAnd probably she had lived in Manhattan before now: the Knight's Bar\nwas unknown to tourists--with the exception of Europeans visiting\nAmerica.\n\n\"You would have been furious,\" I finally said. \"Think that over. Here\nwe are, engaged in a favorite national pastime--imagining flirtations\nwith handsome persons in the public eye. I often reflect that picture\nstars--male and female--are lucky to have so little imagination,\non the average. If you can kill a person by sticking pins into a\nstatue of him--which you cannot, unless he believes it--think of the\npossible result on a star of the lurid, lewd fantasies poured upon his\nphotographs, or hers, by millions and millions of people. Grant any\nvalidity in the pin-sticking process and you have, in the photo-doting\nparallel, a curious possible explanation of what the press knows as\nHollywood high jinks. Psychogenic. The effect, on the poor individual,\nof mass assault, mob lechery. But skip all that. The point I want to\nmake is this: some ladies we have hypothesized are married. You can see\nyourself as enraged, if any husband of yours had his head turned--to\ncontinue the euphemisms--by one such. But it does not seem to occur to\nyou that any possible husbands of the ladies also might feel themselves\ninvolved in the matter--and even experience traces of pain?\"\n\n\"Men!\" she said. \"Why should anyone care what they feel?\"\n\n\"O-h-h-h, because they're so plentiful.\"\n\nShe smiled a little--and poured plain coffee. \"You haven't asked me my\nname.\"\n\n\"Naturally.\"\n\n\"Naturally?\"\n\n\"You've been wondering when I would. In such a case, the obvious thing\nto do is to let a girl go on wondering. Besides--my inquisitiveness is\nnever casual. It might be a convenience to know your name. But very\nlittle else. A clue, maybe, to the good taste of your parents--or lack\nof it--and to the national strain of your husband's paternal line.\"\n\n\"It's Yvonne Prentiss.\"\n\n\"See what I mean? A handy--but otherwise irrelevant fact.\"\n\nShe laughed. \"Do you live here?\"\n\n\"I'm staying here--on the sixteenth floor. For a few days.\"\n\n\"I am, too.\"\n\n\"You got mad at Mr. Prentiss,\" I said then, \"and fled from your\nsprawling mansion out in the golden West to the sidewalks of New\nYork--familiar to you in your girlhood. Your problem was not 'other\nwomen'--so what was it? Neglect? Brutality? Obsession? Bestiality?\nStamp collecting? What?\"\n\nHer eyes filled with tears.\n\nJust then, Fred came by. He's a waiter I know pretty well. \"Look,\nFred,\" I said, \"I've made her cry. Bring another brandy.\"\n\nShe was struggling. \"Shouldn't it be a beer?\"\n\n\"If you go on crying.\"\n\n\"I really don't want another drink--\"\n\n\"Then bring her some ice cream.\"\n\n\"--but I'll have one more.\" Fred nodded and went. \"How did you know all\nthat?\"\n\nI told her.\n\n\"It's Pasadena,\" she said. She shivered a little.\n\nSo I talked. \"Pasadena. How well I know it! Caltech, where people think\nthe troubles of the world began. The peeling eucalyptus trees and the\nlong shadows on the long sidewalk. Way back in the dear, dead beryllium\ndays--\"\n\n\"I haven't the faintest idea what you mean!\"\n\n\"Dr. Einstein,\" I said, \"walking around under his hair. Thinking\nso hard he never noticed the earthquake. It was the spring of\nnineteen-thirty-three. Perhaps I should explain that, in those days,\nwhen they wanted to split an atom, they generally used beryllium. A\ncommon element--half as heavy as aluminum and twice as strong--but\ndifficult to recover. Poor Dr. E! Like all the reasonable men,\nseemingly he cannot perceive that what he thinks of as irrational is\nthe force that governs human destiny! He assumes it's just a matter of\nenlightening the politicians. The deification of reason--the worship of\ncommon logic--cuts off human personality from natural truth exactly as\nidolatry destroys the faculty of rational analysis. And for the same\nreason. The intellectual paragon is as blind as any pagan--in the\nopposite direction. But we were talking about Pasadena--\"\n\n\"Vaguely,\" she said.\n\n\"I'll be more explicit, then. I was working for Paramount in that\nblessed era when nothing upset the world worse than a depression. A\ncurable malady--that. Anyhow, I had a producer who lived in Pasadena. A\nbig, reddish house on one of those irrigated buttocks that grow out of\nthe lower mountains. Completely surrounded by thornbushes--except for\nthe entrance gate. The first time I went there was Sunday--a nine A.M.\nconference--and my producer's butler served highballs right away to\nmyself and the other writers. I shall never forget it--or ever recall\na word that we said there that day. I was an animal-horror man, at the\ntime--\"\n\n\"A what?\"\n\n\"Animal-horror man. That's what the studio boss called me. In fact, he\nsaid I was pretty young to be an animal-horror man, the first time we\nmet.\"\n\nShe drank some of her brandy and then did a disturbing thing.\n\nShe took her pale, wavy hair in both hands and bent it back up over\nher head so that the curly ends fell everywhere around her face. When\nshe did it, she looked at me in a certain way. We were both supposed\nto understand the gesture perfectly--and not to notice it at all. Wild\nhorses weren't supposed to be able to drag out of us an admission of\nwhat it meant.\n\n\"Those were not only the beryllium days, but the days of animal\npictures and horror pictures. Frank Buck and Osa Johnson and Tarzan.\nFrankenstein. Paramount was trying to combine the grisliest features\nof all of them. They were making Wells's _Island of Dr. Moreau_--for\ninstance. And I was doing some of the writing. Hence I was an\nanimal-horror man--and young for it, too. Precociously animalistic and\nhorrible. Remember? Cobras fought mongooses? Tigers fought pythons and\nother unnatural antagonists? Zebus fought gnus? My producer wanted\nto throw a half dozen lions into a school of big sharks--and get some\nred-hot close shots of the fights that would then ensue. That--I\nstopped. Even we ogres draw the line somewhere--and I know a good deal\nabout sharks. The lions, if you once got the sharks hitting them, would\nnot be fighting, as my producer imagined, but dying by mouthfuls.\"\n\n\"How awful!\"\n\n\"Pasadena, it was,\" I reminded her. \"Another conference at that big\nhouse amongst the thorns. I know the place like a book. I know the\nspirit of the place. You lived there?\"\n\nShe stared at the room, empty now of all but waiters and two or three\npairs of murmuring people. Full, however, of Musak. Light operettas.\n\n\"Somehow it's easier to talk to strangers,\" she said, \"than to people\nyou've known all your life.\"\n\n\"Of course!\" I replied in sober agreement--although I thought the idea\nwas rubbish.\n\n\"And besides,\" she went on, immediately contradicting herself, \"I've\nread your articles and books and I feel as if I knew you better than\nyou knew yourself.\"\n\nUnlikely, I figured. But this was important to her, so I nodded. \"Maybe\nyou do--in some ways.\"\n\nShe had shown a certain economy of speech--owing possibly to the fact\nthat I had given her little opportunity to show anything else. But her\nbiography was fairly terse:\n\n\"I was born in Boston--and the family moved here when I was a baby.\nMy dad graduated from Princeton in 1921. He's a very intelligent,\nstrong-willed, wonderful guy. My mother's a chronic invalid--of her\nown making. I have one sister--older--and no brothers. I'm very fond\nof my sister--but I was always jealous of her when I was young. Dad\ntried to make her a substitute for a son--took her everywhere, taught\nher sports and games--and I wanted to be the one. She's married and\nlives in Chicago. I went to school in Westchester--Rosehall--and came\nout here. At a mass d\u00e9but. Dad's in real estate. After I came out, I\nfiddled around awhile--Junior League, and Red Cross, and Bar Harbor in\nthe summers--and then I met Rol.\"\n\nShe took a breath that quavered like a musical saw. \"He's handsome.\nHe has manners--buckets and barrels of manners. And money.\" She\nlooked angrily at her rings. \"I tried to make something out of him.\nTo put ambition in him. I got him to work for dad--and he quit. He\nwanted to go to California because he likes flowers. My God, how he\nlikes flowers! We had greenhouses full. He thought he could become a\nbotanist--or hybridize something--and he dawdled away his time with\npaintbrushes and pollen. I persuaded him to go into real estate out\nthere--and he made a lot more money--but he gave it up. He began\ncollecting a library of old books on botany--and writing a history\nof botany--and I was bottled up in botany. It got so he would hardly\neven dress up. Or shave. Overalls all day. I'd want to go places and\nsee people and do things--and we'd be home, instead, with some French\nprofessor, maybe, for dinner, complete with beard, accent, ribboned\nglasses, and knee-patting under the table. Half the time, these\nprofessors and Rol--for Roland--talked Latin. I flunked it, three\nstraight semesters, myself. Well--I took to going out alone--and he\ndidn't care. I even tried to make him jealous--and he positively seemed\nto approve. He told me I needed outside interests and that he was a\ndull fellow for me! I--\" She bit her lip.\n\n\"--love the guy.\"\n\n\"Not now. I did. What finally happened was--\"\n\n\"Should I get that beer ready?\"\n\nShe shook her head. For a while she was silent. Then she touched\nthe book. \"I heard--I knew--I suppose I shouldn't even have been\nsurprised--let alone driven out of my mind--but there's so much that's\nnice about him. Used to be, anyhow. Too nice--and that should have\nprepared me--\"\n\nI got it, then. \"Not--other women, Yvonne. Men, huh?\"\n\nShe shuddered. You don't see people shudder very often--in restaurants,\nanyway. She shuddered because that was how it made her feel. She\ncouldn't help it. And when the spasm passed, her hands went on\ntrembling--like glassware vibrating after a certain right note has\nbeen struck. \"He hired an assistant--a young college graduate--that I\nliked, at first. Then--one day--I got so bored and lonely I went into\nthe greenhouses, which I hated, looking for them. And I found them, all\nright.\"\n\nShe began to cry again--and to talk through the tears. \"It was\nonly--two weeks ago. Rol was dreadfully upset. He promised--everything\non earth he could think of. And I stayed a week more--but it was\nsimply too awful. I finally bought tickets. I--I don't like living\nat home--mother's such a sobby mess all the time. I wanted to see\ndad--and of course he was about ready to go out and kill Rol.\nSomebody--somebody--\" her voice sank--\"told me that if I read the\nKinsey Report I'd see that what happened to Rol happened to maybe a\nthird of the men like Rol. I guess it does. What difference does that\nmake?\"\n\nChildren, I thought. No. Not even children. Children is just what they\nweren't--just what they'd never been--or just what, if they'd ever\nbeen, they refused to let themselves remember. These angel-pusses,\ngrowing up everywhere in America, psychologically hamstrung or maybe\nwingstrung in their cribs. Turned into demons by their right-thinking,\npractical, realistic, common-sense, hard-headed fathers and mothers.\nMarrying, in no better condition for marriage than nuns and eunuchs.\nPhooie.\n\nI slid my wrist in my cuff. It was after three. \"Yvonne,\" I said, \"are\nyou busy tonight?\"\n\n\"I was going to have dinner with dad--as usual. He bucks me up.\"\n\n\"Maybe you could do with a substitute bucker-upper, for a change.\"\n\n\"Dad told me I ought to go out--call up old friends--\"\n\n\"The hell with what dad told you. And I haven't asked you, yet. I'm\nfussy, myself. Can you dance?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"Rumba?\"\n\n\"Rol was a swell dancer. And we used to have a teacher come to the\nhouse--in the days before he lost interest in--me.\"\n\n\"Well, I'll pick you up, around eight. The valet keeps my dinner things\nhere--so put on a long dress.\"\n\n\"I don't need to be rescued, Mr. Wylie. It's sweet of you. But I'd\ndetest to go out feeling as if I was the object of a missionary\nproject.\"\n\n\"Then think of yourself as a missionary to me. I have no date. And I am\nvery uninterested in spending this particular evening alone.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because I'm a writer. I put my heart and brain and libido into the\ncomposition of gay, mad, happy stories. Then I have to pay for it--in\ncompensatory funk. Nothing psychological is free. The illusion that it\nis amounts merely to a passing human fancy--about fifty thousand years\nold. Surely you're familiar with the fact that humorous authors are\nmelancholy babies, in the flesh? Well, I just miss being a humorous\nauthor--so I just miss being a one hundred per cent sourball.\"\n\n\"What are you going to do now?\"\n\n\"That's a very possessive question,\" I said, \"in view of the shortness\nof our acquaintance. However, I am going to cut a serial from two\nhundred and eighteen pages to one hundred and seventy-eight pages.\"\n\n\"_Exactly?_\"\n\n\"Well--within a few lines. And not just this afternoon. It takes days.\nMy wife is up in the country. We were having the house repapered\nand repainted. Every time I found a quiet corner and started to cut\nbleeding syllables from my precious prose, some damned craftsman with a\nmustache like a character in _Midsummer Night's Dream_ spilled paste\non my back. So, finally, I scrammed down here. If my wife had known I\nwould have to put in more days on the serial--she'd have postponed the\nrural clowns. But, not knowing, and with artisans so touchy about their\nschedules--\"\n\n\"Don't tell me!\" she exclaimed. \"We just had the house in Pasadena done\nover!\" Her eyes faded. \"For what?\" She murked about inside herself\nbriefly. \"I'd like very much to go out with you--if you really want me\nto. On one condition.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nShe turned quickly, unbelievingly. \"You do not!\"\n\n\"Bet?\"\n\n\"Bet you flowers for me tonight.\"\n\n\"Generous wager, I must say. Indecently feminine! Okay. Promise to\nadmit it--if I have the right answer? No hedging?\"\n\n\"Promise.\"\n\n\"You'll go out--on condition I won't make a pass at you.\"\n\nShe flushed a faint peach color. \"I thought you were going to guess I\nwanted to go Dutch.\"\n\n\"I know you did.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"I know how women think, as they term it.\"\n\n\"You're right, though.\"\n\nI picked up her check and signed it and signed my own and signed the\ntwo sets of bar checks and gave Fred--who was loitering about in the\nbackground with overt patience--a sound tip.\n\n\"Buy yourself,\" I said to her, \"some dandy flowers. I like gardenias. I\nhate orchid-colored orchids. On second thought, if flowers remind you\nof Roland--\"\n\n\"He never grew them to wear--or for bouquets. Just to breed.\"\n\n\"See you. And thanks for the indiscreet lunch.\"\n\n\n3\n\nIt was, as they say, sweltering in my suite. Sweltering, like every\nterm, is comparative and relative and also tentative. I like to\nswelter, as a rule. To work stripped and sweating, with a vasomotor\nsystem engaged in cooling me, rather than the opposite, which others\nprefer--a pumping system busy stoking the body against cold air.\nThis--like most events and experiences--is more a matter of mental\nclimate than physical. Such attitudes are self-taught, people-taught,\nor environment-taught.\n\nOne's frontal lobes are liable--unless trained in every particular\nat autocriticism--to hypnotize the rest of the brain into compliance\nwith the ego's demand. Suggestion rises at some spot in the throbbing\ncerebral tissues, or from without, and is snatched up by the cortex to\nbe delivered back as ultimate gospel to the whole human establishment:\ngreat balance of the brain and all the instincts in it, spinal cord,\nnerves, organs and muscles. These, then, like a converted Christian,\nare compelled by one fallible new layer of the organism to adjust to\nthe command. When the whole man cannot, the cortex founders in neurosis\nor psychosis. Usually, however, the adjustment, farfetched or absurd\nthough it may be, is sufficient so that the mechanism goes on with at\nleast a semblance of effectiveness. Its nutty operator is allowed to\nlive; people aren't very critical--or even observant.\n\nOnly in human aggregates is the effectiveness shown to be mere\nsemblance. Men seen locally in time and space appear purposeful enough,\nreasonable, even charitable. Seen whole, they are clearly insane. And\nonly one in a thousand sees that this collective madness is but the sum\nof little acts of hypnosis performed by his own cortex on his whole man.\n\nThus, in trifling example, where you might have been sweltering, I\nwas sweating without psychic trauma. You may have taught yourself,\nbeen taught, or may have decided from observation that ninety degrees\nis an insufferable temperature. I have concluded it is pleasant. My\nconstitution is no different from yours. The concept of thin blood\nis mythical--mine, indeed, is probably \"thicker\" than yours, for it\ncontains a very high number of red cells. But the opinion my cortex\nholds of hot weather permits the rest of me to function in a hot room\nwithout the added burden of psychic pain. Your synthetic dread of hot\nweather may send you rushing to the seaside, where you then spend the\nday in a sun temperature of a hundred and twenty-five. You burn your\nskin. Or you exhaust yourself getting to the top of a mountain--where\nthe unfamiliar and unseasonable coolness sets you sneezing with a cold.\n\nI have observed that millions of people who are obliged to live in\ntemperatures of ninety seem to do so with tranquillity and this is the\nmessage my cortex has delivered, not as gospel--not as the authority\nfor a trance--but as submitted opinion. I have sent my brains the\nopposite message, in North Dakota, in the winter, with similarly good\nresult.\n\nThe latitudes of tolerance are immense. The uses people make of\nthem are meager. They pant too much on hot days, shiver too much on\ncold. About God and science, sex and business, they have hypnotized\nthemselves to the great benefit, they think, of that bright, running\ndot of conscious vanity called \"I.\" Even asleep, they finally hear\nlittle but the repetition of their own opinion. It becomes the one\nvoice on earth--God's, of course.\n\nThe point here is--I liked the warm day.\n\nBut liking is another poor, irrelevant expression. What did it matter,\nnow, whether I liked, disliked, or snored with apathy?\n\nThe elevator gnashed its teeth.\n\nI entered the green-walled room and took off all my clothes but my\nshorts. I unpacked the typewriter-paper box that held the pages of my\nserial. I set up a card table and put my portable machine on a corner\nof it. I gathered up cigarettes, an ashtray, Kleenex for my spectacles,\npencils, and my pen.\n\nI had used the soft hair, high breasts and haunted eyes of--of what\nin hell was her name?--Yvonne Prentiss--as a barricade. Now, it\ndissipated. The sad look in her eyes was gone; her smile, like the\nCheshire Cat's--that was gone. And the Ghoul came out from where it had\nbeen.\n\nI had expected it would.\n\nI said hello to the Ghoul.\n\nI knew the bastard.\n\nGeorge T. Death.\n\nThe analgesia was absorbing, or it had been absorbed. My throat felt\nas if a tack were stuck in it. A stinging sensation--hardly noticeable\n(to the properly-hypnotizing cortex). One could scarcely expect a\nlavish use of clinical techniques for blocking off the mere prick of a\nbiopsy. Still--it would be inconvenient to be reminded by my own flesh,\nprematurely, of what it had fallen heir to. There was stir enough in my\ngray matter on the topic, already; no additional goad was needed.\n\nWe death-dreaders--we victims of the marvels of science--souped up to\nthe last ganglion by every advertisement, billboard, radio commercial,\nlecture, and editorial--by damned near every syllable we read or\nhear--to live to enjoy things (rather than to stand ready to die for\nthe sake of ideas) are poorly prepared for carcinoma--for whatever your\nequivalent may be.\n\nOr--was I afraid, not so much of dying as of the manner?\n\nGet busy, I said to myself; you'll have plenty of time to savor these\nnotions.\n\nOr--was I even afraid? Shocked, rather?\n\nWork.\n\nThere's the drug you need, boy.\n\nI lay back on the divan, smoking.\n\nGeorge T. Death. I knew him of old.\n\nIn several guises.\n\nI remembered the year I was ten, the year I had appendicitis, then\nperitonitis, then general blood poisoning. Sometimes, at night, the\npain of my body, the pain of my tube-filled, pus-lathered guts will\ncome back to me. And the smell. The fever. The thirst. They didn't\nbelieve in giving you liquids, then--not any--and I know what it's like\nto be on the Sahara without a drop to drink--and your viscera opened\nup, in the bargain.\n\nI know.\n\nFather came to the hospital during one of the spells of consciousness.\nHis eyes were desperately gentle. \"How's the fight, son?\"\n\n\"Am I going to die?\"\n\n\"You're pretty sick, son.\"\n\nI laughed a little with my curdled belly. Too soon to answer, _You're\ntelling me._ Nineteen-twelve. That was what I meant.\n\n\"But--will I die?\"\n\nHis tender passion became tenderer still. \"Would you be afraid to, son?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Do you believe in God?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Want to live--still?\"\n\n_Still_, he had said. He could see--what I could only feel.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Then--fight.\"\n\nThat time I looked right smack into George T. Death's eye sockets and\nfought. But I was a kid then--and kids are brave if they have brave\nparents.\n\nIn some ways, my father is the bravest man I've ever known; in others,\na coward. Who's different?\n\nWho's different without being more coward?\n\nThere was the time in Warsaw.\n\nMy half brother Ted and I had finished our tour of Russia and come\nshaken across the Polish frontier--like two unconvinced readers of\nDante who had gone there ourselves to be sure which part was poetry\nand which was accurate reporting. We found out. Our Dante was a good\njournalist.\n\nIn Tiflis, after too much vodka, in the biggest, best restaurant where\nthe rats were so bold they would sit under your table and nibble your\ncrumbs and run off a little way if you took the trouble to skid your\nfeet at them--in Tiflis, where every kind of man goes by on the street,\nNegro and Turk, redhead and ash-blond, because every kind of man has\npoured through the Caucasus for thousands of years on the way to\nconquer Europe or the way back in conquest of Asia--in purple-walled\nTiflis where the archeological strata are as clear as the story of\nthe stones in a cross-cut syncline and bare human feet have drilled\ndeep paths in the rock floor of the old Roman baths--in Tiflis where\nPersians still sit cross-legged on tables and play what Ted called\nsnake-charmer music on bulbous pipes--we talked too much.\n\nWe drank too much and talked too much--to a dozen tourists who sat\nabout the big table, waiting for their late dinner--waiting an hour or\ntwo, as you do in Russia. Tourists who, for the most part, had come\nfrom France, Germany, England, and the United States so pre-entranced\nwith communism, so ignorant of farming and industrial process, so\nself-blinded to horror and despair as to imagine, even after seeing\nsome of it, that the Soviet Experiment offered hope to any man. Not\nbeing blind--being noncommittal at the outset--we had seen better.\n\nWait till we get home, Ted and I told them.\n\nWe'll put the truth in America's magazines.\n\nPolice state. Prison. Human abattoir. Endless steppes of horror.\nPerversion of the mind. Destruction of the spirit. A factory of torture\nto keep the factories running. Hunger and helpless hatred. Dirt.\n\nThe old, old, old abomination in new clothes: tyranny.\n\nWe'll tell them.\n\nIt began, after that.\n\nThe GPU men everywhere we went--pretending they spoke no English and\nreddening when Ted and I blasphemed and insulted them in their hearing.\nThe trip to the tea plantation in Batum--on a bus that deposited its\nother passengers and started up a series of hairpin turns--with a\ndriver and Ted and myself on board. The slide--the driver jumping out.\nTed and I jumped, too--but the bus didn't go over the cliff. It merely\ncaught on the edge and hung there. (Was the driver chagrined because it\nfailed to go over--or because we jumped also--or because he had steered\nso incompetently? How could you tell?)\n\nOdessa.\n\nThe bartender offered us a bottle of Scotch--the first we'd seen in the\nlong, grim way from Leningrad. We drank some and gave the rest away.\nAnd took the night train for Shepatovka, exulting in the thought that\nwe would never see the UCCP again, come the morrow.\n\nThere was no water on the train.\n\nAll night, we turned on the hard boards.\n\nIn the blazing forenoon our car was shunted onto a siding and the Red\nArmy soldiers--its only other occupants--marched away. Nothing was in\nsight but the sparse wheat of the Ukraine and its scalding mirages. We\nwaited--with our thirst. Hung-over, desperate. Another train finally\npicked up our car and we went on--at the galling pace of communist\ntransportation.\n\nI found the carafe of water in the toilet--where no water had been\nbefore. Recklessly, tremblingly, we drank it--equally dividing the\nthankful drops. And late that day, without further ado, we crossed the\nborder to the relaxation, the seeming luxury, the comparative freedom\nof Poland.\n\nIt was some days later, in the Palace Polonia Hotel, in Warsaw, when I\nwoke with the cramps in my belly and legs. With a climbing fever.\n\nTime spun--hours commingled in the familiar wastes of pain. I knew\nbelly-fire. I did not know my legs could hurt so hideously or curl up\nagainst my will. I lay vomiting, fainting, crawling to the bathroom and\nthere, too weak to lift myself, pouring out rice water. Areas of my\nskin turned purple.\n\nTed, untouched by an affliction neither of us recognized, took care of\nme. On the fourth day he brought a doctor and a nurse. On the fifth, I\nwas briefly better.\n\nThat evening, on my insistence, he left me for the first time since I'd\nfallen sick.\n\nHe came back to the hotel alone, late, and sober--for he talked awhile\nwith the concierge. He went to his room--beside the one where I lay\nill--and opened the French windows, apparently to stare at Warsaw\nin the vermilion dawn. They found him on the sidewalk five floors\nbelow--dead.\n\nWhen the consul came to see me, and the pleasant young men from the\nembassy, we were unable to make out what had happened. Had he stepped\ntoo far out? Climbed up on the roof for a better view? Had the\nconcierge mistaken his condition and had he lost his balance? Jumped?\nOr had he been pushed--in the fashion of political assassins who pursue\ntheir foes into other nations so as to conceal their bloody reach?\n\nWe can never know.\n\nThe embassy and the consulate thought he was murdered.\n\nAnd when I told Tom, my friend and doctor, the step-by-step progress of\nthe first phase of my sudden sickness--when I remembered the thirst and\nthe miraculous appearance of a carafe of water--Tom said, \"I think you\nhad cholera. It could have been in the water. Some people are immune to\nit. Maybe Ted was.\"\n\nMaybe.\n\nHe was not immune to a five-story fall onto a cement sidewalk.\n\nWhat matter?\n\nTed was dead.\n\nI sent the cables.\n\nAnd the second phase of my illness began. The swelling joints, the\natrophy of muscles, the inflammation of nerves, the--why go into it?\nThey sent to the largest institute for the best specialist in whatever\nthis sequel might be.\n\nAnd there was G.T. Death again.\n\nThe specialist seemed seven feet tall--a skinny man--who wore such\na mustache as only the Poles can grow. He sat on my bed after the\ntorturesome examination and told me about it, in French.\n\n\"I am afraid, my American friend, that I have bad news for you. You\nare a man. You will want the truth. It is a progressive malady. Your\nfoot--your arm--already crippled. When it reaches the heart--\"\n\nHe went away.\n\nMy nurse wept.\n\nTed was the one we counted on to be the great man. The strong, the\ngood-humored, the precocious, the gifted, the good, the young Paul\nBunyan of the family. Dead.\n\nAnd now I had a turn at it.\n\nI, the elder brother.\n\nI, who had taken Ted on his first trip abroad.\n\nI, who had led him to miserable accident, to foul execution, or to\nhorrible impulse--bred, perhaps, in the vile durances of the vast\nnation we had traversed.\n\nAbrupt hate of life.\n\nI lay in that hotel bedroom--they had told me that a Warsaw hospital\nwas to be avoided--and rehearsed the placid, polite syllables of the\nspecialist.\n\nHe had been interested, as one foreigner inspecting another, to observe\nreactions.\n\nI had therefore been careful to exhibit none.\n\nAlone, I could react.\n\nAs now, I thought of my wife and my daughter and the insurance and the\nbanks.\n\nAnd having finished with that, I turned to rue.\n\nFeeble fool. Wretched clot!\n\nHow little of what you felt and thought did you take the trouble to\nexpress!\n\nWhen your corpse follows your brother's to the crematory in Gdynia,\nwhat epitaph?\n\nHere lies a minor author--an excessive curiosity and a penchant for\ninvestigation--who never bothered to write up his reports.\n\nSo every artist and would-be artist makes this same phrase.\n\n_I knew: I never got it said._\n\nIsn't it true of you, also?\n\nDidn't you know--and weren't you always on the verge of saying so--when\nyou had to go to the movies, lunch, the bathroom, bed, or the jute mill\nin quest of new shoes for baby?\n\nYanh-yanh.\n\nEach generation learns enough too late to pass it to the next, for when\nthe learning's accomplished the newcomers have always been educated\nahead of the achievement--in ignorance.\n\nSo when will cradles be rocked by wise men and good women?\n\nThey never know it will take a thousand years, and perhaps a thousand\ntimes a thousand years; they think it will be tomorrow; that is the\ntrouble with them--it is the trouble with them all.\n\nI lay in the Palace Polonia, with the European cars blatting in the\nsacrificial street and the trains hooting across the moribund way and\nit vividly occurred to me that in a few more years Hitler's men would\nblow down these corridors and blow up those cobblestones. I lay in\nJericho.\n\nI thought, finally, about a palm frond.\n\nThere was a day in Florida when, in a mood of black despair, I\nstretched out beside the sea with all the cabanas of the Roney Plaza\nand all the dollars lying round about, reciting to myself the abhorrent\nantics of my compatriots and my own repulsive participation. The beach\nboys laughed; the handsome harlots splashed; and the purple sea came\nmeaninglessly ashore. My eye, tired of the drenched blue firmament,\ncame to rest on the frond of a coconut. It was a young leaf, very\ngreen, and it glistened in the sun like lacquered metal.\n\nWhile I regarded it, the leaf had a sudden meaning--the meaning\nof life and growth and Evolution. Not the idea--but the felt\nsignificance. (You would say, doctor, that some biochemical process\ncompleted itself in that instant--a change came in the endocrines.\nOr you, doctor, that the individual unit shares with the group the\nToynbean shift-to-the-opposite--the yin-yang--and hence, sometimes,\njoy-through-funk.) Anyhow, I looked at the damned palm frond and a\ngreat peace came over me, followed by an excitement. I decided to leave\nthe American scene and make a personal inquiry of Hitler's Germany and\nMr. Stalin's Russia and to take my brother along.\n\nI got up and said so. The purple sea also took back its meaning, then,\nand all its other meanings. And that was that.\n\nI flew with gulls once more, skittered with flying fish, and bathed in\nthe limpid, tepid surf with every sand flea.\n\nThat is what I remembered, exactly, in Warsaw where I lay dying, as\nusual.\n\nRemembering, I determined to go back to that sea.\n\nMy shoulder was disjointed and full of slime. Certainly. My left leg\nwas also paralyzed. I was ankylosed and calcified and atrophied. But of\ncourse. Agony--_sic_. What was left of me might be a stumblebum but the\noutside part could somewhat swim still and the inside part could fly.\n\nMy brother was dead.\n\nThere was work to do.\n\nTo hell with Dr. Jerkski, great man of the Institute.\n\nI would frustrate every specialist in Poland.\n\nTake up your bed and totter, Wylie.\n\nIt required a year for the doing--in Warsaw and Paris, Manhattan,\nConnecticut, and California.\n\nThen I had entirely recovered.\n\nTrauma excepted.\n\nNow that is what I thought of in the space of time it took to smoke a\ncigarette on my divan at the Astolat--that, and several thousand more\nitems.\n\nThat is why, so to speak, I had nodded courteously at the Ghoul.\n\nHe is always hanging around.\n\nOne has only to turn one's head fast enough--and there he is.\n\nMost people, by the cortico-schizoid mechanism I have described a few\npages back, partition him off.\n\nHe is not behind me, they convince themselves.\n\nBut he is.\n\nThere are always exactly enough Ghouls to go round. Billions of people\napply the blindfold technique in another way:\n\nHe is not a Ghoul, they say, but the God of Heaven.\n\nThe Eternal Grocer, who will dole out milk and honey forever.\n\nThe Great Conductor whose baton will direct my Everlasting Harp.\n\nThe Keeper on the Inexhaustible Preserves who will set infinite game\nbefore my arrow in the Happy Hunting.\n\nChairman of the Greens Committee of the Elysian Fields.\n\nThe Sublime Pander who will fit an houri to me on the hour, each hour,\nand I shall be the Paramour of Paradise.\n\nThe Universal Usher who will take the stub of my ticket and lead me to\nmy seat in the Reserved Section at the Right Hand.\n\nWhat asinine measurements of man are furnished by his Heavens!\n\nMy own opinion of the Functions of the Ghoul is different, as I am\ngradually trying to imply here. And I am certain, furthermore, no one\nreally believes, in his heart, that such heavens be. His mouth says it,\nhis cortex confirms it, and his heart gives him the lie; so he has his\nHell.\n\nFor how could Nature come to as tawdry an end as Heaven?\n\nEven human nature?\n\nI told the Ghoul, after this sweating, to get behind me, like Satan,\nwhile I cut my serial.\n\n\n4\n\nThis is the way of it.\n\nYou take out an adjective here, an adverb there, a prepositional phrase\nyonder--and so gain a line.\n\nYou make the first mark on a tally sheet. When you have four marks\nset parallel, you cross them with the fifth. When you have a row of\ntwenty-eight marks, you have removed one page. When you have forty\nof these, you have completed the task--provided they are distributed\nthrough the installments in such a fashion that each part will be\ntailored to the desired length.\n\nIt was a story of manners--a light thing, with a plot.\n\nI had enjoyed writing it.\n\nI did not enjoy the cutting.\n\nEvery syllable scratched out is likely to take away some quality of\na character upon which a subsequent event will turn. It is necessary\nto remember to the last detail what is removed and what remains. The\nelimination of a noun in the first installment may reduce the impact of\na scene in the last. The contraction of a scenic description may ruin\nthe comprehensibility of the hero's actions later on in the tale. And,\nwhen the most careful economy has been achieved, the goal of decimation\nmay still be at a distance so that the writer is obliged to select this\nsituation, that dialogue, yonder tender scene, and recast the whole in\nbriefer compass, the while omitting no cogent phrase or fact, however\ntrifling.\n\nIt is a big puzzle and a hard job.\n\nIt took me, I should think, another quarter of an hour to stow away my\nGhoul completely, divert attention from the prick in my throat, and\nbecome immersed in the running words.\n\nMy editors say I am a good professional.\n\nAnd that, my liberal-intellectual critics add, is all: a capable hack.\n\nO liberals.\n\nO cognoscenti.\n\nO critics.\n\nI give you my death-wish--and the atom bomb for its consummation.\n\nWhy didn't you study it sooner?\n\nYou copied into your literature whatever you saw on washroom walls--and\nlittle else--while brighter boys copied Bohr's equations from\nblackboards.\n\nBoth were true.\n\nBoth were real.\n\nOne was old.\n\nThe other new.\n\nAnd where are you tomorrow?\n\nAnyway, as I was suggesting, I write for money, usually.\n\nI enjoy it--the writing and the dough. If writing isn't fun, I give it\nup. And I spend the money.\n\nHere today and marlin fishing tomorrow.\n\nHere today and at the couturiers with Ricky tomorrow.\n\nNight club today and novelette tomorrow.\n\nSerial today, book, movie, play.\n\nSarcophagous tomorrow.\n\nI am at least one two-billion-three-hundred-millionth responsible for\nthe contemporary world and bear the burden gamely. Why not take up my\nburden and follow me as I, too, follow? The burden of Light.\n\nOr why not take up, better than I have, the same burden and improve\nupon my shambling progress?\n\nI am the occasionally somewhat rich man who finds the Kingdom of Heaven\nat hand this day--and the next, discovers in his private concerns\nand small affluence that the door has narrowed down and his camel is\nbalked by its load. The little acre I have dedicated stays where it\nis but wants, sometimes, for cultivation. I have sinned; that is why\nI understand sin. Men have made enough things for me to last fifty\nlifetimes; I have given them away for newer, more expedient things.\nEnough substance has been dug out of the earth and grown upon it and\nsold to me to support a tenementful of more intent philosophers. And I\ncannot compare myself favorably with other men: perhaps they lacked my\nenvironmental opportunities--a Princeton education, for instance--or\na youth's experience of Montclair, New Jersey. (What grim lessons!).\nIf, furthermore, my assigns perish with the yuts and their barbarous\nimpedimenta, they will have no reason to remember me kindly.\n\nBut these are my problems.\n\nAnd these are your problems, too.\n\nDo you repent at all?\n\nOr ever act?\n\nOr merely join another lunch club and boost your voice loose? What\nfagins brought _you_ up?\n\nOld Bob Durfree, editor of the magazine for which I'd written so many\nyarns about Cynthia Davis and Cynthia's silly mother and Cynthia's\npatient pop would welcome this one. My short stories, my serials,\nwere a branded feature of Bob's magazine. Struggling years! A hundred\nserials--froth composed of my blood and sweat and tears--were written\nfor nothing. And then, at last, Success. Chimes in the mercantile\nestablishments! Fiesta for salesmen! Orgasms in banks! The Cynthia\nstories belonged more to Bob Durfree's magazine than to me--and nearly\nas much to the taste of millions as to my taste, although I sometimes\nput spices in the meringue that offended the flaccid palate of Mrs.\nAmerica and the lovely abscess she rears as a daughter.\n\nAt any rate, I poured it out on Bob Durfree's yarn because of the\ndignities I have referred to--and in light scorn of those critics who\ncan never tell if silver is alloyed in gold since they do not know what\ngold is. They will follow their wrong guesses into oblivion. Every time\nthey cried Eureka another true prophet went flat on his face.\n\nIt was about five o'clock when my phone rang.\n\nI was surprised it hadn't rung sooner.\n\nPeople are always calling me up. They want me to talk to Lions,\nElk, Moose, and other quadrupeds. I never do. They want me to go on\nInformation Please, or Town Hall, or Breakfast at Sardis. I never go.\nThey want to know what boat to charter for a day's fishing. I always\ntell them. They want to argue. Me, too.\n\nI thought, friends, relatives. Max, maybe--my brother. I thought, We,\nthe People, asking me to appear as a Voice.\n\n\"Sorry--I'm all booked up. Busy. Going to die in a few weeks.\nYes--exactly. Keeps you jumping.\"\n\n\"Phil! This is Paul! I'm down in the lobby!\"\n\n\"Well, come up.\" I gave him the room number.\n\nPaul is the eldest of my nephews--twenty-five now, or perhaps only\ntwenty-four. His last name's Wilson. He is my older sister's only\nson and he reminds me of myself at that age, sometimes. Gaunt and\nhectic--continually outraged by the course of human events and\ncontinually upset by his own doings as well as his failures to do.\nErudite in many things. Phenomenally na\u00efve, all but unteachable, in\nothers. (Maybe I haven't changed as much as I think.) And there is a\ndifference between us of great magnitude. Where I was an interested\nbut lazy mathematician, Paul is a genius; where I was captivated by\nevery discovery of every science and adept at none, Paul was captured\nin earliest childhood by physics. We are temperamentally alike, to some\ndegree. But he concentrated and achieved where I dispersed my attention\nand mastered nothing. He has--as I have--the familial facility for\nexpression; this is the common property of so many of my relations that\nwhen any of them turns out to be inarticulate he is regarded as a sport.\n\nPaul's mother, Georgianna Wylie, was such. Born two years before me,\nstill more years before my brother, sister, half brother and half\nsister, and dispatched to an aunt after the death of my mother--which\noccurred when I was small--she was always a nebulous member of\nthe family. A cumbersome, religious woman who wore plain-colored\ndresses--brown, as a rule--and rolled her hair in tight coils, like\nrusty screendoor springs. An introvert. She sang in the choir somewhere\nand studied for the missionary field. She never made it. Some remote\nWylie cousin fell ill and Georgianna was drafted to take care of her.\nThe illness turned chronic and young Georgianna's assignment became\npenal servitude. She spent twenty years or so as a peon in a prairie\nvillage that straddled a State border. What was never bloom, faded\ngradually; but it did not quite die out. One night in Minnesota at a\ncamp meeting she met a chemistry professor who had gone to the service\nfor a lark. He had it. He got Georgianna pregnant on the spot--or\nwithin harmonium-shot of it--and she died giving birth to Paul.\n\nWilson, the professor, meantime had done the right thing by her; they\nwere married by an uncle of mine.\n\n\"Georgianna,\" my aunt used to say, \"was the most docile, uncomplaining\nhuman being on earth. A true Christian. If she hadn't met that vile\nseducer--that atheist, Willy Wilson--she'd be serving her Lord in some\ndistant land to this very day. She expiated her sin, believe me. The\nnight she died, she said so. 'I'm going, Effie,' she told me. 'Bring up\nthe boy in the Master's steps.' I failed her! Willy Wilson insisted on\ntaking the boy--and brought him up a nonbeliever, like himself. Poor\nGeorgianna!\n\n\"'I know He has forgiven me!' Those were her last words--excepting for\nwhat she said after the delirium set in.\"\n\nMy aunt would frown and shake her head at that point. \"Two more mortal\nhours she lay there, twisting and trying to sit up--with me holding\nher. And the whole time she cursed the name of Wylie with words you\nwouldn't believe a girl like that would know. Of course--she meant\nWilson--it's a common befuddlement. But whenever I think of the\nlanguage she heaped on that evil man, I know what human torture is!\"\n\nIt was one of our favorite family stories.\n\nAnd, needless to say, Georgianna didn't mean Wilson at all. He's still\na good chemistry prof--a husky, redheaded guy whom everybody likes.\nGeorgianna was cursing her own blood the way people curse the day they\nwere born--and for sufficient reasons. She had glimpsed--all but too\nlate--the hypocrisy implicit in Scotch Presbyterianism. The strong,\nlucid mind that burned in silence beneath her clumsy exterior had\nfinally cut through that wall between reason and instinct which men\ncall Faith. Just before her \"delirium\" Georgianna had realized that\nWilly, not Jesus, had forgiven her (or would forgive her) for deserting\nhim after their marriage, for working as a farm cook, and (as the\nresult of over-fatigue) for falling down a back stairs in the ninth\nmonth of her pregnancy, thus bringing about her own demise through\nstubbornness and vanity. She had figured out the family--and Willy too.\nShe got at least one moment of transcendent understanding, and followed\nit with two sound hours of profanity--crowding into the racing moments\nas many repressed sensations of her life as she had time for. Not a bad\njob, on the whole.\n\nAfter Willy had explained it to me, I'd always wished I'd investigated\nGeorgianna more attentively.\n\nThere hadn't been much chance.\n\nPaul--her son--came in. The one we were so proud of.\n\nPushed the door open, kicked the book away, and let the automatic\ncloser snap the lock. He took off a seersucker jacket that had flapped\naround his slatty shoulders. He picked up the book and said, \"Jesus\nChrist. I thought I explained quantum mechanics to you ten years ago!\"\nHe went through my bedroom to the bathroom. A firm, pounding stream.\nHe kicked the toilet handle, missed, kicked again--and it flushed\nresentfully. His jacket had fallen to the floor. When he returned, he\nkicked that. It rose in the air and he caught it. He whipped off his\nshirt.\n\n\"Buy me a drink,\" he said.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Scotch and soda.\"\n\n\"Order it yourself--and order me a coffee.\"\n\nHe went to the phone. I cut one more line, and then tidied up the\nbridge table, stacking things so I could start in quickly where I had\nleft off.\n\n\"I didn't know you were in town,\" I said.\n\n\"I didn't know you were. Took a chance. I had to see a gook who lives\nnear here--so I stopped in. How's Ricky? Recovered now?\"\n\n\"Swell.\"\n\n\"What you down for? Cheating?\"\n\n\"Work.\"\n\nHe considered that, pinching the flared nostrils of a long nose,\npeering luminously over his fist, wrinkling his forehead. \"It's\npossible, anyhow. You're getting pretty old.\"\n\n\"I'm not too old to take you on, Spare-ribs.\"\n\nHis dark eyes twinkled. \"No. You're getting oaken, Phil. Late maturing\nand frost resistant. Someday, though, I'll be like that myself--and\nthen you'll be a wizzled shard who goes around feeling young girls.\nI'll bring over a pretty one to bait you up, and when you reach for\nher, I'll wallop you till they have to put you in an iron lung.\"\n\n\"By God, I believe you will!\" I was laughing. \"How's physics?\"\n\nHis face became taut. \"Don't you know Congress will crucify you for\nmerely asking?\"\n\nPaul worked for Johann Brink, at the Belleau Lab. For the Atomic Energy\nCommission. Brink had picked him from a prepared slate of geniuses at\nM.I.T., Caltech, and several other schools. Paul was that good.\n\nI said, \"Congress has got one of my arms pinned down already and a hole\nin my foot, besides. If you don't want to tell me how physics is--I'll\ntell you. Put it this way. There was an atmosphere at Eniwetok you\ndidn't like--\"\n\n\"What do you know about that?\" he said swiftly.\n\n\"I just listen to what Truman says,\" I answered, \"and then I\nextrapolate.\" I shook my head. \"It's funny. As soon as anybody has a\ndose of military security, he gets the soldier's creed--assumes people\nstop thinking because certain thoughts are classified. Everything\nabout atomic energy is secret, hunh? Well--who has Brink been\nseeing, lately? Who was he photographed with? Old man heavy water.\nSo now you come in here--looking like an underfed caribou with the\nwind up--and what must I think? That your little cadre of nuclear\nphysicists is fooling with the hydrogen-helium cycle and getting\nhotter than the rotor in a turbo-jet. You're scared you'll figure out\nthat one-thousand-times-more-powerful-than-Nagasaki bomb. The atomic\ncloudmaker. The continental broom. The universal gene-mangler. Or crack\nlight metals or separate isotopes by heat. Don't tell me if I've read\nyour mind, doctor. I would rather be calm in my surmises than fearful\nI might say something in my sleep that could be checked. Do you guys\nreally think it is smart to cause officials to go around positively\nannouncing that the number of bombs we have in our beloved stockpile\nis smaller than anybody who knew the prewar radium production could\nfigure out? When you discuss atomic 'weapons' in the press--without\nspecifying--doesn't it seep into the dull heads of us laymen that,\nfor instance, hot isotopes would make a nifty charge for ordinary\nhigh-explosive bombs--against warships, for example? And can't anybody\nmake a pile, now--and start the isotopes flowing? Crop-dust cities? And\ndon't you incessantly talk too much about how long it will be before\nyou can do thisa and thata? Remember when your spokesmen were telling\nus of the inutility of thorium? Cannot we, the plain people, add and\nsubtract neutrons in our heads? Aren't you protesting too much now\nabout how long it will be before you can push a couple of hydrogen\natoms into one helium, with great and beneficial new release of energy?\"\n\nPaul was unamused. \"Someday G2 is going to walk in here and walk out\nwith you.\"\n\n\"Thought control,\" I said. \"Never worked. Never will. Whenever a nation\nuses it, you can know that nation's washed up.\" The coffee came in--and\nthe highball. I signed the check and tipped Karl. \"Danke schoen,\" I\nsaid, and turned to Paul again. \"G2 came after me long ago. I wrote a\nstory before the war about uranium bombs and how they would be made\nand what they'd do--and it wasn't accepted until 1945. It went to\ncensorship automatically--and when the censors read it--they hit the\nceiling. Thought there was a leak in the Manhattan District. The only\nleak was in their heads. They sent a major out after me--like the\nhounds on the tail of Uncle Tom--\"\n\n\"I recall the escapade,\" Paul said wearily. \"You lead such a harrowing\nlife, Mr. Wylie. And tell about it over and over.\"\n\nNobody likes that one. I said, \"Sorry,\" and carried Paul his drink. He\nwas sitting in one of my chairs; he had his legs on another; his elbow\nrested on my coffee table. I saw in my mirror that I was flushing a\nlittle: I felt embarrassed.\n\nBut Paul had already forgotten chiding me. \"Phil,\" he said, jiggling\nhis glass to cool his psyche with the ice-clink, \"it gets worse and\nworse. It is beyond horrible. Past hideous. More than unthinkable. And\nit surpasses the unbearable.\"\n\n\"How about--tiresome?\"\n\nHe remembered again--and grinned. \"Quid pro quo? Okay. What do you want\nto talk about?\"\n\n\"It,\" I said. \"You. Any damned thing you please.\"\n\nPaul sipped his highball. And that was another difference. At his age,\nI hadn't sipped. I had guzzled. He appeared to be thinking over what he\nwould like to discuss--as if it were a scientific problem. Finally he\nsaid, \"Phil, what's the matter with us?\"\n\n\"Us who?\"\n\n\"Physicists.\"\n\n\"Religion,\" I said.\n\n\"The faith of skepticism?\" He leered at me. \"If all you've got on it is\nthat old chapter about the law of opposites, never mind.\"\n\n\"Lack of skepticism,\" I answered.\n\nPaul chuckled. \"Goody! Go ahead.\"\n\n\"The religion of a physicist is his belief in pure reason. He has done\nso well with it that he regards it as the whole of consciousness. He is\nlike a man who has discovered the shovel. It digs so much better than\nhis hands that he never looks for--\"\n\n\"--the steam shovel?\"\n\n\"Dynamite.\"\n\n\"Ouch!\"\n\nI laughed. \"Take the _Bulletin_ of the Atomic Scientists. This\njournal has been coming to me ever since you guys got frightened by\nWhat-Hath-God-Wrought-Now. I've been reading it for so long that I\nmaybe ought to carry a pocket radiation meter to be sure I don't read\nit too much. What is this noble publication? An inquiry, it claims,\ninto the means for controlling atomic energy and assuring world peace.\"\n\n\"And a pretty complete, exhaustive inquiry, too.\"\n\n\"Is it? Is it even a scientific inquiry? The atomic bomb will never go\nto war by itself. Men will drop, toss, or convey it.\"\n\n\"Sure. And the _Bulletin_ has taken up every known means by which\npeople can be told what atomic energy is, and why it must be\ncontrolled, and how to do that. Every step of the debate in the House\nand the Senate--and the debates in the United Nations--has been\nfollowed. Every idea my fellow physicists could hit on has been aired--\"\n\n\"With no result.\"\n\n\"No result, my eye! If we hadn't ganged up to make Congress see that\natomic energy was more than a military matter--soldiers would control\nthe whole business right now.\"\n\n\"Grant that. You did get the AEC appointed. The brass doesn't run\nthe whole domestic show. But the world show is run entirely from the\nviewpoint of possible war.\"\n\n\"Do you expect the physicists to be able to do anything about Russia\nand the Iron Curtain--when all the statesmen of all the nations can't\ndrive a pinhole in it?\"\n\n\"Look. There are too many places where you lads aren't really\nscientific at all. You run a magazine to investigate ways for avoiding\natomic war. Men make war. But never in your _Bulletin_ did I once\nsee an article about human motivations. An article by a top-notch\npsychologist. A digest, even, of the existing science of human\npersonality--and how that might apply to war, to atomic bombs, to\ninternational relations.\"\n\n\"Psychology isn't our business. We're specialists.\"\n\nI slightly sneered at him. \"Son, when you are trying to stop wars,\npsychology is the only business you're in! You're in the business of\ntrying to answer the questions about what makes men tick--including the\ntick they make these days that sounds so much like an infernal machine.\nBut you think that's still the reason--business.\"\n\n\"A lot of big shots,\" Paul answered, \"have called on the psychologists\nto contribute. Asked them to speed the work on their science and\nthe science of sociology--so we'll have a solid technical basis for\nestablishing peace.\"\n\n\"Yeah. They have. And not one God-damned super-brain in the barrel\nhas stopped to note for a moment--so far as I'm aware--that the\npsychologists are 'way ahead of them. The science of personality--of\nbehavior--of consciousness and instinct--is well along. The\npsychologists could tell them why men fight. They could tell them\nwhy--so far as present evidence indicates--men are going to go right\nahead having wars--atomic bombs, germs, and all--into the far,\nforeseeable future.\"\n\n\"Why?\" he asked mildly.\n\n\"Oh--because they exploit individualism and never take any\nresponsibility for it. Their hostilities and aggressions, frustrations\nand fears--add up, inside their groups, and burst out, since they're\nnever even noticed, let alone dealt with, on the personal and private\nlevel, where they originate.\"\n\n\"So you have written,\" he grinned. \"So what? Should we pure scientists\nsimply say that peace is hopeless? Quit cold? Or try for peace with\nwhat we do know?\"\n\n\"You and your pure science! Pure is a word that should be forbidden all\nof you. What's pure in a science that deals exclusively with the object\nand rules out the subject doing the dealing?\"\n\n\"Just,\" Paul answered, \"the result. If we hadn't ruled man out of man's\ninvestigations, we'd still believe the earth was flat, the sky was a\ncup, and the stars were holes in it. We'd still be premedieval--\"\n\n\"Yet--when you did establish the objective facts to a considerable\ndegree--set up physics and chemistry and biology--did you boys then\nturn that knowledge and that method upon yourselves?\"\n\n\"You claim,\" Paul answered airily, \"that the psychologists have done\nso.\"\n\n\"Yes. And you needn't pretend I have no right to make the claim. You\nscientists, self-styled, let a few doctors--ridiculed by the public and\nunassisted by you--do the investigating of the consciousness you were\napplying to electrons and protons. They used your method--the empirical\nmethod. They have announced their results steadily for the past half\ncentury. You never even looked them over. So now what are you? Big\ncheeses in the high-tension labs. Mere mice, around the psychological\nclinics. Hunting in your _Bulletin_ for a way to stop war when, really,\nyou haven't a good kindergarten knowledge of what war is and how it\ncomes about.\"\n\n\"If there were enough psychiatrists, then--we wouldn't have to worry?\"\n\n\"Be sarcastic!\" I said. \"All you birds need a good psychiatrist.\" He\nwinced at that, rather sharply, I thought. But I didn't let up on\nhim. \"Guys like you are aware enough to see that perhaps Hitler could\nhave used a psychoanalysis. You are not aware enough to see that any\npresident of any big engineering school could use it, too. Why? Because\nyou think pretty much as he thinks. And neither of you can see that\nyour thinking is largely emotion and only somewhat logic. The great\nblunder of science was to imagine that science could be indefinitely\ndeveloped for the physical benefit of man and never concurrently\napplied to his subjective needs, states, motives.\"\n\n\"It was hard enough for the early scientists to get across the simple\ntruth about objects. If they'd tampered with man's beliefs--they'd all\nhave been burned to death.\"\n\n\"What about you later scientists, then? Would anybody burn old Johann\nBrink to death, today, say for studying Freud?\"\n\nPaul chuckled. \"The picture is beyond imagining.\"\n\n\"Yeah. And I'm sick of it. All your eminent predecessors rushed ahead\ninvestigating stars and bugs and drugs and air currents and left any\ninquiry into man himself to philosophers--who were usually ignorant\neven of physical science--or to James and Wundt and a few trying,\nsolitary people. You didn't ever really apply science. Not all science\nto all reality. You just promulgated pure science along exactly half of\nits possible lines--and called it a job. Looking forever at the light\noutside--and never at the interior dark. Justifiable in a sense. But\nnot bright. And not really scientific at all.\"\n\n\"Hear, hear!\"\n\n\"If the Greeks had worked out math and aerodynamics and built flyable\nair frames--without bothering to study the problem of engines, we\nwould regard them as remarkably skillful imbeciles. They would have\nlittered old Attica with the fusilages of Piper Cubs and maybe B-29's\nthat couldn't get off the ground. In a sense, that's what they did do:\nthey pushed knowledge ahead along certain lines a certain distance--and\nnever followed through. You goons are still doing the same half-baked\njob.\"\n\n\"You want us to quit studying physics and start picking up stuff about\nthe Oedipus complex and sibling rivalry?\"\n\n\"It's too late. That's the assignment for the next civilization.\"\n\nHe just looked at me.\n\nAfter a while, I went on. \"You birds say that knowledge is power--yet\nall your knowledge turns into impotence when you want it used for human\nharmony and peace. What is the power, then?\"\n\n\"Let me guess. Instinct. You see--as an old Wylie reader--\"\n\nI heaved a cushion at him and enjoyed a little of my second cup of\ncoffee. \"Instinct. You dumb bastards! If you were really dedicated\nto science, as you say, the last war would never have happened. And\nthe next one wouldn't be forever imminent. You say you believe that\nscientific knowledge should be free to all. Freedom of knowledge, you\nsay, to put it backwards, is essential to science. But every time the\nnations get miffed at each other--you lice lock yourselves up in the\nnational labs and go to war against each other as much as any soldier.\nThe old herd instinct. The old ego. Intellectual fealty to scientific\nprinciples? You have none!\"\n\n\"I kind of resent that,\" Paul said slowly.\n\n\"You resent the accusation. We who are about to die of the fact resent\nyour behavior. Or should. If you pure scientists were pure guys purely\ndevoted to science, Hitler could never have hired a dozen of the lot of\nyou in Germany, or Stalin coerced six. If you had insisted on keeping\nscience free--the Wehrmacht could never have been armed. If you had\nbeen scientific men, not men practicing science--even granting you\nfelt it necessary to wipe out the Axis--when the deed was done, you\ncould simply have published all the atomic facts and be damned to the\npoliticians and the so-called patriots. Left mankind to work out its\ndestinies in a climate where knowledge was still free. As it is--Russia\nknows enough to wipe up America in a few more years--the patriots and\npoliticians are living in a fool's paradise--your _Bulletin_ sweats\nmonthly to explain that sinister fact--and all you gained by assenting\nto the current lockup of freedom of knowledge is a bureaucratic\nsweatbox to do your work in--and a terrible endless case of jitters.\nYou don't understand behavior well enough to predict the results of\nyour own. Others do. And by far the most probable result of the failure\nof pure scientists to behave purely toward science will be the end of\nthe possibility of further top-level scientific investigation for a\ncentury or two.\"\n\n\"You think I should sit down and write out all the atomic secrets I\nknow and print them and scatter them from a plane?\"\n\n\"I do not. I think you should sit down and face the fact that science\nis precisely as hypocritical as religion--essentially no different\nfrom it--hamstrung in the opposite tendon by the same egotistical\nmeans. Sinful--call it. Guilty. The scientist can see the lack of logic\nin religion--so he rules it out. He doesn't see the import of its\nuniversal existence. The religious man can see that physical science\noffers precisely nothing of value to his inner sensibilities--but\nfails to see the meaning of logic. So he neglects to learn science and\napplies logic only when it flushes his toilet or eradicates his foes.\nYou're both apes.\"\n\nPaul swallowed the last of his ice. For a moment he sat without\nspeaking, the reflected sunlight softening his sharp features. Then\nhe said, \"I hate to think anybody understands anything I don't. And I\nstrongly suspect you do.\"\n\n\"I strongly know I damned well do.\"\n\nThere was another pause. Paul pulled his nose. He drew a breath to\nspeak--and gave up the impulse. His eyes turned inward. Little by\nlittle, his limbs sagged. An expression of the utmost melancholy\npassed like a shadow over his face and was followed by lines of\nresolution--lines I did not like because, visible in them, was\nconflict--unacknowledged discontent mixed with unknown resolve.\n\n\"I'm in a terrible mess, Phil.\"\n\n\"Aren't we--and so forth?\"\n\n\"I want to quit.\"\n\n\"The Lab?\"\n\nHe nodded. \"There is something positively bestial--in the worst\nsense--about going any further with schemes to turn physical theory\ninto mere implements of death.\"\n\n\"Instinct coming to your rescue. I thought you liked the work?\"\n\n\"I did. As long as it was a series of problems. Now--it's getting to be\na cold choice of means for engineering murder. That's no fun. It's like\nspending all your time figuring out how to destroy your own home--after\nyou've already hit on half a dozen nifty ways.\"\n\n\"Why not quit, then?\"\n\n\"Brink--for one. I like the old guy. I'm indispensable to him--I at\nleast pretend. And I feel loyal.\"\n\n\"Talk it over with him.\"\n\n\"No use. He's got the idea that he's engaged in some sort of holy\nmission--a personal war against all tyranny, right or left. That he,\nand we, and guys like us, must keep out in front--from the weapons\nstandpoint--until every tyrant's done for.\"\n\n\"Tyranny, Paul, isn't a gent. It's something inside everybody.\"\n\nHe drew a long, sighing breath and abandoned the subject. Soon, he\ngrinned at me. \"Phil, I came as near praying you'd be in town today as\nI get to prayer. When the telephone operator put me through--I like to\nfainted with gratitude.\"\n\n\"How much,\" I asked caustically, \"do you want to borrow?\" Then I\nwondered if I ought to lend anybody more money.\n\nHe laughed. \"Money, a guy like me can always use. Someday, though, I'll\ntake time out and invent a quicker way to make ice cubes, or a better\nzipper, and get rich and pay you back. I keep a record of the debt on a\nletter I got from Fermi--a cherished possession.\"\n\nHe would, too, I thought. Get rich and pay back--Ricky. \"Hundred bucks?\"\n\n\"That wasn't why I wanted to see you. But thanks.\" He fumbled in his\nmind for some sort of beginning. \"Oh, hell,\" he finally said. \"What I\nwant to say can be put in two sentences. And they're the hardest two I\never had to speak. I haven't tried them on anybody yet. But I've got\nto--with someone. Meaning you. It goes like this.\" For a full minute he\nsat there saying nothing. Then he pushed back his rather long chestnut\nhair and looked at me squarely--with an expression in his eyes that I\nwould remember for a long time, if I had a long time to remember in.\n\"I'm in love. And the girl's a whore.\" He turned away from me, after\nthat, and looked toward the window, toward afternoon blue sky into\nwhich the sun still pointed. His chin was shaking.\n\nI thought of several responses and picked one carefully. \"All right.\nIt's said--the whole thing. It leaves me fairly undisturbed, Paul.\"\n\n\"I guess you don't understand--don't believe me. I mean it. The girl\nactually was--a professional tart. A call girl. What they hold to be a\nhigh-class one.\"\n\n\"So I gathered. I've known several cases.\"\n\n\"It--\" He swallowed hard a time or two. \"Mind if I have another Scotch?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\nHe ordered and began once again. \"I didn't know it--like a dope--for a\nlong time. I can't even tell whether or not knowing it right off--would\nhave made a difference. I suppose it would. I suppose I'd just have\nbeen bitter--because I couldn't afford her. The name's Marcia.\"\n\n\"Nice name.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Look, Phil. It was last winter--after I got back from Eniwetok.\nSome of the directors of a big corporation where I'd been called in\nfor a conference asked me to a party. Marcia was there. I suppose that\nthe other girls were the same.\" He looked at his knuckles. \"Scratch\nthat. I know they were--now. Nobody said anything about it. Just--big\ncorporation hospitality for people like me, whose advice might make\nthem a few more millions. I sat around drinking cocktails and having\na swell time and thinking that the girls had got prettier while I was\nin the Pacific, working. I didn't know they were to take home--like\ncandy--compliments of the management. And Marcia didn't mention the\nfact when I asked her if she'd care to ditch the binge and have supper\njust with me.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"She merely went. She went--and was charming. You see--she caught onto\nmy na\u00efve assumptions, and she was being paid, and it amused her to be\nthought of as just an ordinary girl--a debutante, or the like--for whom\na smart young physicist was falling like a ton of bricks.\" He looked\nat me again. His explanation was coming more easily. \"Do you get the\npicture?\"\n\n\"She must be bright. As well as attractive.\"\n\nHe nodded. \"She has a sense of drama. All I did--feeling suffused that\nevening with love--was to take her to her apartment and bid her a\npleasant good night. She asked me in--sure. Even tried to argue me in.\nBut I was thinking in terms of the long and sentimental pursuit. Or--at\nleast--decorum. Not-the-first-night, baby. That's me. Gentleman of the\nold school. I extracted her phone number--it wasn't difficult--and\nescorted her home, and went out to Brooklyn to my flat--and dreamed\ninto my pipesmoke. Happy me.\"\n\nHe was silent for so long that I said, \"And then?\"\n\n\"I called her up the next afternoon. She was busy.\" A muscle shaped\nitself in his temple, twitched, vanished. \"So I made a date for another\nevening. We had dinner and danced around--at the Stork. On dough you\nlent me. And that evening I accepted the invitation to go into her\napartment with her. You see--she wasn't merely diverted by a dope--but\nshe felt she owed me something. Something that corporation had paid\nfor. Only--\"\n\n\"It was different for her.\"\n\nHe seemed surprised. \"How'd you know?\"\n\n\"I'm thinking of the difference that would understandably exist between\na guy who was paying--and a guy in love with you.\"\n\n\"It upset her.\"\n\n\"So she tried to duck you.\"\n\nHe was still more surprised. \"She told me she'd be out of town for a\ncouple of weeks.\"\n\n\"And you waited--\"\n\n\"--the all-time eager beaver. And phoned. She sounded--odd. She asked\nme if I'd like to come up to her place for dinner--said she didn't feel\nlike going out. She cooked. I know now that she had planned to tell\nme--that night. Instead--well, she didn't. She said she worked some as\na model--which she had done. She said she had an income--not said, just\nhinted. I asked her to marry me--around three A.M.\"\n\n\"Just what did she do about that?\"\n\n\"She cried. Quietly. Told me that she'd taken a fall out of\nmarriage--which was also true. Didn't want to risk it again--not\nwithout being sure of the guy. And said there weren't any such guys\nas--she needed.\"\n\n\"Pretty close to being pretty nice.\"\n\nPaul answered the door, took the drink, and put his own dollar on\nKarl's tray. \"It went that way for about two months. Then she told\nme.\" His ice clinked without his volition. \"The whole story--straight\nout--beginning at dinner one evening in the Waldorf. The guy she\nmarried--a smug, sadistic twirp. Getting divorced. Coming to New York.\nScrimping along on modeling jobs. Running into Hattie Blaine. Ever\nheard of her?\"\n\nWho hadn't? Hattie was madam to Manhattan's upper set. I gave a nod.\n\n\"Hattie sold her on the idea--after quite a campaign. Marcia went\nto work. That was about three years ago. I took her home that\nnight--placidly enough--and went for the walk that lasts till they put\nout the sidewalks again. Then I phoned Johann I was sick--and got sick,\ndrinking. For a month or so more, I tried the old Presbyterian anodyne:\nwork. No use.\"\n\n\"Not when you're young.\"\n\n\"Later?\"\n\n\"It comes with time. Go ahead.\"\n\n\"When I had all but burned out my main bearings, I phoned her. Maybe\nyou won't believe it--but Marcia was going to phone me that evening. We\ntalked it over. She moved to my flat and got a job.\"\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"We might get married.\"\n\n\"She want to?\"\n\n\"She refuses--now. I'm not always certain I want to, myself.\" He stuck\nhis forefinger into his shoe and tugged at the counter. \"And I don't\nknow why. Why I want to marry her. Why I'm uncertain.\"\n\n\"How do your--?\" I broke that off.\n\nBut he got it. \"My friends think she's swell. You gathered she was\ngood-looking. She's a tall, slender gal with light-brown hair and blue\neyes. Quiet. You'd never think--! But I went into that, didn't I? She\nattended college, in Iowa, for a year--and she likes to read. By that I\nmean--\"\n\n\"Nobody else--?\"\n\n\"Christ, no. They think she's a working gal--which she is, now: a nice\nfriend of mine.\"\n\n\"Someday--\" I stopped there--again.\n\n\"Yes.\" His face whitened. \"A putty-chinned, overweight lodge brother\nfrom Keokuk, just tight enough to miss the stony stare and come up with\nthe big hello. It's happened.\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"She went home and had hysterics.\"\n\n\"Bring her over.\"\n\nPaul looked at me thoughtfully. \"You are upset.\"\n\n\"Sure. Now. _You_ are. So bring her over. Not tonight--or tomorrow\nnight. I'm busy.\"\n\n\"What about lunch tomorrow? She's not working and I can slide out.\"\n\n\"Lunch, then. Come around one.\"\n\nThe family's very fond of Paul and a good many of us have tried to\nspoil him. He was one of those irresistible kids--the kind that wears\nglasses, has braces on his teeth, raises bizarre pets, looks up\neverything in the encyclopedia, and is always engaged in a project\nabout five years ahead of his current age--so that he is always in deep\nwater and needs help. Everybody helped Paul. When he grew up--through\none of the most gangling and precocious adolescences in the history of\nyouth--the aunts, sisters, and female cousins used to argue constantly\nabout his looks. Was he genuinely handsome, did he merely have\ncharacter in his face, or was he plain ugly but friendly-looking? The\nargument was never decided. But, at least, he looked better when his\neyesight was corrected, the spectacles were abandoned, and the braces\nhad come off his teeth.\n\nI walked Paul to the door and pulled out my bill-clip. There were a\ncouple of fifties in it and I gave them to him. Not much else--so--when\nhe'd gone, I wrote a check to cash and phoned for Bill the bellman. He\ncame up and took my check and brought the money back in a few minutes.\nI gave him fifty cents--knowing it was too much--knowing I had always\ntipped too much--knowing that I had never cared because I'd been\nbrought up amidst nickel pinchers and because I like to please the\npeople around me--and realizing all of a sudden that I would go right\non being extravagant till the day I died which, luckily for my estate,\nprobably wouldn't be far off.\n\nIn this connection, one trifle should be mentioned which on looking\nover these minutes, I see I haven't got to.\n\nIt crossed my mind at this point, as it had earlier in the day.\n\nI walked over and sat on the arm of a wing chair, staring out at the\nhot evening. New York often has a marine sky to which, being a seaport,\nit is entitled. That night the clouds were low and small--evenly spaced\nand of a size. When the sun hit them, it turned them several different\ncolors--a dappled effect, like a peacock's tail in which orange, not\niridescent blue-green, was the predominating tinge. It was getting on\ntoward seven.\n\nI thought about my dollar-strewing habits and the fact that I probably\nwouldn't much reduce what funds I'd stored up myself and reluctantly\nbut methodically amassed in the coffers of the Connecticut General Life\nInsurance Company.\n\nTom-the-doctor had said the damned excrescence in my craw, if mortal,\nwouldn't be operable. That meant I wouldn't be lying around in some\nhospital, like so many of them, at umpteen bucks a day, while they\nslowly took out my neck. It meant, so far as I was concerned, that a\nday would come along when I would make up my mind the books no longer\nbalanced. A day, that is, when pain or mechanical difficulties made it\nimpossible to proceed with the prose. When I couldn't write any more.\n\nThat day, I would have completed my best effort to get my affairs\nin order. I'd have seen the people I loved--and seen them before it\nwas an ordeal for them to see me. I do not have a horror--but a kind\nof intellectual rage--over meaningless, agonizing, nonproductive,\nlingering existence. In my life, I've seen a great deal of it. I have\nseen people who were a stinking nursing problem twenty-four hours a\nday--who were afflicted with fantastic agony besides--and who implored\ntheir relatives, friends, and physicians to put them out of their\nmisery--but who lived in that state for a couple of years.\n\nBy taking a reasonable amount of thought, and through a certain\namount of luck, I have avoided several of the pitfalls into which man\npersistently topples. Into others, I've all but pitched myself. But\nthis was one I intended to skip. In the kit I carry for boat trips is\na hypodermic syringe and a thin little bottle of morphine tablets.\nI've never had to use them on the broken leg, the gasoline burn, the\nleader-wire cut, for which they are always ready. But, when the day\ncame which, in my judgment, would turn the balance of life, I knew\nprecisely what I would do. I had always known, even before I had owned\nsuch gentle means.\n\nYou dissolve all the tablets--five grains--and fill the barrel of the\nhypo. You jab yourself and push.\n\nSimple.\n\nThe reader of these notes may therefore spare himself--as I spared\nmyself--as all human beings should be spared--the anticipation of death\ndragged out excruciatingly by the miracles of science.\n\nThat is one of the items on the gigantic ledger in which are gathered\nthose details that prove modern man is mad.\n\n Too many people, for one thing,\n when they get to dying,\n want to top Jesus.\n Wanting that,\n inevitably,\n they want to kill as many others as possible\n by Christlike torture--\n forgetting that even He\n had his legs broken\n as a method of mercy killing.\n\nMy apologies, then, for not entering this note sooner.\n\nI sat at the window and I could have pulled out my own hair, or wept,\n(or roared with laughter) on account of Paul.\n\nI knew Paul pretty well, and loved him.\n\nAnd I did not believe he was enough of a realist or a humorist to marry\na harlot and prosper in his soul.\n\nWhoever she was, she would eat him away altogether, or eat away years\nof him. When he found himself out--that he could not accept himself\nwith her--it might be too late. He was stubborn. The ordeal would\ncontinue--brave front and eroding guts. What should a man do?\n\n_I am not my brother's keeper._\n\nHow often that wretched phrase has been used as the alibi for vicious\nneglect!\n\nHow rarely has it served in the intended sense. It is but a warning\nto Peeping Toms, to Meddlesome Matties and Interfering In-Laws,\nOverweening Do-gooders, Paul Prys, the Rabble of the Self-righteous.\n\nWould God the Peepul understood the Words of Jesus had one meaning,\nalways, and often the opposite of the convenient, accepted\ninterpretation; that their Christ appreciated how nothing can be\ntruly said of the Father that does not make a suitable apothegm for\nBeelzebub!\n\nWho asked them to _interpret_, anyway?\n\nHe told them to _act_.\n\n_I am not my brother's keeper._\n\nThe Holy Writ that John Sumner never comprehended, or Anthony Comstock,\nold Cotton Mather, and a dozen billion more.\n\nWhat man, seeing even a pig caught under a fence, does not pull it out,\nalthough it might be the Sabbath?\n\nWhich is germane to the circumstance?\n\nWhat of the Good Samaritan?\n\nI left the sunset hanging over the gray composite of the roofs--the\nwillow trees in penthouse gardens, the chimneypots that twirled with\nsupper cooking, and the fly-eyed walls, the thousand-lenses, the\nbloodshot windows staring at New Jersey--staring from the square sides\nof skyscrapers that towered around me in stiff, unplanned attention,\nwaiting for night, waiting with God knew what stony thoughts and\nbrickish resignation--doubtless for Soviet rockets.\n\nI pushed down my shorts, kicked them onto a bed as Paul had kicked his\njacket, and turned on the water in the tub.\n\nI lay down there, donning the warm garment gradually, the wet, the\nclean, the only other that fits as perfectly as the grave. I turned\noff the tap with my foot. I looked at my skin, which was still fairly\nsmooth, for all the long time I'd worn it, weathered it, and given it\nunnatural chores of excretion.\n\nGood-bye to All That. Good-bye Mr. Chips. And Miss Chippies.\n\n Yak-yak.\n This is the cup.\n And\n take this cup from me.\n Nyanh-nyanh.\n I soaped the person.\n The phone rang.\n It does.\nYou get out of the bathtub. You wrap a towel around your midriff and\nmake footprints on your rug. You sit and drip.\n\nThe operator says, \"One moment, please. Rushford calling.\"\n\nIf her boy friend had too many beers on the night before, she hurts\nyour ear.\n\nThis mug must have been rolling.\n\n\"Hello, dear.\"\n\nRickey's voice was as clear as heaven's door-chimes.\n\nI could feel my heart jumping around inside me, trying to straighten\nthings up in a hurry.\n\n\"Hello, Tud.\" It rhymes with \"good\" and doesn't mean anything to\nanybody but us.\n\n\"How are you--you sound--worried?\"\n\nMy banging heart must have left a chair out of place somewhere. I took\na good breath and pushed whatever it was back into the regular design.\n\"Naw. Maybe tired. Been working. Paul was here. I'm worried about\nhim--if that's what you mean.\"\n\n\"I guess so. I called up because I thought maybe you were planning to\ncall me this evening.\"\n\n\"Was.\"\n\n\"Mother and I are going up to Brookses to play bridge. So we'd have\nbeen out, if you'd have called. What about Paul?\"\n\n\"He's living in sin with a dame he's nuts about--and he found out after\nhe went overboard that she's an old understudy from Hattie Blaine's\nfinishing school for young ladies.\"\n\n\"Oh, dear.\" Rickey can put all her compassion into two syllables--and\nit's compassion enough for a saint.\n\n\"I was dawdling around here cogitating ways and means--\"\n\nShe giggled. \"In the tub, I bet.\"\n\n\"Think what Socrates accomplished in a tub. Not to mention Archimedes.\"\n\n\"The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,\" she replied amiably.\n\"Then there was that show-girl who bathed in champagne. Her tub landed\nher in jail. Any number of people have opened their arteries in tubs.\nThey put tubs under guillotines--north end. A tub cuts both ways,\ndear--\"\n\n\"What should I do, then? Maybe you take dust baths. Maybe that makes\npeople brighter. The genius is a quaking mass of emotional mincemeat.\nHasn't told a soul but me. Dumped it in my lap. Regarded it as an Act\nof God that I happened to be here when the confessional mood came over\nhim. Typical physicist--solve any equation but the human.\"\n\nRickey said, \"Did you see her?\"\n\n\"Tomorrow. Lunch.\"\n\n\"It just won't work--for him.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Is he--terribly--?\"\n\n\"The works. Head-over-heels.\"\n\n\"Oh, _dear_! Has it been long?\"\n\n\"Six-seven months.\"\n\n\"Then--it could take him six or seven years to--\"\n\n\"Some kind of female arithmetic. But probably solid.\"\n\n\"You could call up Hattie and talk to her and find out--\"\n\n\"I've considered that. What do I ask Hattie? Is Marcia sincere--like\nsincere in a Freddie Wakeman character?\"\n\n\"Marcia?\"\n\n\"M'm'm'm.\"\n\n\"If it was only Dolores! Or Fern or Pearl!\"\n\n\"More woman-palaver. And it's Marcia. And she was in college for a\nwhile. She reads books.\"\n\n\"You could ask if she's sweet. You know what to ask, dope.\"\n\n\"I will pull a low-brimmed hat over my eyes, slip a roscoe into my\npocket, print up a few dozen private-eye calling cards, and fare\nforth--\"\n\n\"It would help to know something more about her than Paul's feelings.\nThen call me up. How's the work?\"\n\n\"Oh--a needle in every haystack.\"\n\n\"You ought to have a little fun.\"\n\n\"I'm enjoying every paragraph.\"\n\n\"Why don't you call up Murray's and take some more lessons? Maybe if\nyou put in enough roadwork and a few more thousand dollars--you could\nfinally learn to tango.\"\n\n\"Damn your pretty eyes! Why don't you study how to follow?\"\n\nRicky laughed. \"No fooling! You work too much. If you don't play some,\nyou'll burn yourself out in another forty-six years. You've been\ngetting stale around here.\"\n\n\"Tell me about the birds and the flowers and Popcorn.\"\n\nPopcorn is one of the cocker pups--all white. Quite a dog. Popcorn had\ngot into the garbage pit and trapped himself for two hours. There had\nbeen a squall. The wind had blown over the delphiniums. The 2-4-D I'd\nsprayed around was already wilting weeds that had defied generations of\nher forebears. She was going to dig up and separate the crocuses in the\nrock garden. She had decided I wouldn't finish building the water lily\npool for another year and she was planning to use the excavation for\ncomposting. There were two young downy woodpeckers and an oriole at the\nbird feeding station that afternoon.\n\n\"Don't work too hard,\" she repeated. \"And have some fun.\"\n\n\"I'm weary and I'm bored and I'm lonely.\" God knew I was lonely, anyhow.\n\n\"It's good for you.\"\n\n\"I hope you starve emotionally.\"\n\n\"It is a big bridge party and I am going to sit beside Mr. Teel.\"\n\nMr. Teel is an aging squire who lives in the lush Genesee bottom land\nand can't keep his hands off. I was laughing. I was also biting back\nthe desire to tell her to drive to Buffalo and grab the night plane.\n\n\"The trouble,\" I said, \"with ladies and Mr. Teel is that they fidget\nand flush, squirm and put up with it. Personally, I think they like it.\"\n\n\"Should I scream?\"\n\n\"Lord, no. Worst possible technique. When you bid six spades and start\nplaying it and you notice something on your knee of about the weight\nof a man's hand, there are three good possibilities. Relax and enjoy\nit. This is what I recommend. However, you can also idly lower the tip\nof your cigarette and apply it. The third, very good, move is to lean\nforward as if staring myopically at the dummy--reach under the table\nyourself--and grab back in a way Mr. Teel will never forget.\"\n\n\"You know everything, don't you?\"\n\n\"Need you ask?\"\n\n\"Except that we're wasting a lot of money on Long Distance. Are you\nsure you're all right?\"\n\nWomen's ears! \"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Then good night.\"\n\n\"Night, darling.\"\n\nWhat dripped now was not eau de Croton Reservoir. It came from Wylie's\npores.\n\nAlmost--I called her back about the plane.\n\nShe had sounded fine--thank God!\n\nIt was not always so.\n\nWe had been married, Ricky and I, for two years (was it three?) and\nbuilt a candy-box house on an island in Biscayne Bay (before the sixty\nsewers of Greater Miami belched the water sludge-thick) when she fell\nsick. Brucellosis, they called it, or undulant fever. In cattle, Bang's\ndisease. The cows abort. They told us it was common everywhere in our\nfair land and caught from unpasteurized milk, or cheese, ice cream,\nor meat improperly inspected. The pasteurization laws in those days,\nthey said, were altogether inadequate; inspection was bad; and cattle\nowners--they said further--were loath to lose their stricken animals.\nFor a small bribe, we were told, they might be warned of impending\ninspection. Thereupon, they could drive the afflicted members of their\nherds into hiding while the government agent went by. They were in\nbusiness (after all) and a buck is sacred; so are American sacred\ncattle sacred; let the public look after itself. Some of the cowmen\ndon't believe the germ theory, anyhow; they think hygiene is one more\nracket like their own. And some, of course, like a certain proportion\nof the men in every business, would sell you leper's dung (neatly\npackaged--nationally advertised) if there were money in it.\n\nThey sold the milk.\n\nWe drank it.\n\nSome get brucellosis--some not. Some hundreds of thousands of free\nAmerican citizens. It is one of the marvels of our Age.\n\nSome die.\n\nSome heal themselves, in due time.\n\nOthers, like my Ricky, drag out the years in pain, debility, and\nsorrow. Fits of fever seize them. They take to their beds for days, for\nweeks, for months--racked and suffering and exhausted, sick at their\nstomachs, sick in their heads. The gram-negative bacterium is (they\nsay) neurotoxic. It inflames the ganglia of the brain. The patient may\nexpect not merely fever and pains, but constant anxiety, causeless\nfears, a collapse of the calmest temper, hysterias, heebie-jeebies,\nscreaming meemies, spasms, and incomprehensible alarms.\n\nYou must try to ignore it, Mrs. Wylie. Personality changes occur owing\nmerely to the nature of your disease. Devote your (changed) self to a\nconsideration of the change as physical phenomenology. You are lucky\nto get your trouble diagnosed. Hundreds of thousands of undulant fever\nsufferers spend their lives running from one doctor to another without\navail. They're told they have tuberculosis, intestinal poisoning, brain\ntumor, neurasthenia, and bad dispositions. Medicine is--though the\nfact's not medicine's fault--very laggard about recognizing this common\nmalady. Consider yourself lucky.\n\nRicky threw into the tormented years her fortitude. She said she was\nfortunate. They knew the name of her ailment and they were doing all\nthey could.\n\nHospitals and clinics, X rays and tests, sulfas and antibiotics,\nvaccines and sterile sores--a little improvement, a red-hot\nlocalization and the hospital again. Coming fine! Another year or two\nand you should feel--pretty much your old self. Patience. Courage.\n\nWell. She had plenty.\n\nThe doctors--the dozens, the scores, mauled and mangled and encouraged.\n\nWe have great hope for this new immunizing serum.\n\nShe took it.\n\nStubborn case, Mrs. Wylie. You seem to be especially sensitive to\nbrucella.\n\nStreptomycin holds out hope.\n\nWe find it, in a chronic case like yours--ineffectual.\n\nSome new mold is what we are searching for.\n\nThe years--two--three--five--continued with their hopes and horror.\n\nIt may be, Mrs. Wylie, that brucella sterilizes women in the same way\nit causes cattle to abort. Not all the sufferers--but a percentage. Of\ncourse, we aren't sure. But I wouldn't set my heart on having children,\nnow. You're not in condition now, anyway; and when you've recovered,\nyou may find it is impossible.\n\nShe is a game girl, Ricky.\nTwo years ago, she began to get well.\nWe have had our fingers crossed--\ncrossed--and held tightly in the clamp of one more hope.\n\nI thought about her.\n\nThese things--and how she was still that same calm girl.\n\nAnd how could I tell her, that perhaps it was my turn?\n\nGradually I got myself into the tub again.\n\nI shaved, then.\n\nWe are all afraid of Five O'clock Shadow. Such fears, indeed, have\nbecome paramount for most of us.\n\nYuts.\n\nWhat was Paul's idiom?\n\nCipher-faces--standing around waiting for somebody to put a minus one\nin front of them. Hitler, Stalin, or Huey Long. Zero-pusses, he called\nthem. Zed-mugs. Neck-heads. Neonightmares. Two-legged negatives.\n\nI shaved, thinking I was positive, anyhow. Wait till they focused their\nbright peepers on that biopsy!\n\nI wished I had a little music to cheer up the joint. All I could hear\nwas passing cargo on Madison Avenue, the elevator ruminating in its\nshaft, and some dame in the bathroom above me talking to a little\nkid with the motherly tones of a cement mixer. The sweet child was\nanswering in words I could not distinguish, but it knew how to mix\nconcrete, too.\n\nRicky and I haven't owned a radio for years--except one that sneaked\ninto the house in a record-player and we didn't even notice we had\nthat, for eight months. A man in this world encounters more than he can\nbear of the sort of thing that radio purveys; it is Heaven's own mercy\nif he can avoid a part of it. The printed ads and the billboards get\nyou willy-nilly; and second-class mail is always fooling you. You are\neternally exposed to entertainment by chumps in the flesh.\n\nBut when I want a cerebral clyster I want something that won't wash my\nbrain out. And while I can eat with my mouth I propose to get along\nwithout the nutrient enema. Every orifice to its rightful function, I\nsay.\n\nBut now I wanted music.\n\nSo I called Bill-the-bellman again. To think (as you are beginning to\nsee) is to act, with me. Sometimes. And the Astolat doesn't have what\nis correctly called piped radio in its rooms. Bill brought up a machine\nwith knobs like the eyes of dead fish and an illuminated grin for a\ndial--such a grin as may be seen on any alligator lamp.\n\nI spun through about eighteen of my fellow citizens who were uniformly\nengaged in lying to the public and finally hit a girl with too much\nrosin on her voice, which was what I wanted.\n\n \"When a Broadway baby goes to bed\n It's early in the morning--\"\n\nI did a feather and a few more Peabody steps and a couple of advance\nleft turns.\n\nThe dame put a mute on the bridge of her nose.\n\nBroadway dreamed off to her lullaby.\n\nShe began, \"Say it with music--\"\n\nI thought of Palmer Gymnasium on the Princeton Campus in about\n1922--the June, the quiet trees, the cigarettes like cherry-colored\nfireflies, the flappers, a cicada competing with strings and woodwinds,\nand me outside because I didn't have the spondulix and the tux. My\nthroat thickened with something sharper than carcinoma.\n\nIf only I had known then what I know now.\n\nAnd suddenly I remembered that I _had_ known.\n\nIn that musky dark, in the dark of a thousand other disappointed\nevenings, in the beam and blister of every day, I had been tightening\nthe spring for the run. The anticipated journey--the slatting of my\nchoo-choo train around its silver track.\n\nI knew then because I was doing it.\n\nAnd I knew now, but differently, because it was done.\n\nThat poignancy was not this.\n\nBeneath the fragrant maples and beyond the envious desuetude had burned\nthe gathering assurance.\n\nThe response to challenge.\n\nSpondulix, tux, and young girls' tongues, and stingers, too.\n\nIncidents.\n\nRepressions, Mr. Wylie. Inferiority, Phil.\n\nWhat had kept me so steadfast despite my passions of despair? Despite\nall music--despite the Weltschmerz of underprivileged sophomores?\n\nI looked at my old friend, The Typewriter.\n\n\"Somehow they'd rather be kissed To the strains of Chopin or Liszt--\"\n\nThe more we succeed the more we fail.\n\nWhen I am gone, who'll write on you and say the same things better?\n\nPlenty of them, Philip.\n\nYou never put the bar up where even you could jump.\n\nWho ever did?\n\nIt was damned near eight o'clock.\n\nI got dressed fast.\n\n\n\n\nPART TWO\n\n _Tarantella_\n\n\n1\n\nThe desk clerk told me that Mrs. Prentiss had Room 1603--the apartment,\nnot only next to mine but accessible from mine by a set of doors--now\npartly locked: I'd turned the key in the door on my side and tried the\nother, when I'd arrived.\n\n\"I thought,\" I said, \"that she was a few floors down--\"\n\n\"She moved this afternoon, Mr. Wylie. To get out of the heat, where\nthere was more air.\"\n\nOr more something.\n\nI hung up and looked at the doors.\n\nThe promise not to make a pass at her naturally crossed my mind. It\nwas, evidently, a one-sided commitment. At this season there weren't\nmany guests in the hotel so she'd had no difficulty in moving near me.\nI wondered whether she would admit it or pretend it was a coincidence;\nand bet the latter way. _Honi soit qui mal n'y pense pas._\n\nI checked myself in the mirror. Then I knocked on her door. The proper\nhall one.\n\nShe wore the gardenias in her hair--a white dress with a gold border\nstenciled around the hem--and her shoes and pocketbook were gold, too.\nThe big diamond had evidently been sent down to the safe-deposit boxes,\nor left on her bureau--depending on which sort of person she was. Her\nhair was done up--with the curls among the flowers. She looked as\nattractive as she intended. Cool, too.\n\n\"Am I stunning?\"\n\nI nodded. \"But not ravishing. If the Hindus had untouchables at the top\nof the caste system--white priestesses, say--you'd qualify.\"\n\n\"You obviously don't know much about priestesses.\"\n\nI rang for the elevator.\n\n\"That,\" I pointed, \"is my demesne, abode, diggings--\"\n\n\"I know. I asked. And moved.\"\n\n\"Why, exactly?\"\n\nI suppose she wanted her eyes to be interesting. They were\njust--disturbed. \"To tease you.\"\n\n\"Tease _whom_?\"\n\nShe blushed the peach tinge I'd noticed before. \"Me.\" Then she shook\nher head at herself. \"Because I'm lonely, maybe. Because I have a kind\nof phobia about hotels. I don't know.\"\n\nI took her to the Cr\u00e9puscule--the steps down and the moonlit air\nconditioning--the blue leather benches--the violin, cello, and piano\naccordion--the little dance floor in the corner with mirrors on two\nsides--and the French cuisine. The trio there has rhythm and the\ncellist plays maracas when he feels like it, so you can rumba.\n\nShe had a dry Martini and I had tomato juice. Then I asked her and\nwe danced a couple of fox trots. She was a little bit nervous for a\nminute or so and presently she wasn't. I asked the trio for a bolero;\nthe two other couples quit; and we danced alone. Afterward we danced\nto a piece called \"Cu-Gu-Tu-Ru\" which is also known as \"Jack-Jack.\"\nShe understood, technically, about dancing the rumba and she gave some\nindication of feelings for the part that is more instinctive than\nplanned. Once or twice she tried to lead me--without being aware of it.\n\nIf you know a good deal about dancing, you can tell a good deal about\ngirls that you'd be a long time in learning by any other means. People\nare animals--and dancing among animals is several hundred million years\nolder than the species that calls itself Homo sapiens. There was rhythm\non the planet long before there were ballrooms. So you can expect\nvestiges, at least, in woman-the-animal, of impulses which belong\nto the skeleton, muscles, and nerves and not to society--vestiges\nspecifically interpreted, disciplined or repressed by the individual in\nyour arms. The woman's dancing says, This is what the world has done to\nme--or hasn't. And it is the same for men--which is why women, who live\ncloser to their instincts, like to dance.\n\nThis circumstance, alas, has for so long been repudiated by our\nforebears that the dancing of most American males is rude and boorish\nand clumsy, at once self-assertive and self-conscious, unimaginative,\ndisrhythmic, unsubtle--paranoid. It is what the world has done to them.\n\nYou can talk to a woman all night and persuade her of nothing.\n\nYou can hold her hand and a chemical change will take place in her.\n\nYou can kiss her in certain ways and the Old Memories will do what\nrhetoric cannot.\n\nAnd you can dance with her.\n\nIf you can dance.\n\nYou can dance by fox trot, the American way, the integration of\nsurfaces. We know the same steps, the same skills, the same beat. We\nlook well together. We make a matched pair. The thresholds of our\nsentiments mesh, dovetail, tongue-and-groove. We are, indeed, in the\ngroove.\n\nYou can use the dance of conquest and gradual assent, the tango.\n\nOr the rumba.\n\nWhich is African. Studied teleology, stylized candor, libido embedded\nin the music, suspended in cadences, arrested, sustained--beyond\nintellect, this side of ecstasy. It is a sophistication that northern\ncountries never knew of--a primitive deliberation, a hot-blooded\ncoolness. For not knowing, they are punished by going without--and\nin other, obscure fashions. Very few northern women and fewer men,\nexcepting among the young, are able to discover the essence.\n\nThey rumba--they say.\n\nThey wave their tails like pennants, the oscillating flesh corrupt in\nChristian purity.\n\nYvonne was one of the few.\n\nShe came honestly by the name, I thought.\n\n\"Huguenots,\" she said when we sat down. \"On mother's side.\"\n\nHow can the Americans ever cleanse themselves?\n\nI ordered our dinner.\n\nAgain, she tried to lead--to change her mind--to demur--to say she\nwasn't hungry--then to consider the cold roast beef.\n\n\"You'll like it,\" I said. If she had insisted, I'd have let her order\nfor herself. But she didn't want anything in particular to eat. She\nwanted to see what happened to her slight, vain whims. So I ignored\nthem.\n\n\"You can have another Martini.\"\n\n\"I guess I must?\"\n\n\"Sure. Must. Dinner will take a few minutes and we won't dance again\ntill after.\"\n\n\"You're terribly positive.\"\n\n\"Nonsense,\" I said. \"You're used to men who have been beaten to death\nby women before you got hold of them.\"\n\nHer eyes fixed on me, dilated, and she laughed. \"Rol.\"\n\n\"Among all the others. Maleness has just about disappeared in your\nnative land, sister. The boys are all brought up by women, and taught\nby women in school, and then they go to work to support women by\nmanufacturing and distributing the things women think they want. It's\ncalled civilization--and actually it's only the highest form barbarism\nhas yet reached. Trinket-and-gadget society. Domestic convenience\nsociety. A society that holds a handkerchief to one end and sets\nthe other on a flush toilet--a society that aims to make the linen\ngermicidal and the toilet silent, colored, and perfumed.\"\n\n\"And men? What do they do? Use fingers and squat?\"\n\n\"You're learning too fast. Live outdoors, avoid neurosis, and so escape\nthe common cold. I think they could stand for the flush toilet--but\nthey would be more concerned in getting the nitrogen back to the\ntopsoil than they would in the orchid rims. First things first and a\nconscious sense of responsibility for the future--that's us boys.\"\n\n\"Phooie!\"\n\n\"Who do you like--to go on from lunch? Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, George\nRaft, Rudolph Valentino, Gregory Peck, or some of the new boy friends\nof the bobby-soxers I'm too old to remember the names of?\"\n\n\"None of them. And I never saw Valentino in a picture.\"\n\n\"Meaning him.\"\n\n\"At least--he acted as if he had manners.\"\n\n\"On the contrary. He did, in a mannerly way, several things banned by\nthe book of etiquette.\"\n\n\"Isn't that the same?\"\n\n\"From the woman's viewpoint.\"\n\n\"Don't you ever get tired finding imaginary inferiorities in women?\"\n\n\"Did I say it was inferior? It isn't. More realistic, in fact.\nDon't you, on the other hand, prefer to be appreciated for\ndifferences--rather than to worry over the need of proving identities?\"\n\n\"_Modern Woman--the Lost Sex._ You got it out of the book.\"\n\n\"It's a pretty good book.\"\n\nYvonne watched the waiter exchange a filled glass for the empty one.\nShe seemed to want to defer talking while she caught up with something\nin her mind. She sipped, and stared at the people eating dinner in\nthe azure haze the place calls light, and sipped again. She had a\ngood-sized mouth with a pretty shape: the lipstick went where the lips\nwere, and nowhere else.\n\n\"I wanted to talk to you. I was ready to pester you. That's why I moved\nnext door. I was going to let you find it out when we came back this\nevening. I was going to ask you in. I'm not afraid of you.\"\n\n\"Smallest achievement in the history of courage.\"\n\n\"I want to figure out what to do about Rol. You see--I'm still crazy\nabout him.\"\n\n\"Send him to a good psychiatrist.\"\n\nShe exhaled with gentle violence. \"Try it!\"\n\n\"You said he was very upset--promised you anything. That was your\nchance to make him promise psychiatry. You seem to have read books\nabout it--\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"Not many, really. You don't understand. Rol wasn't\nin the least bit upset because of what _he'd_ done. He was upset about\nmy attitude over it. He said it was a 'trivial incident'--and told me\nhe loved me--and said I was frigid and what did I expect. He said he\ndidn't consider he'd been unfaithful to me--and talked on and on about\nbeing 'human.' Imagine!\"\n\n\"Are you?\"\n\nThe blush came again. She spoke in a low voice, \"Mostly.\"\n\n\"People,\" I said, \"don't want to know about people, nowadays.\"\n\n\"Did they ever?\"\n\n\"Here and there--by fits and starts. They had a short spell of wanting\nto find out about themselves through reason--a couple of centuries\nago. Innumerable spells of trying to figure themselves out through\nreligions.\"\n\n\"But not now?\" She was sarcastic. \"Nobody knows anything now?\"\n\n\"The average college graduate doesn't even know where he is in relation\nto other objects. Couldn't point to the ecliptic. Or explain the\nchanging seasons. Couldn't point toward the sun, at night. Friends of\nmine, well-known writers, belong to a society that believes the earth\nis flat. There's another buddyship of boobs who think the earth is\nhollow and we live inside. Till the government began financing research\nfor war, America spent twice as much on astrology as on scientific\ninvestigation. The folks would rather, by twice, be fooled than find\nout the truth.\"\n\n\"We've made a lot of progress.\"\n\n\"Individuals have learned a lot. The people ignore it. They\nare interested in the applications of science--appalled by the\nimplications. Our civilization is just one more swarm of low cheats.\nIt won't last because cheats can't. Only inertia sustains the current\nshape of it, and that momentum is encountering more friction every\nday. A republic of crooked dumbbells can't safely use the instruments\nof clever men. People not only don't know how to behave, they don't\neven know they are ignorant. Yet in the main, people are thoroughly\nsatisfied with themselves. In view of sure catastrophes that loom on\nevery margin toward which they hurry--the very self-satisfaction of\npeople is the statistical guarantor of their doom. Hence that crack\nabout pride going before a fall.\"\n\n\"I think people behave rather well, on the whole.\"\n\n\"Sure. They'll even be decent about doomsday. Blame somebody else as\nthey perish, like flies, but perish heroically. A pity.\"\n\n\"You can't depress me!\"\n\nI laughed. \"Bear in mind that you brought up that word 'depress.' I'm\nnot depressed. I've had to learn how to get along in the certainty that\nall I was taught to live for is either rubbish or a dream of a future\nthat lies ages beyond the public expectation. People don't know--won't\nknow--can't know, in their present frame of mind. Take your little\nproblem, for example.\"\n\nHer face changed. Interest replaced antagonism. \"So all right. Take my\nproblem. Kick that around awhile!\"\n\n\"You believe in evolution?\"\n\n\"A person can still believe in evolution--and in God!\"\n\n\"Certainly. Something exists in men which they've given the name\nof all their gods. That's fact. And evolution is a fact, too--a\nsimple reality. A minority of the educated people in our land\nhave accepted the fact that man's body evolved from the bodies\nof other animals. A still smaller per cent realize that man's\nmind--personality--spirit--also must have evolved from animals and the\nanimal equivalent: instinct. The question is, How? Most of such people\nbelieve that it is the supreme function of the conscious human mind to\nrepress instinct. That's their answer.\"\n\n\"But not yours!\"\n\n\"I believe it's the function of consciousness to rediscover instinct,\nunderstand it, and pursue it--in the ways that it has to go. That it\ndoes go--people by the billions to the contrary notwithstanding. So\nfar, people have made only blind efforts in that direction. Unconscious\nefforts. Their religions--according to the soundest hypothesis I've\nencountered--are the results of such attempts: expressions of animal\ninstinct, as it appears in men--and in men wholly unaware of what they\nare expressing.\"\n\n\"Is that Freud?\"\n\n\"It's Jung. Freud never got that far. He merely demonstrated that\ninstinct exists in man. The id--he called it. The raw cravings of the\ninfant. To Freud--the id was pretty much what sin is to a preacher. A\ndisgraceful bunch of bestial lusts and impulses. Society--through the\nparents, mostly--disciplined the id by disciplining the infant and the\nchild; this produced the superego--or conscience, according to Freud.\nAs far as Freud could see, man would always live amidst conflicts set\nup between his id and whatever superego, or culture, had been hammered\naround it--plus his own common sense, if any. Dismal view.\"\n\n\"And Jung?\"\n\n\"Well--Freud showed that instinct exists as a basic motivation of\nmankind. Not that anybody but a few psychiatrists have ever paid\nattention to the discovery. But there it was--the beginning of a\nscience of psychological evolution of people. Jung asked what instinct\nwas and how it worked. Jung found out several things Freud only began\nto realize. For instance, Jung looked at animals and perceived that\ntheir instincts unfold in them, individually, as they mature.\"\n\n\"You mean, new-born beavers don't start building dams immediately?\"\n\n\"Exactly. So the id of infancy is only part of instinct. More instinct\nappears as the person ages--which is in line with the nature of\ninstinct in all other living beings. Next, Jung noticed that instinct\nin animals, and in primitive people who hardly ever use reason and\nlogic abstractedly, takes care of the whole life cycle of every\nspecies. So it cannot be viewed as mere lawless, infantile lust. If\nit were only that, animals, and primitive men, would tear up each\nother and themselves; all life would commit suicide. From the animal\nviewpoint--instinct includes whatever animals do that men would call\n'good,' 'virtuous,' 'unselfish,' 'self-sacrificing,' and so on. Do you\nfollow?\"\n\n\"I think so.\"\n\n\"There are--so to speak--checks and\nbalances--compensations--counterinstincts. That's the idea embodied\nin Chinese philosophy. In Taoism, for example. That's the concept\nsymbolized by the yin and the yang. It's the idea embodied in Toynbee's\ntheory of history, too--right up till the present, when his own ego\nconfuses its own description of instinct with history. At that point,\nToynbee decided that the Church of England--his personal patternization\nof instinct--might salvage civilization. Which, of course, is pathetic.\nBut let's drag this bundle a little bit further before we drop it and\ngo back to you. If all animals have a proper pattern of instinct--man\nhas. But man is to some extent conscious--and therefore to some degree\nable to separate out a personal identity of himself--an ego--from\nthe older, more powerful compulsions and countercompulsions of his\ninstinct. And he has used his consciousness--largely--not to maintain\nand enhance the liaison between his ego and the forces that drive him\nstatistically forever--but to swell up his ego and to conceal from it\nthose fundamental forces.\"\n\n\"I don't understand that.\"\n\n\"Well--man tries to deny he's an animal. Or to hide the fact. To call\neverything that is animal subhuman. To call every success he makes\nhis own achievement. To call every disaster no fault of his own.\nBecause he is conscious--he has slowly learned to extend the physical\ncapacities of every kind of animal--for his own, immediate benefits.\nHe has telescope-microscope-X-ray eyes. He has atomic energy muscles.\nBrighter light at night than the fireflies. He can fly faster than\nany bird--speed through the water faster than any fish--store food\nfor decades when a ruminant or a pelican can store it only for days.\nHe has even developed quite a few techniques that have no good animal\ncorrelative, though most of man's inventions were made ages before\neven apes appeared on the planet. Man has merely learned. But he\ntells himself he discovered and invented. It gives him a preposterous\narrogance. And that's largely what he has used consciousness to swell\nup.\"\n\n\"We just skip his ideals--and philosophies--?\"\n\n\"No. But we note that, to extend his physical capacities, he has\nused logic and reason. He has sometimes tried to employ them on his\nconsciousness; but never--except intuitively, till recently--has it\ndawned on him that he is usually unconscious of his own real motives.\nThat his cultures represent guesses--or trial and error. You take a\ncreature that is governed by instinct--and doesn't realize it--one\nwho confuses instinct with deity and identifies deity with himself--a\ncreature who has made logic work in every dimension of the objective\nworld and is extremely smug about himself in view of the results--and\nyou have an animal cut off from its own nature and hence from Nature\nitself. Modern men can't tell whether anything they think or say or\ndo is suitable to them, or merely the result of a tradition--as the\nsemanticists claim--or whether, perhaps, their motives rise in a desire\nto hide instinct, to deny the animal, to inflate ego, or what not.\"\n\n\"I'm confused again.\"\n\n\"Put anybody through psychoanalysis--all the way, not just far\nenough to scare the wits out of him, and so make him hide his fear\nfrom himself by turning upon and ridiculing psychoanalysis--and that\nperson will discover there is more instinct in him that he didn't know\nabout than there is ego that he knew. Awful shock. Then put the same\nperson through an analysis by a Jungian, and he will get numberless\nclues about the images and dreams and the feelings we have which\nare intended, by Nature, to make us conscious of the whole of human\ninstinct _as a pattern_.\"\n\nYvonne shook her head. \"Let's talk about me.\"\n\nI wanted--I always want--to continue that line of explanation. It seems\nlogical to me that man would have in his head the means to recover a\nconsciousness of instinct--and to find, in that recovered awareness,\nnot just the psychological history of the past, as man finds history in\nhis body, but intimations of the future, which also exist in his body,\nas countless extrapolating anthropologists have shown. There must be\nsome way, I have always thought, to shove aside the immature id and\nalso the disguising images, taboos, compulsions, and descriptions of\nthe modern superego, and to see what lies beyond them both--looking\nbackward and looking forward. Having at long last followed Jung's\ninquiry into this process, having grasped his techniques and repeated,\nthrough idioms of my own personality, the same empirical experiences\nwhich Jung has demonstrated in hundreds of other human beings as well\nas in societies seen as wholes--I have been afflicted with an urge to\nbring the steps to wider attention and understanding.\n\nAnd I suppose I shall try to do so, sporadically, all my life. But I\nrealize now the futility of the effort as a \"cause.\"\n\nI am the man who wanted, from childhood's earliest dreams, to know what\nmen would think in the future. And now that I believe I know I find\nthat--save for individuals--present men cannot even reach toward such\nideas and concepts. Could they, the better world would be at hand,\nand not a mere ignorant wish. It is a simple irony--an operation of\nthe very law I learned--the law that I imagine all men will finally\ndiscover. And, while it supplies me with hope for my species, it\ncondemns me to general incomprehensibility.\n\nIf you wished for the future--and were given it--you couldn't use it\ntoday. Because it is the future.\n\nPhysicists feel this way--and rightly--concerning their urgent,\nbrilliant, all-but-fruitless efforts to explain ideas in comparatively\nfamiliar and acceptable fields--ideas such as Relativity or the Quantum\nTheory. How much more, then, will psychologists feel it! The wide world\nof their awareness has as yet not even a basic glossary among people;\nthey do not yet even use the arithmetic of that science in their daily\nlives.\n\nIndeed, the psychiatrist, the practitioner of certain known principles\nof human psychology, the physician, is still prone to dodge the central\nfact of his science. \"Psychology,\" he says, dogmatically identifying\nhis opinion with the science, \"does not conflict or interfere with\nreligion. There are areas in which the minister or priest is better\nequipped to deal than the psychologist. Psychiatry does not attempt\nto change a man's beliefs. And it is not 'all sex'--as is so often\nclaimed. It is not concerned with sex morals, or any moral law.\"\n\nSo, in his time, the churches made old Galileo lie, too. Made him lie\nto live at all.\n\nAnd so the same churches in our day cause comparably enlightened men to\nlie concerning their knowledge--in order that any people may benefit by\nit at all. In order, truly, to go on living. It is one more expedient\ndishonor of scientists.\n\nFor psychology--though a thousand Presbyterian and Roman Catholic\npractitioners of its minor branches may not admit it--and though ten\nthousand better psychologists lie their faces black--has already put\na period to orthodox religion. The old astronomers did away with the\nold cosmology for all the churches. The new investigators of awareness\nhave done away with the ancient theologies and \"moral\" systems as\ncompletely--whether it takes the people a generation or a thousand\nyears to find it out. Psychology is the scientific investigation of\nwhat man calls awareness and of what prompts him that he is unaware\nof. As such, it inevitably must analyze and resolve all man's beliefs,\nreligions, faiths and the mechanisms of them, as well as his politics,\nhis economics, the motives of his arts, his morals, ethics and sex\nmanners. Why should anybody be surprised that science, turned finally\nupon man's inner self, should disclose different shapes from those\nheld real by Stone Age man, barbarians, and a few later millenniums of\nmen who decree that they are Christian but act more viciously than any\nbeast?\n\nThe disavowing psychiatrists, opportunist weaselers or men who do not\nsee that their science has set philosophy aside, will be historically\nremembered. Their acts will prove the shocking superstitiousness\nof the twentieth century and--in some cases--represent the public\npersecutions, the subjective witchburnings, which show this era to be a\ncontinuum of the Dark Ages.\n\nAs I said earlier, a smug people cannot even find the motive for asking\nif a science of psychology exists, let alone what it has learned.\nAnd we Americans are probably the most self-satisfied people who\never appeared. The whole world starves, brawls, perishes around us.\nOur own philosophy of progress is leading us to swift, continental\nexhaustion--to the resourcelessness of our own progeny. Yet we believe\nwe are doing right and thinking rightly--a great, good, wonderful,\nnear-perfect nation.\n\nIt will take generations of disaster to crack the hull of such\npreposterous self-satisfaction. Only through despair and amidst ruins,\nin all likelihood, will men discover that humility which may lead to\nthe honest assessment of man's vanities, his insane traditions, pompous\nfaiths, patriotisms, and excesses. But there is not much use talking\nabout it or trying to explain. Knowledge cannot fend where the people\nrefuse to know.\n\n\"Did you ever raise dogs?\" I asked Yvonne.\n\nShe had been quietly eating lobster bisque--glancing at me from time to\ntime while I reflected and while I ate, too. She nodded. \"Several.\"\n\n\"Then you've noticed that pups behave in every single way that would,\nin people, be called sinful, immoral, and perverse.\"\n\n\"That's the nastiest thing I ever heard in my life! How could animals\nbe perverted!\"\n\n\"Did I say they were? I merely said--or tried to--that dogs exhibit all\nthe same curious activities your Professor Kinsey found abundant in\nhuman behavior.\"\n\n\"They do not!\"\n\nI grinned. \"Perhaps yours didn't. Perhaps--whenever you saw in your\npups a symptom of any sort of sex activity--you yelled at them. Pulled\nthem apart. Swatted them with a switch--\"\n\n\"I never used a thing but rolled newspapers!\"\n\nI laughed until she saw why. She flushed. I went on. \"You imposed, by\nforce, your sex manners--Episcopalian?--I thought so--on your dogs. If\nyou left them alone--as I do mine--you'd see that pups are every bit as\n'perverted' as people. Grown dogs, too, sometimes. So are wild animals.\nPut a bunch of male monkeys together--without females--\"\n\n\"I detest monkeys!\"\n\n\"They won't mind. Anyhow--segregate the males and they'll turn\nhomosexual. My caustic acquaintance, Dr. Hooton, the anthropologist,\nhas reported it. He says it is 'disgusting'--a curiously unscientific\nterm. The monkeys weren't disgusted, after all. Just having fun,\ngetting relief, being excited.\"\n\n\"What are you trying to prove now?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"That mammalian sexual behavior has a pattern and men\nbelong in it.\"\n\n\"What nonsense! Men know what they are doing! Animals don't!\"\n\n\"Then why was Kinsey able to show that men do just exactly what the\ndogs and monkeys and all the other mammals do--in spite of church, law,\nstate, parents, culture, schools, society, and every other restraint\nthey can dream up, consciously?\"\n\n\"Some men--maybe.\"\n\n\"All I have been trying to point out, Yvonne, is that people who don't\nknow where they are in space--people as ignorant of simple, cultural\nfact as the average American college graduate--obviously cannot know\nanything much about their real sex natures, since these have been\nhonestly examined only recently and only by a few men, and since sexual\nenlightenment is the great taboo in this era. To that I merely add that\nmen do behave sexually like mammals, which has been shown, and mammals\ndo not behave in any fashion resembling the sex mores of this age.\"\n\nHer gray eyes were bitter. \"You think, then, that it would be perfectly\nacceptable, if you felt like it, to attack me right here and right now?\"\n\n\"Yvonne. Even if I didn't have vestiges of your Episcopalian superego,\nor its equivalent, and ideas of my own besides--all the other people\nhere do have your attitude. And I'm not a lunatic.\"\n\n\"You think, though\"--her eyes went burningly around the room in search\nof effective illustration--\"it would be perfectly all right for me to\nget a yen for the cashier, and show it, and let the cashier see it,\ntoo! Nobody should mind that--?\"\n\nShe spoke with such emotion that I leaned forward to see why she'd\nselected the cashier. The cashier was a dark-haired girl, a pretty\ngirl, leaning into the rays of a desk lamp to add up a dinner check.\n\nI said, \"Charming.\"\n\n\"You're an evil person.\"\n\n\"Did I pick out the cashier--or did you?\"\n\nShe considered anger--and settled for laughter. \"At least, you have one\nvirtue. A person around you doesn't have to censor what he says.\"\n\n\"And the devil is shocked by virtue, too--is that right? How perfectly\nthe closed mind bats them back! It must be marvelous never to be\nable to wonder what goes on outside your own head. The enviable\nsituation of nearly everybody! And the everlasting chute-the-chutes to\nhell-on-earth. Here comes our next course, Miss Morals.\"\n\n\"Can I have p\u00eaches flambeau?\" she asked, somewhat later.\n\n\"I'll join you.\"\n\n\"I thought you didn't drink?\"\n\n\"I don't. A brandied bonbon? Peaches with the alcohol mostly burned\naway? Sherry in the soup? I'm not absolutist, Yvonne--not stuck\nwith it, quite. I don't accidentally swallow the port in my fruit\ncocktail and then go out and get roaring drunk--excusing myself with\nthe accident of the port. Maybe the sniff of alcohol will fold up\nthe resolution of some reformed drunkards. My own problem--in that\ncase--was different.\"\n\n\"What was it, then?\"\n\n\"It's a long and sordid story that I am not going to tell you now.\"\n\n\"Do you really understand all these things you're talking about?\"\n\nI thought that one over. \"Mostly,\" I said, \"my mental activity relates\nto errors in the concepts of other people. Let's say--I've come to\nunderstand a good deal--by searching for blunder, by hunting for the\nsense of what brighter guys have learned. By relating them all.\"\n\n\"If God came in here now, what would you ask Him?\"\n\nIt was quite a question and I looked at her with surprise. Her face\nsaddened. \"Rol said that to me, once. But what?\"\n\nWhat would I ask?\n\nI realized, with a strange feeling, that I wouldn't ask anything.\nNo questions. No further privileges. No favors. No additional\nenlightenment. That last impulse had stayed in my mind for a moment and\nI had then thought, if you want more enlightenment, the data is there,\nson. Enlighten yourself. Don't ask, when there's a chance of finding\nout on your own.\n\nSuperego?\n\nHad my father told me that?\n\nOr was that how I felt about life and the world?\n\nI felt that way.\n\nMy father had his faith.\n\nSo it was not superego.\n\nI would say hello to God.\n\nWhat I did not know, what I knew that I did not express, others would\nlearn, others would say.\n\nThere was a little instant of silence and remoteness around me as I\nunderwent the experience that goes with such realization.\n\nA calm.\n\nThe Cr\u00e9puscule was a long way off--the sound and sight and smell of a\ndim restaurant.\n\nThe trio was playing \"Ja-da,\" I finally realized.\n\nYvonne snapped her fingers in my face and laughed. \"If you must\ndaydream, put me in the act.\"\n\n\"What part do you want?\"\n\n\"I'm a woman,\" she said. \"And, according to you, I can play only one\npart. I'll be the sins of your mind. Do your evil for you. Kiss the\ncashiers and encourage little children to undress each other. Throw\nstones at cathedral windows--\"\n\n\"It's your life. And your sin-list. Go ahead.\"\n\n\"_Your_ list.\"\n\n\"You're sticking to _acts_. And mighty compulsive ones, too. All I've\ndone is to give such matters subjective consideration.\"\n\n\"The thought is father to the deed.\"\n\n\"Then for God's sake be more attentive to what you think!\"\n\n\"Jesuit!\"\n\n\"I'm the nemesis of that whole philosophy.\"\n\n\"At least--you're sincere. I didn't believe so, when I read your books.\nI thought you were just fond of shocking people.\"\n\n\"I could never shock them a millionth part of the amount they've\nshocked me.\"\n\n\"But you did your best?\"\n\nI laughed at that. \"Sometimes.\" A sad confession.\n\n\"Don't you love burning brandy?\"\n\nWe watched the peaches flame.\n\n\n2\n\nI took her over to the Amigo.\n\nThey had a rumba band there that would give sloe-eyed fantasies to a\nNorseman.\n\nAnd it wasn't crowded.\n\nI haven't said--was it necessary?--that I intended to make Mrs.\nPrentiss eat one or two of those gardenias. That is, I proposed in my\nmind to bring her to the point of withdrawing the order that I was to\nbehave toward her in all chaste chivalry. As to what I would do beyond\nthat, I had no idea. It could not possibly be important if I followed\nup a moral (or immoral) victory with what would then be an ethical (or\nunethical) act.\n\nMrs. Prentiss was a remarkably handsome young woman. She was somewhat\neducated and she had a fair degree of intellectual sensitivity. In\ntelling me she had not understood what I was saying she had implied\na considerable degree of comprehension and a reluctance to deal with\nwhatever it was that she had gathered from my words. She was \"mostly\"\nfrigid (an intriguing expression) in many different ways.\n\nIn any sexual encounter she would undoubtedly barricade herself from\nbiological design with common artifact--and half the Pharmacopoeia,\nbesides. She was avid and did not know it. I could see--as the reader\nhas seen with me, no doubt--that her domestic debacle was the result of\na projection of her own guilt-sense. She was a nubile dancer. But she\nused her dancing rather meanly--as a sly and enjoyable confession to\nherself which, she thought, was the most that society would permit of\ndancing. She was somewhat spoiled and very selfish--extremely prissy\nin the real, felt sense of the word: a bitch. Nobody, that is to say,\nexisted for her excepting in that they existed for her desires.\n\nShe had moved to a room beside me. She had tried to lead me--at\nfirst--on the dance floor. She had thrust the eyes and lips of her\npsyche into the brunette cashier's hair without caring in the least for\nthe brunette or for any woman or for what happened to others. She had\nattributed the libidinous gesture to my imagination, when I had brought\nit to light. She had failed to add anything but frustration to the life\nof a man about whom I had heard, so far, what I regarded as almost\nnothing but good.\n\nShe had bought her world and was willing to pay in cash to keep it the\nway she wanted it--but not willing to pay in a dime's worth of herself.\nShe needed a lesson. For there were nice things about her.\n\nThe expression on her face when she talked about Rol was descriptive,\nto me, of many good qualities--of loyalty to emotions she did\nnot understand, of untapped vehemences, of tenderness--of human\ncharacteristics she was unable to embody. She had been taught not to\nembody them--she had been taught such attributes were weaknesses--or\nshe had been taught nothing concerning them at all. Her greedy mother.\nThe cocksure extravert--her father--a man who, even from her brief\naccount, plainly believed he knew all there was worth knowing on all\ntopics, one who had reached final conclusions about Everything. Reached\nthem--or was able to jump to them by a process requiring neither\nthought nor the machinery for evaluation. Reached them or jumped to\nthem because his opinions were peeled like decalcomania from Precedents\nset up by businessmen who have graduated from good universities.\n\nI knew the type. Sometimes I feel there is hardly any other.\nYvonne's dad--successful real estate man--Ivy League--New\nYorker--daughter-adored. He had no reason to doubt his excellence. He\nwas rich, which proved it. He had graduated from a superior university,\nwhich guaranteed his intelligence, knowledge and culture. And his\nsuccess had been achieved in a tough game in the biggest city on the\nearth. Moreover, he was, apparently, a churchman. Hence not only the\ntradition of America, as a whole, and the judgment of upper-class\nAmerica, but God Himself, attested to his superiority. On top of all\nthat, he was, no doubt, a good guy. A good guy who had loved his elder\ndaughter a little more (how?) than Yvonne.\n\nIt was not remarkable that Yvonne exhibited the characteristics and\nthe reactions she'd sketched for me--or those I'd witnessed. She had\nbeen packaged in the best fashion of the richest and most powerful\nculture of the twentieth century by people who knew and felt less of\nthe significance of life than any other group which has arisen in\nthe species during its past ten or twenty parasitical millenniums.\nIn representing the highest peak of what is called civilization she\npresented the least sensitive arrangement of what is human.\n\nA nice bitch, then, with a father complex.\n\nWhen we began dancing, I was still fiddling in my mind with fragments\nof the dinner monologue. A couple of things should be said about it.\n\nAs the reader has perceived, it represented in its way a conscious\neffort at self-assessment. It was a partial statement of philosophy--my\nown--urged upon me at that time because, under my circumstances, some\nreview of philosophy was inevitable. When the Ghoul appears, one thinks\nabout one's thoughts.\n\nFor a while, we scarcely talked at all.\n\nAmerican women, as a rule, will rarely listen to a monologue by a man;\nwhen they do, it is usually because they want something from the man.\nMen have, generally, the better faculty for speech; in America they\nare not trained to use it. And they are, moreover, so accustomed to\nfemale authority in their formative years that they submit, all their\nlives, to the clamor of it. An aggregation of American people is thus\nconventionally dominated by the tongues of women and sounds like the\ncontinuous breaking of dishes.\n\nYvonne had listened through part of a lunch and all of a dinner and now\nwe set our communication in a more definite language--one that followed\nthe tempo of maracas and made use of the whole body.\n\n\"Rol,\" she said once, during an Afro-Cuban number, \"needs lessons.\"\n\n\"Who doesn't?\"\n\n\"Did you take a lot?\"\n\n\"Hundreds.\"\n\nShe danced quietly for a while. \"Did they teach you--?\"\n\nI held her a little closer. The gardenias smelled like nights in\nFlorida. \"It's not in the book, Yvonne. But there's nothing in the\nbook, either, that says you shouldn't go to Havana and find out what\nthe steps mean--when you've learned how to do them.\"\n\nShe said, \"I think I better sit down.\"\n\nWe went to our table and she ordered another Planter's Punch. Her face\nwas a damp, darker color now than peach; perspiration had curled small\nends of her hair so that they were like the tendrils on vines. She was\npanting--and trying to disguise it--but I could hear the breath in her\nthroat and see the dilation of her nostrils. We had been dancing hard.\nWe both needed the long, slow drink of air--though the air here was\nwarm, full of smoke, and had garish light in it that made too plain the\ngrimed plaster on the walls. Too plain, that is, for the music and its\nmood.\n\n\"You do things to me,\" she said.\n\n\"You do them to yourself. In sex, men respond to the subject, women to\nthe object. I'm your object--but you're the response.\"\n\n\"I could be annoyed with that.\"\n\n\"More of what you'd call antifeminist propaganda?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"Annoyed on the grounds that you apparently never\nlet yourself go.\"\n\n\"On the contrary. I always let myself go. But I always let my brain go\nalong, too.\"\n\nShe thought about that. \"Annoyed--then--on the grounds that there's\nnothing reciprocal about the dance we had.\"\n\n\"But you'd be wrong. After all--I asked you to dinner.\"\n\n\"Because you were curious.\" She spoke petulantly. \"Because you like\nto find out what makes people tick. Because you're full of half-baked\nmissionary impulses.\"\n\n\"Because you're a damned good-looking dame.\"\n\n\"You think so?\"\n\n\"Don't fish.\"\n\n\"I'm not! Plenty of people think that I'm a spoiled brat with merely\nsuperficial good looks.\"\n\n\"Girls that troll in my waters catch whatever is swimming by that's\nhungry. Of course you're a spoiled brat--and all good looks are\nsuperficial. So I was in a mood. I came down to lunch. I saw a blonde\nwith a book--odd enough, in itself, to be interesting. A hell of a\ngood-looking blonde. And I sat down beside her and she told me the\nstory of her life.\"\n\nShe saw that she was not going to be appeased beyond that deliberately\nmeager degree. She sighed and picked up the tall glass as soon as\nthe waiter deposited it and drank perhaps a third of it, thirstily.\nAfterward, she tittered. \"I'm going to get tight, if I do that again.\"\n\n\"And if you get tight, I'll take you home.\"\n\n\"And if you take me home, I'll pound on your door.\"\n\n\"And if you pound on the door, I'll put you under a cold shower.\"\n\n\"And I'll call the manager.\"\n\n\"You won't need to. He'll be helping me with the shower.\"\n\n\"I thought you were maybe hoping I'd get a little tight.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Don't men?\"\n\n\"Not me.\"\n\n\"It's supposed,\" she said with a flirtatious glance, \"to make it\neasier.\"\n\n\"Make what easier?\"\n\n\"Oh--being with girls.\"\n\n\"I never found it difficult--_except_ when they were tight. Then my\nimpulse is to run.\"\n\n\"There we go again! Women mustn't drink. But you--being a man--don't\ncare if the boys get blind.\"\n\n\"Did I say so? Having been a drunk--and quit--I detest drunks. A\ncommon example of the law of opposites in operation. I force myself to\nassociate with them, sometimes, because I owe drunkenness a good deal\nof quid pro quo--\"\n\n\"Like an Alcoholic Anonymous?\"\n\n\"Like that--without the self-canonization. An American man--with a few\ndrinks in his blood stream--is able to become a shade more human. To\nshed the posture of men demanded by his era and its women. To show he\nhas feelings, to be introverted--unless he gets out of hand--and even\nto think a little bit. To cherish and fear, to appreciate and revile,\nto show some evidence of the democracy and human brotherhood he is\nalways talking about--and always doing his best to defeat by getting\nto the top in nefarious ways. I don't mind guys being slightly tight.\nExcepting for the danger that they'll go beyond that stage--which they\nso generally do.\"\n\n\"But women! Dear, dear!\"\n\n\"The average American female with three or four cocktails in her\nbecomes a living exhibit of the frustrations inherent in the feminist\nmyth of these days. Together with the compulsions.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Wylie?\"\n\nI grinned at her. \"She sets out to _prove_ the myth she has not been\nable to live up to, sober--that women are superior to men and also the\nexact equals of men. She does this by turning into a bad imitation\nof a man. She argues. She imagines her arguments are brilliant and\ncrushing--when they are non sequiturs and ad hominems. She directs. She\norders. She demands. She judges--she is a little tin magistrate hurling\ncharges to unseen juries and handing out sentences on her enemies or\nauditors. She is both the defending and the prosecuting attorney. She\nis everything but a lady and everybody but the prisoner. Which shows,\nof course, that she feels imprisoned when sober, and also envious of\nmales when she goes around in her sober mind trying to convince herself\nand everybody she is their equal and also their superior.\"\n\nHer voice suddenly became flat and cold. \"I am beginning to get very\ntired of you, Mr. Wylie.\"\n\nI looked at her.\n\nYou have only to apologize, to crawl about for a moment, to resume\nflattery or a suggestion thereof, to dance again, to put your hand\ngently on her--in such a way that she would remove it firmly. Then\neverything will be stardust again. She will be a beautiful young woman\nenjoying, with world sanction, the company of a suitable guy. Toying,\nperhaps, with the thought of an affaire. Toying would be her word and\ntoy, her inept function.\n\nAnd what had I been doing?\n\nI looked for the waiter. If he had been visible in the smoke-spun,\nlight-pulsing, low altitude of the big room, I would have asked for the\ncheck and taken her straight to her door and to hell with her. This was\nmy night to howl, maybe. It was turning into my night to die. I had the\nright--or intended to make the right--to howl and die as I pleased and\nwith whom I chose.\n\nBut while I was looking, she sensed my intention. \"I'm sorry,\" she\nsaid. \"I didn't mean to be rude! You hurt my feelings.\"\n\nSo I dissembled. \"I was hunting for our waiter. Let's go someplace\nelse.\"\n\nWe walked down the staircase of a Latin spot off Eighth Avenue called\nthe Cuban Paradise. A spot with a still lower ceiling, and no air\nconditioning or ventilation. Two small rumba bands alternate, so the\nmusic is constant, and nine-tenths of the customers are Cubans or\nPuerto Ricans or South Americans. The orchestras are not pretentious,\nbut such as may be heard on a hundred side streets in Havana.\n\nWe took a little table at the wall. New Yorkers spend a good deal\nof their lives with their backs to walls, looking at things, eating\nthings, drinking. We ordered coffee and the waiter dutifully told us\nthere was a small minimum. It was Cuban coffee--thick and sweet--and we\nlistened to rhythms musically na\u00efve but emotionally more sophisticated\nthan those of the big, smooth, uptown bands. Music is like accent in\nspeech, and very few foreigners learn the language of another nation so\nwell as to lose all traces of their own tongue--to talk like natives.\nAt the Cuban Paradise, the Latins danced as they were supposed to and\nwanted to. Working people having fun. Immigrants remembering tropical\nnights--and sounds never heard in Manhattan--trees never seen on its\nstreets--flowers never sold in its markets.\n\nThere were pairs of girls dancing together--hopefully--and when I saw\nthem, executing the slow, insidious steps of a bolero--I glanced at\nYvonne. She was watching them, too--watching them so intently that my\nglance became a stare. She noticed and swept from her face its look of\nparticipation.\n\nAgain, I felt terribly sorry for her. Sorry as one feels sorry for a\nbird that has failed to migrate and sits on its branch in the dreary\nrain of autumn, knowing the world is wrong, feebly sensing a lost,\nwarmer climate, but unable to resolve the quandary of the dream and\nthe pain of its present. A bird can be a sharp thing with a reptile's\nappetite--a bright bundle of vanity and vengeance. She smiled, though.\n\n\"Those two girls--the redhead and the one with blue-black hair--are\nvery good, aren't they?\"\n\n\"The dark one's beautiful--like an Indian.\"\n\n\"Probably is part Indian--and also probably a Dodger fan who chews\nbubble gum and works in Macy's stockroom.\"\n\n\"I wish I could lead--the way she does!\"\n\n\"That's the boy's department.\" I laughed. \"Sorry! Maybe you're right.\nMaybe I am prejudiced. Though I regard it as merely the extreme and\nnecessary product of my constant effort to keep track of prerogatives\nwhich are defiled and trampled every few seconds in this fair land!\"\nI then added, \"If you really want to learn dancing, you have to learn\nboth parts. Yours--the girl's.\"\n\nShe was easily mollified. And she was--not tight--but less cautious\nabout herself. \"I never thought of that! It would be interesting!\" She\nlooked at me thoughtfully. \"Did you ever dance with a man?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\nHer gray eyes kept looking. \"Was it exciting?\"\n\n\"Sailors,\" I said, \"dance together on battleships and have fun. That's\nwhy sailors are good dancers. I was never a sailor, however. The\ndancing I've done with guys was when my teacher despaired of being able\nto show me a step--and called in one of the boys to demonstrate--and to\nlead it.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nShe was disappointed. She had fled in revulsion from her husband's act;\nshe had no similar scruples about me.\n\nOn the contrary.\n\nI thought that if she possessed even a little insight into that single\npair of facts she might be a happier girl. And I also thought that any\nattempt to supply the insight by pointing out the two inconsistent\nattitudes would only tighten the hold of her small, personal dilemma.\nShe would deny the very suggestion; she would use all her energy to\nauthenticate the denial--immediately--and in the weeks, months, years\nto come--use it to kid herself. Not to investigate herself.\n\nSo I said, \"It's a good way to learn. Lots of gals get women teachers\nin dancing school. Men embarrass them.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"You mean--if I went and enrolled and asked for a girl teacher--nobody\nwould think I was--queer?\"\n\n\"Thousands do.\"\n\n\"I never knew it.\" She said that almost to herself--and hurried on, as\nif to expunge it. \"We had a man teacher that came to the house--and\nI was always afraid to go to a school--for fear I'd get some slimy\ngigolo--\"\n\n\"More likely a GI working his way through college.\"\n\n\"Don't you want to dance with me again?\"\n\nIt was after one o'clock when we climbed back up on the humid street\nand the doorman flagged a cab. She said the night was young--and I\nsaid, but I was old. I said I had to get up early and work. I told\nthe driver to go by way of Central Park and Seventy-second Street\nand while we hummed between the lamplit green leaf walls she moved\nover to be kissed, so I kissed her, but not much. And after that I\nspoiled my breast-pocket handkerchief wiping off the lipstick, which is\nanother convention. We went through the empty lobby. The night clerk\nwas a tall, handsome gent and his eyes glimmered at me when I rang the\nelevator bell. Harry brought a car down, let out a policeman (who had\nbeen on God alone could imagine what errand) and hoisted us to Sixteen.\n\nShe took her key from the golden handbag and unlocked 1603. She turned\nup her face slightly. \"It's been a lovely evening.\"\n\nI tossed the key of 1601 and caught it. \"Me, too.\"\n\n\"It's a pity a girl can't ask you in for a nightcap. But you'd only be\nable to have Coca-Cola.\"\n\n\"Gotta sleep. I'll give you a buzz in the morning, Yvonne.\"\n\n\"Will you?\"\n\n\"Bet.\"\n\nShe gave me a musical good night and opened her door slowly. I walked\ndown the red carpet--and her door closed with a bang.\n\n\n3\n\nThere was nothing for me in my own apartment.\n\nThe books--even Vogt's _Road to Survival_, which I had almost\nfinished--looked nervous. The many magazines--through all of which I\nhad coursed while bathing, eating, sitting on the toilet, riding in\nthe plane, idling--were like partly-consumed meals: there were bits\nhere and there I still wanted to taste, to digest--but not now. I was,\nof course, neither sleepy nor intending to go to bed. I can get along\nfor days, for weeks, on four or five hours of sleep, even without\nthroat cancer. Often, when I am writing a long story, I begin with the\nsunrise, go to sleep at two or three the next morning, get up with\ndawn again--and so continue until the job is done.\n\nMy body ad-libs its life. When its brain is electrified, when the\naurora of thought and imagination and sensation ascends there as a\nmeans to work, to dream, to worry, to engage in reasoning or wild\nspeculation, the thing that calls itself \"I\" follows after, like a\nboy after a rainbow--and I have found as many pots of gold as a bank\npresident. And when my body has nothing to say or do or think about, I\nsleep. I lie on the ground. I hoe potatoes and corn, dig garbage pits,\nmake tables and bookshelves, fix gadgets. I sit on a beach and stare at\nthe accumulation of hydrogen cunningly mixed with oxygen. When my body\nis sick, the I runs to doctors, takes pills, eases itself--and pushes\nat pain only if it must, like a man wheeling a heavy barrow up a hill.\nI do not have the illusion of fortitude that makes sadists of, say,\nEnglishmen. I suffer. And when my I is grayed with its own weather, or\nthe bad chemistry of the body that owns it, I suffer, too--jittering\nand jizzling, mourning and dreading, a repelled, repellent object--a\nman with blues.\n\nThe construction of society does not permit such practices by most.\nThey have the 8:02 to catch, the Monday wash, and their two weeks in\nJuly. The church bell rings not when the preacher feels he is close to\nGod, but at eleven, on the Seventh Day. He who is weak with the length\nof winter cannot escape it; who faints in the summer must faint again\nupon recovering consciousness--or else employ his I to whip his body so\nthat it will face summer without further protest.\n\nNo other animal would do itself such violences.\n\nThis is an age of schedules. The people of it have long since foundered\nin time. Time is a sea that presses them to its bottom--a sea that\nwaterlogs their tissues--a sea that prevents them from the experience\nof its own medium as other than a weight and an absolute dimension.\n\nLiving is drowning with the first lesson at the clock and being drowned\nforever after that.\n\nMy body and my I had endeavored, with some success, to ignore the\nobsessional meridians. Others may travel them like a baby that has\nlearned to walk and become so enamored of the skill as to proceed,\nsteadily, for the rest of its days, in one straight line on time's sea\nbottom. We have stopped--separately and together--somewhat explored\ntime's other dimensions--gone to the surface and seen the sun, for\nexample--bought time, stolen it, ignored it, zigzagged, looked back\nthrough it, and seen the straight line of the compulsive infant for the\ncircle it really is.\n\nAs Dr. E. has shown, time's a human invention--a convenient illusion.\nAs the body knows, it has no more significance, alone, than width,\nby itself. But the I has taken time, in most cases, for a universal\nmeasurement, notched it in hours and minutes, and set the whole world\nto counting time. Its mere recognition is subjective. Yet, how few\nsubjects realize that if the subject be a baseball player, and if his\nsubjectivity and objectivity live fifty years--then the subjectivity of\nWordsworth, or Emerson, may have lasted for several hundred thousand?\n\nSo, in this frame of reference--this truer attitude--even I, compared\nwith some of my timeserving fellow men, may be older than Methuselah.\n\nThe body is potentially immortal: it can reproduce itself. And so the I\nwould be immortal in its self-sensation if it were oriented, like the\nlives of animals, toward that which it could reproduce--all men toward\nall men yet to be--rather than toward its wretched self-awareness, its\ngreedy, permanent stoppage of time for narcissistic attitudinizing.\nThe I is a mirror. It can see itself forever and any now as this\nnow--if only it looks at the reflection to observe all those behind\nand all beyond, of which it is an integral. But if it ignores those\nbehind--rules out even the next-lowest author of its instincts--and if\nit eschews the requirements of those to come which are the integral\nfunction of itself--if, that is, the I concentrates upon its one\nembodied reflection, rejecting the panoply of life and repudiating\npast and present for its little now--then, truly that I is mortal. It\nis a suicide for that it is an assassin.\n\nSuch are all persons but a very few, these days.\n\nSo are they taught.\n\nSo inspired: unpunctuality and unproductivity are un-American.\n\nSo do they urgently maintain themselves--egoists without the sense of\nindividuation.\n\nAnd that is why the earth is perishing for man.\n\nIn the hatred people have for people.\n\nAnd the absolute hatred of posterity that rises from the absolute\nrejection of our real ancestry.\n\nThere are moments when the circumstance is unutterably clear to me--and\nin these, I _know_--without respect to the immediate employment of my\nbody or the thing called I.\n\nThere are moments when the time-easements I have bought grow clouded.\n\nAnd then the knowledge escapes arms, legs, cranium, and I.\n\nWhat man, reared as I was, domiciled in this earth's insanity, has even\nthe intimations, let alone the occasional assurance? And who, attached\nto his clocks, trains, bells, and the earth's turned shadow, keeps a\ncontinual hold upon the vital principle? Very few.\n\nSay it was late.\n\nSay I did not want to sleep.\n\nSay, if you will, I did not want to face my circumstances. It is not\nso. The space during which I sat on the green sofa smoking my cigarette\nwas what you call ten minutes--an infinity that could not be shortened,\nmade painful, or even touched at any point by measurement.\n\nI picked up the telephone.\n\nThe colored girl had a soft voice. \"Hello?\"\n\n\"This is Phil Wylie--is Hattie there?\"\n\n\"What's the name again, please, sir?\"\n\nI spelled it. She was gone for a long time. I felt a little amused.\nIf Hattie didn't remember--I thought she would--they'd be obliged to\nconsult books or files or whatever records they kept, that went back\nto the wild, drunk, bewildering years when my first marriage had worn\npatience thin, shattered it, and turned loose on the town a younger\nman. A decade and more ago.\n\nHattie's voice--deep, harsh--worried, I thought. \"Phil, for God's sake!\nWhere have you been keeping yourself? I heard you were a reformed\ncharacter.\"\n\n\"My wife told me to call you up.\"\n\nHattie was unruffled. \"Sometimes they do. How are you?\"\n\n\"Swell.\"\n\n\"I'm glad to hear it! What can we do for you?\"\n\n\"It's a long, fascinating story that I'd like to run up and tell you.\"\n\n\"Be a pleasure. I'm losing at bridge. Looking for an out.\" She\nchuckled. \"Stingers? Side cars? What shall I get ready?\"\n\n\"Coffee.\"\n\n\"Better still! Viola keeps a percolator on--but I'll have her make it\nfresh. Usually--it's like French pot-au-feu--goes on forever.\"\n\n\"You've doubtless--moved--?\"\n\n\"Moved! We're Manhattan's most displaced persons!\" She gave me a high\nnumber on the West Side.\n\nThere was never a rush hour at Hattie's. But two a.m. was what might\nbe called the peak. It embarrassed no one: she had plenty of sitting\nrooms. In any case, most of the customers knew one another--and knew\none another as clients.\n\nA white marble lobby. An elevator with much gilded fretwork. It was\noperated by a Negro with an exceedingly noncommittal face. Only one\ndoor in the hall on the top floor. A good-sized apartment building, I\nthought, as I pushed the bell and heard the chimes; hence a good-sized\nbordello. The colored girl who had answered the phone answered the\ndoor, keeping the chain attached. I told her my name.\n\nThe foyer was dim and modernistic. Two halls branched from it. I could\nsee doors along both--and hear music.\n\n\"Jes' follow me, please.\"\n\nShe said it all night.\n\nThe perfumes mingled, the way they do. It is a woman's\nmedley--expensive or cheap--with no other detectable difference. One\ndoor was open. Two girls sat there--pale, straight hair that fell to\na sharp, sculptured point over a book and a pair of shimmering, nylon\nlegs.\n\nViola went on.\n\nShe opened another door. Hattie was standing at the window in a green\ndress--her once-sleek orange hair dyed black, now, and fluffed out--her\nankles no longer slim--and when she turned I hid, as all of us do, my\ninner response to the etching of the interval--that very Time which\nI so recently had seen to be without importance. She was now about\nfifty-five.\n\n\"Phil,\" she said, \"this is nice! You don't seem a day older--just\nwiser. But look at me!\"\n\n\"Brunette.\"\n\n\"A harridan. The warmest heart in the world--and what happens? The\nopposite of Dorian Grey. I blame it on the high morals and low conduct\nof the cops. Hard years. I loved Fiorello--and he despised every bone\nin my body. I was even over in Jersey for a while. It was the lowest\nperiod in my life. Sit down over there in the red chair. Viola, bring\nus coffee. You know--I've often thought about you--when I read your\nbooks--or when one of the girls did--or when I read something of yours\nin a magazine. You aren't around here much, any more, though, are you?\"\n\nI shook my head. \"Miami Beach. And now--we're building a house in\nMiami.\"\n\n\"Florida. I went down last winter. Had a cold I simply couldn't\nshake. Stayed at the Steinberg-Riviera. Hell of a place, Miami Beach!\nWonderful weather, period. Everybody on the make. Shake a palm and out\ndrops a chippy. A madam with ethics would starve there--and the news\nabout good taste hasn't got south of the Mason and Dixon Line.\"\n\n\"I always think of it as the end of the American dream.\"\n\n\"It's the end, anyhow. Phil. Do you really want to see me? Because if\nyou're being polite for old time's sake--maybe you'd rather put off the\nsentimental chitchat till later.\"\n\nHattie is a thoughtful dame.\n\nI was about to laugh at her when an abrupt inquiry held me for a second\nor two. I was surprised--a little. But the question postponed itself.\n\"I came up--solely and utterly to call on you, Hattie.\"\n\nShe shrugged one shoulder. She yawned. \"Maybe we can return your\ncalls. We used to. But--really--I'm delighted. Except when you\nwere--overburdened--you were always fun to have around. It's a dull\nlife--just being chaperon to a lot of whores. And it seems to me the\nboys aren't interested in philosophy any more. They used to spend\nmore time chinning than cheating, around here. Back in the old days\nof humanism and liberalism and Cou\u00e9 and the market boom, when the\nworld was full of fun. Why--I had to scout local campuses for girls\nwho could keep in the debates! Now--the boys just come in tight and\npreoccupied--ask for a girl by hair color, like picking out paint for\na kitchen--pay--and scram. I can't recall how long it's been since we\nheld one of those impromptu breakfasts--for the celebrities and plain\npeople who happened to be around! It's depressing!\"\n\nI knew what she meant. Everybody knows.\n\nViola brought the coffee.\n\n\"Pretty,\" I said.\n\nHattie looked at the door where Viola had gone. \"Nice girl. Married and\nhas two kids. The wages are no damned good--but the tips!--I think she\ndoes as well as I do, after taxes. More passes made at Vi than nearly\nanybody actually working. She's a strict Baptist.\"\n\n\"I wasn't--\" I thought of reminiscing a little. Then I thought it might\nbe sad. Hattie seemed to have read my mind.\n\n\"Remember Elysse? The French girl with the brown bangs?\"\n\nI did.\n\n\"She's married. Lives in Troy. Comes to see me once in a while. Lovely\ngirl. And--Charmaine? The president of an oil company moved her onto\nPark Avenue--died--and left her his heap. Millions. She's a good\ncustomer of mine. You know, Kinsey should interview me before he writes\nmore books.\"\n\nKinsey again.\n\n\"Why don't you drop him a note? Volunteer?\"\n\nHattie's face wrinkled with amusement. \"I wouldn't want to shock the\npoor man.\"\n\nI laughed.\n\nHer brows came together. They were ordinarily straight and level, red\nonce, black now--like a crayon mark made with a ruler. She still had\ngood-looking amber eyes, fiery but steady, and her forehead was very\nhigh. She was beginning to look like some sort of sachem--a tribal\nwiseman, or a poet. Quite an impressive dame.\n\n\"It's funny,\" she said. \"I've even heard men right in these rooms\nargue that Kinsey was a liar and crazy and incompetent and a menace to\nsociety. Otherwise bright men. Heard them say that Kinsey only talked\nto screwballs and neurotics and people who were inventing stuff to show\noff. You'd hardly believe such self-kidding was possible!\"\n\n\"They said it about psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, too,\" I agreed.\n\"Said that their conclusions were obviously nutty because they never\nsaw anybody but nutty patients. Never stopped to reflect that a\nneurotic is not a nut, that every patient did his best to tell the\nprecise, detailed truth about his private life, and that every single\none of those stories involved the sex behavior of many, many other\npeople who are called normal. I mean--the psychologists learned a whole\nhell of a lot about what normal people did from every neurotic patient.\nSo when they talked about sex--they had the dope. Most people never\nthought of that angle.\"\n\n\"Most people,\" Hattie said, \"never think. And when it comes to sex,\nthey think about ten times less than never.\"\n\n\"Which brings me,\" I nodded, \"to the matter in hand. I got a nephew. A\nbrainy apple and a good kid. And you had a girl here--or on your call\nlist--till about six months ago, named Marcia something--who's gone to\nlive with Paul--he being the nephew.\"\n\nHattie said, \"Yes,\" and waited.\n\nI realized that a dozen years is a long time in which not to see\nanybody--a time long enough for a change, especially if one has quit\ndrinking, married again, and so on and so on and so on. Hattie was\nafraid I was up to some sort of Presbyterian nasty-work--and she was\nready to be disappointed. Ready not to help me call the cops on Marcia,\nso to speak, and ready to write off one more guy as a galvanized\nhypocrite.\n\nI said, \"In my frank opinion, Paul is not the sort who will be happy\nwith an ex-houri. And I don't say that because he's my nephew and\nbecause I'm broad-minded about everybody but who-touches-me. Let me\ntell you what Paul's like--and how he came to confide in me on the\nsituation--how he got into it--and how he's acting about it as of this\nafternoon.\"\n\n\"Tell me.\"\n\nThe longer she listened, the more she relaxed. When finally I stopped\ntalking she walked over to the window, where she had stood when I came\nin. Her broadening buttocks and shoulders blotted out most of the\nriver-gleam and the Jersey-glow, which you could see from there--but\nnot the boat-hoots which came up around her, wallowing through the\ncity, buzzing the middle ears of the millions. She stood there a while.\nThe frame of faraway light blinked around her and the ferry boats\nand the freighters hollered pensively at each other. When she turned\naround, there were tears not only in her eyes but on her cheeks.\n\n\"If people only knew what I know!\" She said it in a quiet voice with\nnothing of the brash timber of her usual speech.\n\n\"I'll buy that. I'll even add a big apothegm, Hat. People have found\nout so much, they are now obliged to learn the rest. The whole\nGod-damned, agonizing, exalted rest of it.\"\n\nShe smiled in a woebegone way and got a Kleenex from a drawer. \"It'll\ntake thousands of years,\" she said. \"They've been making the same\nmistakes, that long.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Meanwhile, we've got Paul and Marcia. I'm supposed to have lunch\nwith them tomorrow. You can see--from what I've told you--why I think\nthe thing will fold--painfully. There is, however, a chance it won't.\nA chance that depends on what sort of girl Marcia is, mostly. Which is\nwhy I came up here.\"\n\nShe was shaking her head. \"Not on the kind of girl she is--necessarily.\nOn how much she loves him.\"\n\n\"Okay. That.\"\n\n\"Providing--she can love. Providing--she hasn't kidded herself into\na sweet little daydream that she got from reading too many women's\nmagazines. Or all those books. She sure was a reading girl. And smart.\nAnd attractive, too. How tough are you, Phil?\"\n\n\"It's something you do, isn't it? Not fill out in a questionnaire?\"\n\nHattie smiled. \"I don't want to offend those fine sensibilities of\nyours. Or make you think I'm something special in the she-Judas line.\nBut you want to know whether the girl means it. Why not send your Paul\nback to his laboratory after lunch--he'd like that--like you to get\nacquainted with her--and why not--?\"\n\n\"I'm not tough that way. That's businessman tough.\"\n\nShe dropped a hand. \"Still--there's hardly one of them in a thousand\nwho wouldn't--work out some breezy little arrangement--for a G, say.\nAnd she'd have to be such a one.\"\n\n\"She might just see through it. You said she was smart.\"\n\nHattie shrugged. \"If she was smart enough to resist the G, maybe she'd\nbe smart enough. However.\"\n\n\"In other words, you don't know about her.\"\n\n\"Not Marcia. If it was ninety-nine in a hundred, I could tell you right\noff. Some of them make damned good wives--better sometimes for being\nhere. With the kind of men who really understand what life is--and with\nthe kind who don't mind because they don't understand anything at all.\nI like to see those girls get married. Lots more make swell mistresses\nfor men who married hunks of flint. I could go calling at so many swank\naddresses that your head would swim. And sometimes I do. There are\nworse places to look for a wife than good bagnios. Any high-society\nparty, for instance. Women's colleges, too, I suspect. Most country\nclubs. The dud percentage--the lack of warmth--runs higher there--\"\n\n\"Not to mention know-how.\"\n\nShe sighed--and then chuckled. \"Isn't it crazy? Something that should\nbe given more loving practice than music--something that needs extra\nexperience and skill for civilized people. They think you can learn\non one bridal night! Or from a book! A girl it would take a genius of\nsex to seduce satisfactorily marries a bright young college boy in the\nchopsticks class--and what have you got? The American home. Did you\never--\" the question--indeed, the entire subject--seemed to have roused\nher--\"ever once have an affair with a plain American wife who was any\ngood? Somebody else's, I mean?\"\n\n\"Once.\"\n\n\"Once! And how many--?\"\n\n\"Look, Hattie. I came to cross-question you--\"\n\nShe thought awhile, when she saw I wouldn't reply--looking out at the\ncity and detesting it. \"I've had lots of men bring their wives right\nhere--to look and learn.\"\n\n\"How many?\" I grinned.\n\n\"God knows! I'm an old madam, Phil. But many a snooty female has lost\nher inhibitions in my parlors--and gained a little knowledge that went\ninto making a happy home for some guy. The more people say physical sex\nis unimportant--the more it is likely to become the only thing that is\nimportant for them. And they don't realize.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"You know. And a lot of my clients know. And a lot of women. But they\ncan't change anything.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"What do I really do here, then? Ask yourself. I'm in the business of\nsupplying erotic fun to people who are made for it, born to it, urged\nfrom the cradle to the grave to take part in it, who depend upon it for\nmental health, for a decent feeling of good will toward others--and\naren't allowed to engage in it even with their own wedded wives, by the\nstatutes of New York State and forty-seven other little penitentiaries!\nThat's my trade. And because I'm in it--I am regarded as the greatest\nblight in civilized society, by millions. Holy, jumped-up St. Peter's\nbe-hee!\"\n\nThrough a recollected haze of alcohol I heard this same tirade from\nold and distant days. And Hattie was right, in her way. The theory\nof accession to culture and intelligence, to morality and Godliness,\nthrough the restraint of desire by the demeaning of it, had run its\ncourse in the Western world and unstrung nearly all of us. And where\nthat thesis did not exist, there were others, still more absurd, to\nbring other peoples to their repetitive, obnoxious dooms.\n\nQuite suddenly, I felt like weeping.\n\nShe left the window and sat down. \"Relax.\"\n\nThe feeling passed like a bird's shadow.\n\n\"What were you doing all evening?\" she asked. \"How come you're up so\nlate? Work?\"\n\nI thought of telling her--telling her the truth. Thought of it hard and\nseriously. \"Out with a dame,\" I said, which was not what I meant by the\ntruth. \"A wife. A pretty package of all the quality advertising, from\nPasadena, who had caught her hubby in flagrante with a gent--and fled.\nProtesting too much, if you understand.\"\n\n\"Half the girls in the country--if they had the nerve--!\"\n\n\"A latent thing. In maturity, according to the psychologists, it\nbecomes the psychological stuff by which we understand and appreciate\nour own sex.\"\n\n\"And it does, too.\"\n\n\"If you say so, it must be right, Hat.\"\n\n\"There--you are damned tooting!\" She looked at me. \"So you took her\nout--?\"\n\n\"Rumbaing. I've got good at it--since I knew you.\"\n\n\"Really good?\"\n\n\"Good enough to please the Cuban girls. So we danced. And I brought her\nback to the hotel--and turned her loose.\"\n\n\"Nice guy!\"\n\n\"I wanted her to exercise her mind. After all--I only met her at\nlunch--and she's already moved up on my floor, next door.\"\n\n\"You should change hotels, then.\"\n\n\"Too lazy. Too busy. And I can deal with her. Spoiled--and too\nbad--because the guy she left sounds okay. I wish I could help her\nout. Taking--what they call--advantage of her, probably wouldn't.\nAnd you can't re-do a person's attitude and background in a few\ndays--especially with a serial to correct. Usually requires years, and\na good analyst--\"\n\n\"Another wife--to be hated.\"\n\n\"By you?\"\n\nHattie nodded. \"I hate thousands of them. Some, I adore.\"\n\nWe didn't seem to find anything to say for a minute. I could have given\nher one more name for the short side of the ledger but I didn't want\nto. Finally I said, \"If you get any ideas about Marcia--?\"\n\n\"Call me up--when you've met her. Better still--come by again.\"\n\n\"I will.\" I had no idea whether I would or not.\n\nShe got up. \"Look. Do me a favor and autograph a couple of your books\nfor me, will you? And have another cup of coffee while I go downstairs\nand get them?\"\n\n\"All right.\"\n\nShe went. Pretty soon a tall, redheaded girl came in without knocking,\njust as I'd expected one would. Brown-red hair--long, curled at the\nends, and a pair of legs to look at. A girl like a mannequin--but no\npose; no hauteur. She had enough sex appeal for the end of anybody's\nchorus line. She smiled open a wide mouth on even teeth and fixed her\nhazel eyes on me. Hattie remembered: I had never approved of whores\nwho looked like whores. This one looked like a bright assistant on a\nmagazine--or maybe the wife of a lucky prof.\n\n\"My name,\" she said, \"is Gwen Taylor. Hattie got stuck for a few\nminutes--and told me to come in. I've heard a lot about you--here and\nthere.\"\n\nI stood and shook her hand.\n\nShe briefly grabbed her lower lip with her upper teeth. \"Or is\nthat--indelicate?\"\n\n\"No. I'm pleased. And not fooled for a minute. You see--I know Hattie.\"\n\n\"After all,\" said the girl, \"it's her profession. She said we were\nhaving coffee.\"\n\nViola came again with a tray. Gwen poured. \"There are half a dozen of\nus around. Would you like to meet them?\"\n\n\"One's enough.\"\n\nHer eyes flickered and she smiled. \"Thanks.\" She handed me the cup,\nserved the sugar with tongs, poured cream, and fixed her own. \"Warm\nnight.\"\n\nWe talked about that.\n\nBy and by she nodded toward the radio-phonograph. \"Hattie said you like\nto rumba. So do I.\"\n\nI shook my head. \"Sometime--\"\n\nShe looked at me and smiled. \"I hope!\"\n\nHattie came with the books, by and by. She made an apology. I wrote in\nboth volumes and signed my name and Hattie accompanied me down one of\nthe two long halls with the many shut doors.\n\n\"Like Gwen?\"\n\n\"Very much.\"\n\n\"I thought you would. She's--something! It's been marvelous to see you,\nPhil. Call me up!\"\n\nThe exceedingly noncommittal elevator man took me back to the street.\nIt was gravy-thick with the smell of the river.\n\nI got a cab.\n\nIt slatted downtown.\n\nOnce, I leaned forward to tell the driver to turn around.\n\nBut I didn't speak.\n\n\n4\n\nThere is a metal clip on every door in the Astolat; mail and written\nmessages are put in it--so the guests won't have to stoop. I had a\nletter. A tidy backhand with little circles for periods and dots over\nthe _i_'s. It looked like a billet-doux from Yvonne--and it was:\n\n  You meanie!\n\n  Everything you said got me so tremendously stimulated I couldn't\n  sleep. I decided, after a struggle, if you were going to stir girls\n  up that way, you were responsible for their condition. So I phoned\n  you--and no answer! Don't you know hell hath no fury like a woman\n  scorned? If you feel like a little chitchat when you do come in,\n  phone me. I don't have to work tomorrow so you needn't be scrupulous\n  about the hour. And even if you don't, thanks ever so much for a very\n  disturbing, unsatisfying, lovely evening.\n\n Yours,\n Y\n\nIt was four o'clock and my body was tired, though my mind was running\nround and round like a toy electric train.\n\nI didn't want to see any more of Yvonne at the moment.\n\nI turned out the lights in the sitting room, undressed, took a short,\nwarm shower, and lay down on the double bed, naked. Usually, about two\nminutes after the lights go out, I fall asleep. But I knew it would\ntake longer that night.\n\nSo I piled up the pillows and opened Vogt's _Road to Survival_ at the\npage where the jacket was enclosed.\n\nMr. Vogt's thesis is simple and damning; I had somewhat reflected upon\nit earlier that evening.\n\nIt is the philosophy of modern man to produce. To industrialize\nhimself. To learn the techniques and technologies of science\nand of applied science. This is progress. Chinese, Soviets,\nAmericans--everybody strives to speed up production, distribution,\nconsumption. It is also the object of all nations to increase their\npopulations.\n\nThe earth cannot support either of these two goals.\n\nThe topsoil of the planet will not feed the existing numbers of us,\neven now--and our method of using it is diminishing it at a gruesome\nrate. Faster and faster, we starve; and as we multiply, more of us will\nstarve. Medicine, which increases the percentage of persons who survive\ninfancy and extends the life span of all these, is but rapidly adding\nto sure victims of starvation.\n\nWe are busy breeding mouths to eat our future out of house and home.\n\nIdeas of this sort have been around since Malthus's time.\n\nThese days, the facts accumulate.\n\nI often reflect that man's contemporary sexual taboos lead (as they\nmust, by the law of opposites) to sexual excesses: these are seen in\nman's witless overbreeding. His \"moral\" Catholic couch, his unregulated\nBaptist bed, sustains orgy and is the senseless agent of biological\ncatastrophe. This is the riposte of Nature to man's refusal to use\nreason concerning his own nature.\n\nVogt wants planet-wide birth control, before the teeming hordes locust\nup the hope of a human hereafter.\n\nTry and get it!\n\nThere are other truths about ourselves of this same order:\n\n_The minerals._ We are digging them up with the reckless violence of\npigs after truffles. Truffles can grow again--but not minerals. We are\nconverting the earth's elements into forms all but irrecoverable even\nby the most immense expenditures of human energy and time.\n\n_Our genes_--and the holy habit we've got into, of inhibiting\nbirth among our most likely specimens--of proliferating boobs and\nnuts--of maintaining the feeble and the dim, abetting their rabbity\nbedding together--and of sending the cream of each generation to\nwar's slaughter. This, alone, will drive us back toward apehood\nfaster even than our growing physical destitution. Some European\nnations are doubtless already floundering in the poverty of residual\nblood-lines--bereft of brains and leadership by their religious\ndevotion and their glorious wars.\n\nAlso, of course, there is our _failure to perceive our instinctual\nnature_. My own elected department in the category of dooms.\nInstinctively, as we must, all of us feel the weight of such colossal\ncrimes against the meaning of instinct as those above--our cosmic\ndisavowals (by our acts) of any responsibility toward men to come. That\nis why, at bottom, no one is happy in modern society--happy in his\nspirit, content, full of a sense of purpose and significance. It is\nwhy we shall have to remake civilization consciously--or to suffer its\nself-destruction.\n\nMr. Vogt, I thought, would feel the power of instinct, as it now\nblindly controls us, when he saw how religious men reacted to his\nsimple indication of the necessity for using reason in our sex\nrelations. And he would see the inertia of our traditions when he\nsaw how utterly his warning was disbelieved, ignored, ridiculed, and\nforgotten. Others, with the same wild cry of despair, have had such\nreception, for the same reason.\n\nIt is not that man cannot do for himself.\n\nBut that he will not.\n\nAnd he will not because he is self-flattered into the incredible\nillusion that Mr. and Mrs. America are doing very well already, thank\nyou kindly.\n\nAfter a long while, grinning over the tremendous sins of those who take\nit upon themselves to reject knowledge and yet to say what sin is, I\nclosed the book.\n\nHell has one funny aspect.\n\nIt is where everybody lives.\n\nI sent a thought to Messrs. Sheen, Niebuhr, and their ilk: The\nup-to-date devil, which you so earnestly seek, gentlemen, may readily\nbe found--wearing the costume of your own minds: unconsciousness.\n\nI slept like a log.\n\n\n\n\nPART THREE\n\n _Andante_\n\n\n1\n\nReveille was the heat of burning gasoline, gears grating, rubber\nclattering on the sticky pavement and bits of shouts, floating around\nlike confetti. I can remember when it used to be hoofbeats, quiet\nneighbor-talk, and sometimes, utter silence.\n\nI lay glistening in a depression of the bed. At first, the big noise\nof the city, diminishing when the lights changed, and plunging up with\nnew zeal a moment afterward, gave me only the pleasant sensation, the\ntitillations and satisfactions, of being in New York. Then I remembered\nmy circumstance. The frightened little animal that I am tore terribly\naround while I tried to catch it and to hold it and to remind it that\nthe thin tissue on the front of its brain was capable of managing its\npanic. I spent some time at the job and sat up trickling.\n\nAll my life I have listened to a wearisome cell repeat an old saw: the\ncoward dies a thousand times, the brave man once.\n\nA person is afraid to be cowardly.\n\nFor many years, owing to this rather superficial sentence, I had to\naccept the inner humiliation of cowardice. A boy with my kind of\nimagination, my style of projecting, could not but help finding in his\nhead the taste of the thousand deaths.\n\nAnd I am often cowardly still. In those few morning minutes, I chased\nmy coward a long distance.\n\nBut I do think the aphorism should be discarded. Certainly the coward\ndies a thousand times. So, too, however, does the man of imagination.\nIt is the manner of the thousand deaths that is important. And\nbravery--our poor, human bravery--is not necessarily consonant with\nfaulty imagination or none at all, as this dumbbell's apothegm implies.\n\nI finally caught my animal--a real beast and not a dream.\n\nI ordered coffee and stepped into the sitting room.\n\nIt was after nine.\n\nThe morning papers had been put at my door. There was mail.\n\nA letter from Ricky.\n\nI ripped it open and read it hungrily.\n\n  Dear:\n\n  Would you please, if you get a chance, go to the Lingerie Department\n  at Saks and ask for Miss Drewson? Tell her I'd like to have three\n  more slips like the blue satin ones I got last July when we were\n  in town. I could order them by mail, but I want to be sure to get\n  the same kind and she will know. Size twelve, which I guess I\n  needn't tell you. We miss you--everything is just the same, which is\n  dandy--and have fun. I love you very much.\n\n Ricky\n\nI had a second little beast to chase, then.\n\nThere was a bank statement.\n\nThere were four publicity releases from business concerns which keep\nsending me their bilge even though I took the pains, almost a year ago,\nto write them that I'd quit doing a newspaper column and had no way of\nairing their propaganda even if I felt the urge.\n\nThere were three letters from people who liked my books.\n\nThere was a letter from the assistant to the dean of a small college in\nIllinois:\n\n  Dear Wylie:\n\n  Just how does one go about getting so swellheaded and self-righteous\n  that he thinks he can tell off everybody on earth? I would like to\n  know, because it must be a wonderful sensation to balloon around so\n  gassily. Look out for pins, though!\n\n  Please reply.\n\n Sincerely,\n John F. Casselberry.\n\nI put the letter between my big toe and the next one, held it out at\nbody length, and reflected.\n\nThere is nothing unusual about this letter; I get a version of it every\nfew days, sometimes running into thousands of derogatory words. And, of\ncourse, it is true.\n\nOf course, of course, of course.\n\nAuthorship is the supreme act of ego.\n\nWhether it is good or evil, as an act, depends, I suppose not so much\non what's written, as how the writing is.\n\nMost authors conceal the egoistic aspect of the business under the nom\nde plumes of their characters.\n\nBut exactly as every man is all that he thinks and does--and dreams,\ntoo--so is an author all he writes.\n\nA mystery writer is a murderer in his head and he sets down his gory\nlore for an audience of murderers.\n\nWhat does that make you, Wylie? You first-person author!\n\nDid I use it to take the blame and the guilt--to take the\nresponsibility--and to tear down the artifice of the third person?\nAnd was it true (as I felt) that, since my purpose was to turn the\nthoughts of better authors into a vernacular more popular than their\nown, my I was the mere agent--and not the excreted vanity which it\nso constantly deplored? Or was the whole affair a secret exercise in\nlook-ma-I'm-dancing?\n\nGod knows, some part of it had to be.\n\nI fancied myself as a teacher.\n\nI was mostly a ham.\n\nWhat I knew, what I had learned, sought, made sure of, found comfort\nand understanding in--all this--and the long years I'd spent\nendeavoring to give it a dignified texture--forever emerged as the\noveremphasis of a self-enamored tyro reciting Hamlet. The truths were\nsomewhat there. But the voice was the voice of cheap aspirations in a\ncheap world.\n\nSome people heard my mentors. Yes.\n\nA few, reading my wretched books, saw beyond the antic actor, the\nattention-compeller, the infantile see-how-I-do, to Freud and Jung and\nthe physicists, to the mathematicians, to the calling world and the\ncrying night ahead, to the ingenuity and inconceivable courage of those\nwhom I ballyhooed.\n\nBut others--oh, how rightly--saw me!\n\nYakkety-yak.\n\nWylie's next.\n\nShock you. Make you think. Inspire you. Scare the hell out of you. Set\nbristles standing on old Comstock's neck.\n\n_Christ Jesus!_\n\nI had thought a havoc in prose might be a substitute for havoc\nitself--sparing a man here and a woman there from the reality of\nacquainting them with the instinct.\n\nO tin messiah.\n\nTawdry complex.\n\nBawling calfcake.\n\nJackass of your own worst describing.\n\nBalloon.\n\nIt must be a wonderful sensation.\n\nNot truth, so much as show-off.\n\nNot love of you--infatuation with me.\n\nNot--for what I did--but, like most of us, for what I might have\ndone--and used instead to inflate the First Person Singular with the\nairs of my hot compartments.\n\nThe extravert posing as the introvert.\n\nThe hoofer philosopher.\n\nShame, shame, shame!\n\nShame ran off me.\n\nAnd I shall die, in it and with it.\n\nI went to my window to look at the city the messy cubes in the haze and\nsomebody's radio performed an act of God.\n\n   Ja-da\n   Ja-da\n   Ja-da, ja-da, jing, jing, jing.\n   Shimmy, I thought.\n   Shimmy.\n   Shimmy in your B.V.D.'s.\n   You wear 'em in the winter and you wear 'em in the fall\n   You wear 'em in the summer if you wear 'em at all.\n   Shimmy.\n   Shimmy!\n   Shimmy in your B.V.D.'s.\n   This is a message to and of the American people.\n   The Dream.\n   The Cross.\n   Everybody\n   Loves my body\n But my body\n Don't love nobody\n But me.\n\n  Dear Dean Casselberry:\n\n  I have read all the books in your library. I am a God-fearing,\n  patriotic American. I believe in brother-love and liberty. In the\n  folks, who made me what I am and from whom I cannot find myself\n  different in any respect. Aside from that, you are right. I am\n  sending you, under separate cover, my ear, which I have cut off for\n  you. It is all I had to give and you may address it in the first\n  person because it will then understand. Also, for the inflation of a\n  balloon like mine, I send these directions: use equal parts of the\n  outcries of the oppressed and laughter; for ballast--you will be\n  there, and you should also carry a pail of tears.\n\n Phil Wylie\n\n Some give money\n some give work\n but if you give the person\n brother, you're a jerk.\n It didn't do me any good ... for ...\n If you try to tell the truth\n there's only you telling it.\n\n\n2\n\n It was a hell of a morning.\n\n\n3\n\n From nine-thirty until twelve-thirty I cut that serial.\n You wouldn't be interested.\n We'll go on, anyway.\n What the hell else can a man do?\n\n\n4\n\nPaul and Marcia, when they appeared for lunch, were expectably nervous.\n\nThe condition called strain is universal in this civilization, anyway.\nIt begins in the cradle with the Freudian conditioning--the creation\nof each superego. Toilet training, the disciplines of the bawling id,\nmeals according to schedule rather than appetite, the sting of parental\npalm on cheek, buttock, and wrist that follows erotic manipulation. All\nthese, and countless other \"punishments\"--which change with changing\nsocial codes, change with changing fads amongst pediatricians, and\ndiffer from one home to another and one culture to another--set up\nsuch stresses that, by the age of two, there is hardly one civilized\nbeing in a thousand who is not loaded up with a lifetime of disparate\nindignities.\n\nAdd to this the regimentations of school--the musts and must nots of\nclassroom and cloakroom. Impose upon it the innumerable stringencies\nof a religion. Require patriotism. Pepper the taut personality with\nfamilial prejudices and phobias. Jew-detestation, snake-dread. Now, in\nthe passing years, fold in the Law--cop, truant officer, and prison\nbars--sidewalks not to be spit on, or park benches not to be initialed,\nor loud noises not to be made by individuals (but only corporations),\nand season with the regulations that rise around the older child, the\nadolescent, the adult.\n\nRemove the person, then, from every natural source of his existence.\nSet him in a city where no useful plants grow and no animals graze--at\nthe end of a steampipe that uses coal mined he knows not where, or oil\nsucked up ten thousand miles away. A city where no wood is chopped.\nDetach him, that is to say, from Nature--deprive him of its experiences\nand every direct sensation of the earth, upon which he depends. Bring\neven his water in far conduits, with chlorine added, so he will never\nknow a spring's taste.\n\nSet him to work at earning a living without acquaintance of how the\nwhole of any living is made. On the contrary. Let his life's blood\nderive from some capillary of the flow. Let him take charge--not of\nhouse-building, or food-raising, or wood-gathering or fire-keeping,\nnot of cookery or childbirthing or the weaving of fabrics--but of the\ntwenty-eighth step in the manufacture of one size of ball bearings.\nCall this earning a living.\n\nGive him a town to defend against all other towns and cities, a county\nto boast of, a state to regard as superior to forty-seven other states,\nand a nation which anyone can see is the greatest on earth. Teach\nhim to hold such superiority as the supreme goal--to believe that no\nmore can be asked of him or of his fellows than that they maintain\nthe greatest nation--however low the rest may sink. Teach him never\nto inquire if his superlatives are adequate for the conditions of his\nage. Let him live to the full--by odious comparison. Let him say--I am\nbetter than you, wherefore you--not I--need all the improvement.\n\nNow. Set a few wars in his time, with their alarms, rigors,\nrestrictions, and dull regimentations. Load up his era with means for\nbacteriological attack and with atomic bombs. Invent great secrets,\nwith attendant rumors. Frighten him all day long--and at night. Tell\nhim he is nevertheless a free man and that, above all else, he must\ncherish and protect his liberty. Next, at every corner and edge of\nfreedom, hack, harass, chip, clip, steal, stain, bribe, sabotage, and\nsmudge each meaning and application of liberty, so that he no longer\ngathers its fundamental sense and comes to imagine liberty is consonant\nwith security--which is all that remains for him to dwell upon, since\nhe has been deprived of every secure thing and every secure experience\nin God's cosmos.\n\nIt makes you nervous, n'est-ce pas?\n\nNo one should be surprised that modern man shows signs of strain.\n\nNothing much in the world is sane.\n\nOnly the great instinct--the spaceless, timeless urge toward\nconsciousness--continues its thrust of sanity. Because of it, even the\nmaddest men are able to seize upon the illusion that they are sane by\ninterpreting their own, spotty awareness as if it were the entirety of\npossible knowing. Because of instinct, however, all the mad men and\nall the mad societies will be brushed like bugs from the earth's crust\nand replaced by better, sensibler men or--if necessary--by silence. By\nsilence while Evolution is retooled and instinct tries again with a\nnew form--one which may not be so dazzled by its little consciousness\nor so greedy for the immediate fruits thereof as to attempt, with all\nthe means and methods set down here, and ten million more, to deny\ninstinct, repudiate Nature, and insist its petty Reason is the shape of\ntruth entire.\n\nSo we three nervous wrecks sat down to lunch.\n\nMarcia was a pretty girl, winsome, willowy, with eyes as blue as an\nupland lake and light-brown hair which, where the sun fell through\nundulant glass brick, turned opalescent, like duck feathers, and shone\nevery color, as if it were composed of quintillions of submicroscopic\nprisms. She wore a light perfume--smelled like an April garden--and her\nvoice was limpid.\n\nPoor Paul.\n\nGloves on her hands--white little things, knit of string. She was\nnearly as tall as I am. A trembling came through the gloves. \"So glad\nto meet you, Phil. Paul talks about you incessantly. It's practically a\nfixation.\"\n\nHot in the lobby, steamy; you could bake bread in the place. \"Come in\nthe Knight's Bar,\" I said, \"and cool off.\"\n\nShe bewitched me with her lakelike eyes a moment longer--and deep in\nthem I saw the shadow glide, the fear--the numb, dark carnivore that\nhad to eat, that looked up at me with a guilty but imploring gaze.\n\nYou see, I knew her.\n\nI held the door. She went first, walking confidently in the face of\nthe strangers in the restaurant. Paul hesitated halfway through the\ncold doorway--hesitated, and eyed me with a sort of regret. Regret--and\ninquiry. I nodded my head to say she was lovely.\n\nJay saw her--gestured with a menu. We sat.\n\nThey ordered Manhattans and I a coke.\n\nMusic sprayed from its electrical hose--garbled a little, echoing\nslightly, like music from a lawn sprinkler. This wash of counterpoint\nin every public place is an attempt to assuage nerves that burn like\nbeds of coals. We do everything we can dream of to relax--except relax.\nIf we did that--we would lose the world that we own. And we are afraid\nto find our souls.\n\n\"It broke the record today,\" Paul said. Our best prop.\n\n\"Just over a hundred.\" Marcia moved her long hair across her right\nshoulder and kept gazing at me to see--not if I remembered her, for\nwe had already acknowledged that--but what the effect was to be. \"You\nought to see Park Avenue! It's a parade--driving to the country!\"\n\nI tried to look like a man who had no memory--who regarded the earth\nas if it were a big flower. \"Hot,\" I agreed. \"But I'm one of those\nunbearable souls who likes it that way.\"\n\n\"Me, too,\" said Marcia. \"Two winters ago, I went to Miami. I was crazy\nabout it--\"\n\nIt was a defiant thing to say. For that was where I'd seen her--with\nDave Berne, one morning when I'd stopped at his hotel, early, to take\nhim fishing.\n\n\"A young lady left over from last night,\" he said.\n\nMiss Somebody-or-other, he had said. Marcia breakfasting in his bed.\nShe exposed a nude shoulder to wave at me from the other room. Dave\npaid her and we went away.\n\nHe caught his first sailfish that day.\n\nI supposed, now, that Marcia was offering me the opportunity to ask if\nI hadn't seen her in Miami; I supposed she had pointed out the hurt\nto let me, if I wished, open it up. Paul had crushed his napkin. He\nwas sitting beside her and across from me--wondering, probably, how to\nturn the conversation away from the heat wave, the weather, to a less\nself-conscious, more profitable subject.\n\n\"Workin'?\" he asked.\n\n\"Miami,\" I said to Marcia, \"is quite a place.\" Then I said to Paul,\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"He's cutting a serial,\" Paul told the girl. \"When he gets through,\nthey'll pay him about five years of my salary for it. A month's work,\nfor him. A story about how some college football player married the\nDaisy Queen, I imagine. For that, he gets sixty bucks to my one. All I\ndo, though, is make atom bombs. You can see the public would rather--\"\n\n\"--have its ego blown up than its cities.\"\n\nShe laughed. \"What is it really about?\"\n\nI gave them an outline of the story. \"You see,\" I said, \"it's just the\nway Shaw put it. If you're going to tell people the truth, you've got\nto make them laugh, or they'll kill you.\"\n\n\"Why will they?\" Marcia asked.\n\n\"Because the truth doesn't seem amusing to them at all. However--they\nhave a feeling life should be amusing. So--if you can make them laugh,\nand still occasionally set down a fact, they assume it's possible for\nsomebody to know a few truths and still laugh. This permits them--in\nthe long run--to ignore the truth you set down and go on laughing.\"\n\n\"Does the truth seem amusing to you, Phil?\" she asked.\n\n\"Infinitely.\"\n\n\"It seems ghastly to me.\"\n\n\"Infinitely ghastly, too. You have to approach it in both moods at\nonce--or else, and this is commoner--in first one and then the other.\"\n\n\"There is an unwritten law in this country,\" Paul reminded us dryly,\n\"that everything is just dandy all the time--and anybody who says\ndifferent is a communist!\"\n\nI nodded. \"There is also a superstitious belief that the act of stating\nan unpalatable truth will increase its danger to the folks. What you\ndon't know won't hurt you. Innocence is bliss. Boost, don't knock. If\nyou haven't anything good to say, don't say it. This is the folklore of\nadvertising. This is the theme song of radio. Everything has to be on\nthe up-and-up. Criticism is regarded as un-American and un-Christian.\nThe nation was founded by a rebellion of the early fathers against\nBritish tyranny. Christ was the most passionate critic man ever had.\nBut it is considered the essence of patriotism and the chief tenet of\nthe Master to be anticritic. So the whole meaning both of our nation\nand of its principal religion have been thrown overboard--and we are\nall riding on a roller-coaster where no track inspectors are allowed.\"\n\n\"Goodness!\" Marcia said.\n\n\"Where,\" I went on, \"nobody is even sure that the tracks were ever laid\nto the end: looking ahead realistically also is forbidden.\"\n\nThe drinks came.\n\nPaul lifted his glass to the girl. She smiled at him warmly--with love,\nI suppose. What kind? It was a look of gratitude. A certain composition\nof her features. I compared that expression with the casual,\ncollegiate, young-woman-of-the-world wave she had once given me from\nDave Berne's double bed. A high-spirited, working-prostitute salute.\n\nSome part of her conscience was grateful to Paul for taking her\nout of professional circulation. She was, I presumed, a girl with\na good deal of courage--and one with taste. A sensitive girl who\ncould--still--accommodate her mind to the objective risks of her trade.\nBut the attitudes of many men toward her would not be acceptable. To\nface them, she would have to sell pieces of her inner person. Paul had\nrescued her from that and her eyes thanked him.\n\nBut, far more, Marcia's face expressed a maternal sentiment--warm\nand enveloping. He was, in a sense, her baby. Emotionally immature,\nromantic, and hence na\u00efve, he had taken her for what she was not.\nShe had played up to his assumption as an older woman to a child. In\nseducing him, she had seduced herself. She had adopted him as the\nsymbol of the values she had discarded, the values that were now most\nprecious to her because they were lost.\n\nWhen I thought that over, I realized it was the point of extreme hazard\nin their relationship. Not social pressures, but the pressures of\nemotions--of instincts of which neither was conscious--would be the\nexplosive condition of their two lives. The dangerous day would be the\nday when he matured sufficiently to dissociate the need to love from\nthe need to be loved. In her case, the time would come then, too--when\nhe demanded no more mothering in bowels or brain or heart. But it might\ncome sooner--when she tired of that one function, or extended it, or\nspoiled its object, or devoured it, or cast it out for its own good.\n\nFor neither man nor woman can possess without being possessed, or\nconsume without being consumed, and whether the process involves an\nobject or another person, not to know the way of it and not to abide by\nthe way is to be destroyed by it.\n\nThe lunch went along badly.\n\nMy habit of apostrophe and tirade, which usually fills such hollows\nas occur in talk--and forces its way, sometimes, beyond those decent\nopportunities--seemed inappropriate here. They had been depressed by\nwhat I had already said about the world. I guessed that, along with\nworries, they had hoped the visit would elicit an avuncular gaiety.\nThey were young and in love, they thought, and should get from their\nelders the jocose disposition reserved for young love. I felt some of\ntheir expectancy, at any rate, and it only inhibited my rhetoric.\n\nWe talked of the news, of the airlift to Berlin which, by its very\nexistence, constituted an immense Appeasement. We discussed the\npresidential candidates. We talked awhile of women's clothes, of the\nveterans' organization currently holding a convention in the city, and\nI described the house Ricky and I were building south of Miami, drawing\na diagram on the tablecloth with a knife.\n\nThe effort to keep talk going--to find topics and to change them before\nattempt was disclosed--made me restive. Paul wasn't helping any. He'd\neaten hungrily enough and then sat back--jerking and fidgeting about,\nmaking faces, pulling his nose, simpering, and smirking moonily.\n\nShe'd held up her end.\n\nThe trouble was, of course, that none of us was engaged in honest\nbehavior.\n\nPaul wanted to say: What do you think of her--and us?\n\nPaul wanted me to say: She's lovely--and I'm sure you'll be happy.\n\nI had become doubly certain--without yet entirely appreciating\nwhy--that it would never turn out. I had been generically sure, even\nbefore--just as Ricky had been sure: Paul wasn't constructed to marry a\nharlot and live happily ever after.\n\nI wanted to say: For God's sake, cooky, send her back to her trade;\nshe'll find some other guy, eventually; she's not for you.\n\nThen I wanted to go up sixteen floors to my apartment with my troubles,\nmy work, no women, no nephew.\n\nWhat did the girl want to say?\n\nI looked at her again--at her opalescent hair and her blue eyes.\n\nAnd she looked back.\n\nFor a moment, the shadow stood still--stood still, and dissipated.\n\nA wanton expression, brief and Lilith-like, reshaped the sharp, carmine\nedges of her mouth. She saw me not as the uncle of her now-beloved,\nbut as the detached person--another man--and in this seeing me, she\ninvoluntarily recalled her long affair with lust. I have heard a woman\nsay that, by merely quivering her underlip in a certain fashion, she\nhad been able to change the tone, attention, and interest of nine\nmen in ten with whom she'd ever talked--and there was nothing in her\nhistory to make me doubt the statement. And I have heard another woman\nsay that all there was to Rudolph Valentino was the dilation of his\nnostrils. Watching Marcia's mouth, I could understand the sense of\nsuch matters.\n\nSo I was sure of still another thing.\n\nHattie Blaine had been dubious of her. Hattie had made the\nsuggestion--the to me profoundly immoral suggestion--of tempting this\ngirl.\n\nHattie had done it out of an unconscious notion that Marcia had some\npoint in her nature which could not be lent to the kind of marriage\nPaul would need.\n\nIt wasn't money.\n\nIt was mood.\n\nMarcia caught me making this observation. She blushed a little, glanced\nat the table, and then raised her eyes--but whether anxiously or in a\nrepetition of the look, I could not tell.\n\nPassionate women are seldom ashamed of their passion.\n\nWhat she felt was not bold; it was not arch; it was not mercenary; it\nwas--simply--an essence of her own responses. A belonging, like the\ncurved shape of her eyebrows or the narrowness of her red nails--which\nshe accepted as no more and no less than that, and revealed as\nnaturally.\n\nI wanted to go, even more.\n\nOne can pick patterns in one's life--rhythms, cadences, aggregates,\ncross sections, events that occur in pairs and threes--and the\nphenomenon is undoubtedly the result of chance. But one notices, one\nsuperimposes the pattern subjectively--and decides it is not chance but\nsome obscure order, because one likes to feel that obscure orders occur\nin life. It is difficult to keep the ego perpetually lined up with\nstatistical reality.\n\nIn twenty-four hours I'd looked at, talked to, explored, and somewhat\nlearned three different, very handsome young women. Mrs. Yvonne\nPrentiss. Gwen Taylor--at Hattie's. And Marcia.\n\nThey come in threes, I thought. I thought it had been a long time since\nI'd met even one girl so pretty as all these. I reminded myself not to\nbe an ass--to keep the view that grouping and variation in no way warp\nmathematical principle. The obsessive quality of all such ideas weighed\non me. I hardly heard her account of their junket, on the preceding\nSaturday, to Jones' Beach.\n\nI began to invent an excuse for present departure--to think ahead about\napologizing--my work--the check, please--\n\nThen the busboy dropped the tray.\n\nHe had tripped, it proved, on a napkin.\n\nThere were heavy stacks of plates and side dishes on the tray--glasses\nof water--metal domes.\n\nThe boy staggered--and the wild gesticulation of his free arm was\ncaught by my peripheral vision. So I saw the tray slant--saw its burden\nslide and crash onto the heads of a pair of buttressed dowagers, a few\ntables away. The noise seemed to continue for a long time and a scream\npermeated it as the boy lost hold entirely on his tray, fell against\na chair-back, and dish after soiled dish cascaded onto flower hats,\nbright blouses, fat shoulders, and freckled necks.\n\nA rush of waiters masked the scene. Guests stood to see better.\n\nA bull-voiced beldame roared, \"Send the manager!\"\n\nHer less hefty companion burst through the waiters, daubing at the\nstained area of her bosom and throwing bits of lettuce with every\nswipe. She made a beeline for the ladies' room--followed by her\nsmeared, stentorian colleague, whose hat was full of dill and parsley.\n\nThis commotion had hardly died down--Jay had no more than managed to\nclear the carpet, dispatch the wreckage on the table, send out the\nchairs for purging, and bite back the last traces of his mirth--when\nanother oddity got under way.\n\n\"I want,\" said a man seated beside Paul, \"a baked apple.\"\n\n\"But there are no baked apples.\" Fred, the waiter, said this.\n\n\"Go and tell the chef I want a baked apple.\"\n\n\"I did, sir. There are none.\"\n\n\"Explain to him that I always have a baked apple, here.\"\n\n\"There is applesauce--sir.\"\n\nFred is Viennese. His sorrowful, wise eyes meandered over to meet mine.\nThey were expressionless. But the fact that they had moved toward me\nwas, in itself, communication.\n\n\"I do not like applesauce. Slippery pudding! Go and tell the chef I\nwant my usual baked apple.\"\n\nThe churl who spoke was familiar to me by sight. An Englishman--a VIP\nduring the war--who had often stayed at the Astolat. A medium-sized\nman of sixty with a red face and eyes like gray gas. A brittle British\nvoice, snotty in every particular. An iron-gray Kaiser Wilhelm mustache\nand a way of smacking his lips underneath it, when he was in a temper,\nthat shook its points.\n\nHe was always accompanied by his wife. As a rule, they ate\nquietly--talking together now and then, and more often just swilling\nin food. She was a lank, vapid woman with a toadstool's complexion,\na chin like a fist, and hair tormented into little knobs--as if she\nabsent-mindedly had cooked it, rather than coiffed it--and burned it in\nthe process. Lumpy, burned hair, a disgusting dish of it--and a voice\nlike claws, to match her master's.\n\nShe stared, now, at her empty plate, and said nothing. She did not seem\nto be ashamed, or embarrassed, or to be waiting for a storm to subside.\nShe was a woman born without the knack for yielding or apology. She\nmerely looked at her plate because she would be God-damned if she cared\nto look at anything or anybody else.\n\nFred came back. He put on a sympathetic expression. \"The chef says he\nis very sorry. He says that this is not the time of year for baked\napples.\"\n\n\"The stands are loaded with apples,\" the Englishman snorted. \"Seen 'em\nmyself!\"\n\n\"I know. But they're eating apples. Not baking apples. They come later\nin the fall.\"\n\nThe Englishman doubled his fist and lightly thumped the table. \"I said\nI wanted a baked apple! All I wanted was a baked apple.\"\n\n\"I have explained.\"\n\n\"With cream. A baked apple with cream.\"\n\nI have seen Englishmen by the dozen go through this sort of routine.\nWith the exception of certain Germans, some of them are, I believe,\nthe rudest people on the earth. Badly brought-up babies--these empire\nbuilders.\n\nThis one was insulting the waiter and his wife, in the bargain--but I\nhave rarely seen an Englishman who minded insulting his wife by making\nscenes. When crossed in matters like baked apples they seldom consider\nwives, children, strangers, decorum, or the reputation of Britannia.\nThey merely behave like twirps.\n\nFred had said nothing.\n\n\"I suppose,\" the Englishman at last went on, shivering his mustache,\n\"you mean to tell me I am not to have a baked apple--?\"\n\n\"Perhaps for dinner--one of the eating kind could be baked--\"\n\nThe Englishman suddenly hurled his napkin on his plate. He stood. \"No\nbaked apple,\" he said. \"Well!\"\n\nHe intended to stalk from the room.\n\nHowever, Paul--who had at first been chortling over the slow-spilled\ntray and later watching the Englishman with intent, even exaggerated,\ncare--now interposed, to my great surprise.\n\nHe sat next to the Britisher--on the same banquette. Thus when the\ninfuriated man surged upright he stood alongside Paul and between our\ntwo tables.\n\nPaul stretched out his foot, rested his shoe on the corner of the\nEnglishman's table, and untied the lace.\n\nThe man, barred by the long leg, said, \"Good Gad!\"\n\nPaul retied the lace. He looked dimly at the Englishman--who, I\nhonestly believe, had not so much as noticed or recalled a single\nperson in the room but himself all during the baked apple affair. It is\na kind of concentration peculiar to the British.\n\n\"Put down your foot, man!\"\n\n\"Quintod!\" Paul said, as if using rare syllables of opprobrium:\n\"Quidhetch! Vassenoy!\" He moved his foot this way and that, eying it.\nEven the Englishwoman was staring at it now, in some shock. After all,\nit was on her table, twenty inches from her picklelike nose, and not a\nvictual.\n\nPaul turned again to the standing man and hissed, \"Kittenpitches!\"\n\n\"Waiter!\"\n\nFred was still standing there--still fairly impassive. He had the wit\nto say, \"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"This person is drunk!\"\n\nPaul came to his feet then--and towered over the Englishman. He bent\nclose. \"Pomadiant nocrot,\" he said harshly. \"Cantapunce. Cabulate\ngeepross. Dreek!\"\n\nThe Englishman opened his mouth and emitted a thin, high, frightened\nsqueak.\n\nPaul scowled. \"Nikerpole,\" he said, sadly now. \"Oose.\"\n\nQuite suddenly, Paul sat down. He spoke to Marcia in a perfectly\nmatter-of-fact tone--but a tone loud enough to carry around the\nrespectfully quieted room. \"Never did understand why people came here\nwithout first learning the language. _And_ the manners. I dare say my\nJapanese surprised him! Probably an admiral in civies, spying out the\nnext war. Got a camera in his mustache, I presume, clever devils!\"\n\nThe Englishman then left the room, shaking from head to foot.\n\nHis wife, however, remained staring at her plate. By and by Fred\nbrought her a stewed fish with which she began to fill her baleful\ngizzard.\n\nI would have thought--I would have bet--that this was the end of such\nthings. The tray, alone, would have done as the month's quota for this\nproper restaurant.\n\nI was wrong.\n\nHardly had the Englishman departed--hardly had his wife commenced to\nmake slushing sounds with the cream sauce on her fish--hardly had\nI dried my tears--when the corner of the eye opposite the one that\nhad caught sight of the teetering tray drew my attention in its new\ndirection.\n\nThis was toward the bar.\n\nHere Mrs. Doffin was sitting at her regular table.\n\nShe had been sitting there, lunch and dinner, when I had first entered\nthe Knight's Bar in 1937. A tall, narrow woman with dyed red hair, who\nwas given to wearing witches' hats--such hats as women wore in Merlin's\nday--round and pointed. A stovepipe of a woman with a face on which a\nbleached fuzz grew, and eyes that resembled spoon-backs.\n\nYear in, year out, the four seasons through, Mrs. Doffin had five\nMartinis for lunch, five for dinner, five in the evening after dinner,\nand refreshments in her room, between-times. Some ten million dollars\nlay to her account in various banks, I understood, but, since the death\nof her husband in 1932, she had devoted herself entirely to one form of\nenjoyment, if the pointed hats be excepted.\n\nNever soused, noisy, or shot--she was never remotely sober. Sometimes,\nlate at night, if you came into the bar, you would see her lips move\nas she communed voicelessly with whatever shades or hallucinations\naccompanied the thirteenth or fourteenth Martini. Occasionally, in a\nmoment of clarity, she would recognize this person or that--a waiter,\nthe manager, Ricky, myself. She would nod regally then, wish you\ngood morning, afternoon, or evening--approximately according to the\ntime--and flick her fingers flirtatiously.\n\nShe never bothered anybody.\n\nShe was not bothering anybody now.\n\nShe was sitting at her regular table, wearing a bright, vacant smile,\nand stuffing matches into her nose.\n\nShe had placed twenty or thirty when I spotted her.\n\nShe picked up another and delicately inserted it, pressing it up until\nits pink tip came even with the rest.\n\n\"Curious,\" I said.\n\nMarcia and Paul craned their necks. They watched awhile.\n\n\"I wonder how many it will hold,\" Paul said.\n\n\"Another half dozen, I should think. She has a bit more room on the\nright side.\"\n\n\"Does she light them when she gets a snoot full? Make quite a firework.\"\n\n\"It's new,\" I answered. \"First variation in ages.\"\n\n\"Somebody should stop her!\" Marcia said urgently.\n\nPaul's head shook. \"On what grounds?\"\n\n\"Good heavens, Paul--!\"\n\nMrs. Doffin reached the point where neither nostril would contain\nanother match. She tamped them pensively and nodded to herself. They\nprotruded, I would say, the best part of an inch--all neat and even.\n\nMrs. Doffin then removed her hat. It was the first time I had seen the\nfull billow of her hair. It looked like excelsior on which paprika had\nbeen sprinkled. She set the hat on the seat at her side and glanced\nwith a bright smile and opaque eyes at the whole earth. I suppose the\nwaiters had failed to notice her new gambit owing to the fact that\nshe, and her soundless palaver, were fixtures in the place, like the\nintruding girders and the gaudy horsemen on the walls. All the waiters\never saw was her glass, when she emptied it. She could have breathed\nfire, or come in tattooed, and they would have observed no change.\n\nFrom her hat, Mrs. Doffin withdrew a hatpin, long and as black as any\nof her garments or their accessories.\n\nThis, with the utmost aplomb, she thrust through both her cheeks,\nhesitating only momentarily at the midpoint, evidently in order to get\nher tongue beneath the line of direction. One does not--her pleased\nlook seemed to say--absurdly and clumsily impale one's tongue, in these\nlittle maneuvers.\n\n\"Fred,\" I called at this point. \"Mrs. Doffin needs you.\"\n\nHe looked. His eyes bulged and his brows shot high. He hurried toward\nher.\n\nShe flirted her fingers at him.\n\nHe signalled to Jay.\n\nTogether they escorted Mrs. Doffin from the room.\n\nNobody ever saw her again.\n\nThere are homes for the rich to do such things in.\n\n\n5\n\n\"The heat is getting people,\" Paul said, as he and Marcia bade me\ngood-bye in the lobby.\n\nMarcia gave me one last look. She knew she hadn't passed.\n\nShe ascribed the wrong cause to the fact.\n\nShe thought that, since I'd seen her sensual impulse was not confined\nto one person, I'd written her off as a slut.\n\nWhose sensual impulses have ever been confined to one person?\n\nWere they so limited, human breeding would be the rarest of activities\nand marriage almost unheard of.\n\nI didn't mind Marcia's libido.\n\nAll I objected to was its orientation.\n\nI rode up to my room and began dilatorily to strip once again.\n\n\n6\n\nI am told the female of ruff is reeve.\n\nI am told the energy of one of the early atomic bombs is about equal\nto the energy that falls on a mile and a half square of the earth in a\nsingle day.\n\nI am told that a bishop in Philadelphia ordered two motion-picture\nhouses to close down their shows.\n\nI am told that common goldfish will survive under winter ice while the\nfancy sorts will not.\n\nI am told the kurbash is a whip.\n\nI am told that Soviet fighter planes are buzzing our airlift.\n\nI am told that Paris is unchanged this summer.\n\nI am told that a committee is being formed to censor as un-American all\nbooks which, in its opinion, are sacrilegious or immoral.\n\nI am told that no creature can travel faster than a hundred and\ntwenty-five miles an hour, or thereabouts.\n\nI am told that Truman reads Keats.\n\nThese are things I had not known before.\n\nI subtract myself from them and find life going on as usual--the land I\nlove deteriorating, the world I adore growing ever more miserable.\n\nI throw the papers and magazines on my coffee table and go to work.\n\n\n7\n\nOnce, I laughed.\n\nNot at the slapstick landslide of dirty dishes on the dowagers.\n\nNot at the weird vanishing of Mrs. Doffin.\n\nBut at the matter of a baked apple.\n\nO England--culture uncultivated!\n\nBrave boors.\n\n\n8\n\nToward half past five I got my nose bloodied.\n\nIt happened this way:\n\nI went down to the newsstand for a typewriter ribbon; the energy of my\nsentiments had worn holes in the incumbent tape.\n\nWhile I was waiting for a red light on Madison Avenue I heard band\nmusic and saw people scurrying toward Fifth. I went over to see the\nparade.\n\nIt was a listless marching--veterans on gummy asphalt all along the\nlimp trees by the Park. The older men from the older war rode in mimic\nlocomotives that bucked their front wheels, hooted sirens, clanked\nbells. Some current soldiers marched--carrying rifles with hot metal\nparts, and behind them came a show of mechanized equipment, with bands\ninterspersed. I listened to the bands and thought of Shakespeare's\nreference to men who couldn't contain their urine when they heard\nthe bagpipes play. Brass bands, as much as anything, had undone the\nloose hold of the Germans on sense. Songs about rolling caissons and\nlifting anchors were flaring the eyes and dropping the chins of the\nstreet-lining crowds here, too. I studied these people, remembering\nall philosophers and the scientists and their faith in reason. Man's\nmonumental Thought--his pride--was silly in these surroundings.\nPlato, Aristotle, Socrates, Kant, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Descartes,\nHume, Berkeley, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, James, and a hundred\nmore--compartments of order in a chaos of shining orbs and panting\ntongues. Pretty compositions, real in themselves, and true enough--but\nfloating in a flood their owners did not observe or--if they saw\nit--ruled irrelevant, nor realized they rode it, too. What old classic\npremise could stand the test of a brass band? None.\n\nI watched the bright horns and the dull guns.\n\nI stood at attention when the flags went by--feeling, as I always do,\nthe aspiration in those white stars and those red stripes.\n\nWe would continue to aspire--some of us--while breath stayed in us.\n\nBut this stirring--this patriotic thrill--did not debilitate my\nsphincters. Tightened them, rather, against the multimillion goons who\nwould as soon sell all of liberty down any creek as their own two-bit\nintegrity. What patriots remain these days must battle harder against\ntheir countrymen for truth, for dignity, for honesty and love than ever\nagainst an outside foe.\n\nIt proved a misfortune to be moved to lofty sentience, at that time.\n\nThe tiresome military iron clanked by as it has clanked through every\ncity on the earth for thousands of years.\n\nMore men of the newer war came, canoe-shaped hats worn cock-eyed,\nbellies lean still, faces blank in the scalding sunshine.\n\nI noticed, now, that many paraders were moving among the\nspectators--marchers who had been dismissed some distance up the\nAvenue. These men, from other states, ticketed like parcel post,\nbadge-thick and boozy, shoved among the ordinary citizens, cawing\nand singing, carrying pails, and shooting water pistols. Occasional\ncops watched them with the fixed, tolerating smiles taught in the\ndepartment--proper address toward large political groups. The men, in\nwhat they thought of as boisterous glee, peed out their pistol streams\nat any pretty girl, blotting blouses, stippling skirts with dark\ndribbles, and evoking, as often as not, coaxing screams.\n\nI wandered through a block or two of this nickering infantilism, this\npetty and symbolic repayment for a thousand lacks and ten thousand\nwretched frustrations. Men will be boys, I thought. Boys, I knew, will\nhardly ever be men.\n\nI came to a lamppost where a dozen pistoleers were singing, \"I want a\ngirl just like the girl who married dear old dad.\" Their mouths yearned\nit and the sun sparkled on the gold fillings in their teeth. This song,\nso far as I recall, is the only legitimate outlet for the Oedipus\ncomplex permitted in twentieth-century U.S.A. So I watched gents from\nOklahoma and Idaho and Nebraska sing their incest, get their backs in\nit, and I wondered how much effort it would take to elicit from even\none of them an acknowledgment of that emotion which, hidden deep inside\nhim, gave him his particular inflection and look while he sang that\nparticular song. I have wondered before while viewing luncheon clubs as\nthey yearned for a girl like mother. To a face, every here and there,\nthe anthem does memorable things. I supposed they would all rather be\ndead than have to admit the possibility of the truth. I supposed that\nthe recognition of the baby alive in us all would require the hurdling\nof yet more dead bodies--billions, at least--to bring them to a happy\nacceptance of such affairs.\n\nAmerican babies are not allowed to be Freudian.\n\nNot till they grow up, anyhow.\n\nI pushed along.\n\nThere was a clearing in the crowd ahead. Out of it came such blats\nof laughter, animal calls, and whistlings as mark the approach to\na feeding zoo--the same sound that is emitted by the amused radio\naudience.\n\nI reached the edge.\n\nHere the canoe-hats had formed an open oblong between the curb and an\napartment front. It was necessary for anyone who went by to cross this\narea. On its rim stood a man with a stick, and heavy batteries. He\nwore a sergeant's chevrons and his breast was a blaze of heroism. Men\ncrossed the vacated cement untouched--and middle-aged women, also. But\nwhenever a young girl made her way through the hem of the crowd and\ncame unexpectedly into the hollow oblong, the sergeant sneaked forward\nwith his stick, got behind her, lifted the rear of her skirt, poked,\nand applied the juice.\n\nThe girls, shocked electrically, without warning, in this delicate\nand private part of their anatomies reacted frantically. Most of\nthem screamed. All of them leaped--thrusting their hips forward\nconvulsively. Some then ran--and dove into the crowd on the other side.\nOne, a girl with long, dark hair, slipped after she leaped, fell, and\ntore a hole in her stocking. Another jumped, turned, and cursed. One\ntried to hit the sergeant with her pocketbook. Most endeavored to\nrecover some shred of composure--to laugh--or to slip away without\nshowing what they felt. Some wept instantly.\n\nBut the response of the delighted--the ecstatic onlookers, was always\nthe same: a jarring salvo of catcalls, guffaws, finger whistles, ribald\nyells, mirth's paroxysms.\n\nI watched this business for quite a while--the bands going by behind\nme--the flags--the guns--and the sweating people standing all along the\ncurb for miles of Fifth Avenue.\n\nFinally, a fair-haired girl of about sixteen came innocently into the\nopen place, looked about to find the reason for it, saw none, and\nbegan to cross. The sergeant slipped swiftly behind her. Quickly, with\nhis stick, he lifted the little pink cotton of her skirt, bent as he\nwalked, with ogling pool-room pantomine, took aim, and thrust. This\ngirl did not leap but stood transfixed on the point of the electric\nstick. A great grin broke on the sergeant's face and he thrust,\nnow--again and again. Her head turned in slow horror. Whatever fantasy\nhad seized her brain was shattered by the sight of the lewd man jabbing\nat her. The crowd roared like all the pottery on earth falling over a\nprecipice. A look of the most pitiful terror came over her. At last,\nshe found the nerves and muscles for running and escaped into the\nyapping multitude.\n\nThe sergeant straightened up. When he straightened, I stepped out and\nhit him on the mouth as hard as I could.\n\nThe approving roar stopped as if a noose had tightened on its throat.\n\nThe sergeant stared at me with addled menace. Blood trickled from\nbetween his lips, where I had felt his teeth loosen.\n\nThen one of his buddies hit me from the side.\n\nMy nose blazed with pain.\n\nThe hollow lost its shape. Different--yet not much different yells were\nraised.\n\nSomeone cracked the back of my head.\n\nI saw a place between two fat men, lunged at it, looked back. The\nsergeant was slowly sitting down, fumbling for his handkerchief.\n\nBlows fell on me. A man in a navy uniform grabbed my arm. I hit him and\nhe let go. The crowd closed around me.\n\nWhen, after long minutes of pushing and weaving, I emerged on a side\nstreet, my nose was bleeding.\n\nI wiped it and went, somewhat shakily, to the hotel.\n\nThe nosebleed stopped in a few minutes.\n\nI turned on my radio and found a cello solo amongst the predinner music.\n\nAve Maria, as a matter of fact.\n\n\n9\n\nTom Alden--Tom-the-doctor--had been thinking about me, off and on, for\nmore than thirty hours, now.\n\nHe is the kind of person whose thoughts give birth more to inquiry than\nopinion.\n\nWe went to a Longchamps for dinner--the gold and vermilion decorations\nmade bearable by air conditioning. Traffic was light; only a few people\nwere about--people going tiredly in the heat-choked night. After\ndinner, we rode back in a cab to the Astolat and strolled over to the\nPark where we sat together on the Mall, listening to the concert.\nThousands of people had spread out newspapers in the lamplit dusk and\nlay upon them, asleep, talking, making love. The police had suspended\nthe bans that one night. Tenements and penthouses were ovens; their\nrefugees gasped on the grass. Kids played in the fountains and no one\ninterfered. The city itself had an evacuated feeling; all who were able\nhad fled the heat wave and the rest were in parks, in cool restaurants,\nor in the movie theaters. Stars shone hazily above the trees and the\nstagy skyscrapers. Music, coming down the Mall, was distorted by\ninvisible eddies that still rose from the sun-baked cement; it soared\nand fell and wobbled through the furnace atmosphere.\n\nTom, as I said, is given to inquiry. This is not surprising in a man\nwho practices several sciences. If we were old friends, we were also\ndedicated, in different ways, to the examination of all that surrounded\nourselves and each other. Our sensibilities were tuned to the fact;\nthey lacked the common diffidences of most such attachments.\n\n\"How's it going?\" That was his first question, when he arrived at my\nhotel rooms.\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\nHe put down the black bag that lies within easy reach of his whole life.\n\n\"Jittery?\"\n\n\"Not that I know of.\"\n\n\"Tell Ricky?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"How is she?\"\n\n\"All cured--we hope.\"\n\nHis pale eyes fixed on me. \"Let me have another look at the throat.\"\n\nHe had another look--rearranging lights.\n\n\"I did a little reading on it, Phil. I can't say for sure what it is.\"\n\n\"I'm going on the assumption that it is--what-for.\"\n\n\"Yes. You would. Most people would take the opposite attitude--until\nthe last possible fraction of the last possible second.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nHe shrugged and put his tools away. \"Wishful thinking.\"\n\n\"More fun to know than wish--look than dream.\"\n\n\"Not many agree with that.\"\n\n\"They don't know enough--look far enough. If you're going to get\nyourself free--you've got a lot of illusion to hack through first.\"\n\n\"Do you feel really free?\"\n\nI shook my head. \"Not free at all. But I do feel I know what freedom\nis--what it means--what it's for. Maybe that's as near as you can\nget--these days.\"\n\nHe went to the toilet and washed--in an absent-minded, habitual manner.\n\"Hot night.\"\n\n\"Hot.\"\n\n\"You've been told your number was up before now. I've been considering\nthat. You know what it's like.\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"What's it like?\" He asked it eagerly, and yet academically, as if\nthere were a formula for the reply.\n\n\"Changes from minute to minute.\"\n\n\"I suppose so.\" He seemed disappointed.\n\nThat was when we started for Longchamps.\n\nHe took the bag along. He always does....\n\nHe ordered one Tom Collins. The tall glass was sweating even before the\nwaiter could bring it from the bar.\n\n\"How are you--fixed?\"\n\nI told him that.\n\nHe peered at the room, the other diners, the gaudy colors. \"Funny. I\nremember back in high school in Montclair when you were the class poet.\nEverybody thought you'd be a writer, sure. The last will and testament\nof our class left your pen to the juniors. Remember that?\"\n\nI remembered.\n\n\"But I don't suppose anybody--including yourself--ever thought you'd\nrip out magazine serials like logs going through a circular saw. Get to\nbe a popular writer. And then set people on their ears by writing about\npsychology. We all thought you were destined for the garret--a lot of\nreputation, maybe--but not Florida houses and--fifty thousand dollars'\nworth of insurance--\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Did you?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"You did!\"\n\n\"No harm in daydreaming, was there? Back then?\"\n\nTom meditated on those distant high school years. \"You realized the\ndaydream.\"\n\n\"A person like me has a good many daydreams. When one comes true--he\nautomatically starts on the next.\"\n\n\"Do you consider yourself happy?\"\n\n\"Enormously, Tom.\"\n\n\"So do I. _Why?_ How come? When you spend about ninety per cent of your\ntime considering the unhappiness of the world?\"\n\n\"Somebody has to collect the garbage or we'd all die of plague. And a\nborn garbage collector loves his job.\"\n\n\"There's more to it than that.\"\n\n\"Yeah. It's not garbage. It's what we discard, ignore, repress. The\ngreen fertilizer of the next crop. The yin to the coming yang. My\ncontemplation of what you call the unhappy aspects of life is really\nthe substance of what I find to be hope.\"\n\n\"Jung changed you a lot, Phil.\"\n\n\"I dunno. I got thinking--some years back--of a poem I wrote when I was\ntwenty-one. Threw it away--lost it--haven't any idea what happened to\nit. But in that poem was the fundamental Jungian idea--the idea that\ninstinct directs human affairs--and that it's a force in action which\nalways has equal and opposite reactions--\"\n\n\"Still--Archie--\"\n\nI thought of Archie--the psychiatrist to whom Tom had sent me\nfor analysis. \"Archie taught me psychology--Freudian, Jungian,\nAdlerian--and let me work out my own problems, aloud. He was a great\nteacher.\"\n\n\"He died of cancer,\" Tom mused.\n\n\"'--too'?\"\n\nHe looked at me and grinned gently. \"Masochism takes funny forms in\nyou.\"\n\n\"In us all.\" I went back a little way in the discussion. \"When I was\na young guy, I formed the habit of listening to, and looking at,\neverything that happened in my mind. Ruling out nothing. Trying to\nrelate everything to everything else. That's a good habit. That's the\nnatural mind. There are too God-damned many prohibitions and taboos\nin the life of a Presbyterian minister's son to keep track of. So I\nstarted--as a game--ignoring all of them, in my head. Plenty of people\ndo. I arrived--in that poem--at a pretty complete formulation of\ninstinct and the laws of instinct--as Jung sees it working. As Toynbee\nsees it working collectively, on civilizations. As Northrop glimpses\nit. As Jesus tried to define it. As Aristotle didn't even guess it.\"\n\n\"So you think you really never underwent a philosophical change?\"\n\n\"No. I lost sight of what I'd felt--when I was a dizzy, drunk Hollywood\nwriter. But when Archie taught me Freud and Jung--I got back the\ninsight--in contemporary terms and scientific formulations. That's all.\nAnd it isn't very much.\"\n\n\"Are you ever frightened?\"\n\n\"I'm protoplasm, for God's sake!\"\n\nHe chuckled. \"That's a relief! I've wondered what are you scared of.\nSometimes--you seem haunted. Most of the time, I could swear you were\nafraid of nothing.\"\n\n\"The shadow of the ego--the black streak behind it that it never looks\naround to see.\"\n\n\"And what does that mean?\"\n\n\"What I'm scared of. Inhumanity. Cruelty. To man--to me, also, I\nguess.''\n\n\"People get more humane.\"\n\n\"Like hell!\"\n\n\"If you lived a thousand years ago--or ten thousand you'd believe it.\nThe trouble is, you're supersensitive.\"\n\nI took a long breath.\n\n\"What do you read?\" I asked. \"What do you want to hear? A list of\nGerman concentration camps? An account of the cremation of some six\nmillion innocent people by Germany? A survey of conditions in Russian\nslave labor camps? A discussion of physical torture as it is used\nby modern police in America? Or by military men? Or as a political\ninstrument in Europe? Or as a diplomatic measure, by, let us say,\nthe English, in their colonies? Do you want to hear a discourse on\nthe behavior of Jap troops in war? On our own troops? Would you like\nto have me run over the treatment of people in American lunatic\nasylums? Shall I touch on lynching details--and other minor unpleasant\nexperiences of the American Negro? Would you like me to talk about how\nwe Americans disposed of the Indian problem? Would you be interested in\nsome studies of corporeal punishment as it is administered in American\nslum homes and on American farms? Shall I recite the prison methods\nand jail practices common amongst our agents of law enforcement? Or\nwould a review of the various effects of intense radiation on the human\nbody, as well as its genes, coupled with the fact that about every\nother American is sitting around these days asking why in hell we don't\natom-bomb Russia, tend to persuade you that we are not, essentially,\nhumane people? Shall I discuss brutality in sports? Are you interested\nin considering our annual million smashed in automobiles as evidence\nof a certain basic scarcity of the humanitarian impulse? There are\nvarious business practices I could go into, in documenting the matter.\nNot the ruination of widows and orphans. Not the adulteration and\npoisoning of products. Just the little results of the basic premise\nof business which is that making money is the whole object, without\nreference to kindness or love. Or would you like to review the various\nsorts of crimes committed by the people in our fair land? Would you\nlike to contemplate the interesting and vicious psychology of many\nof the _victims_ of these crimes? Shall we look at the degree of\nobliviousness, smugness, or rejection which Americans held toward\nthe atrocities before the recent war--or hold now toward massacre\nand famine in India--famine in China--ruthless dictatorship in a\ndozen nations--Spain, for instance--Argentina--a lot more? Or shall\nwe, on the other hand, investigate a whole field of cruelty as large\nas the one just hinted at: the _psychological_ cruelties of modern\nmen? It would double the scope of the survey. The teachers--devising\ntorments to sweat off their frustrations on their pupils. The common\noffice techniques of the average man-of-affairs. The torments of the\nsoul written into the class structures of society. The awful havoc\nwreaked on man whenever a minister preaches hell-fire and damnation.\nNo fooling! We are not humane. We are--per capita--the cruelest people\nwho ever lived, because, unlike the poor thieves on the two other\ncrosses--we do know what we do!\"\n\nTom took off his fogged spectacles and wiped them. I pushed the\nadvantage. \"Cruelty among doctors. An interesting little sidetrack. I\nrecall, for example--\"\n\n\"Skip it.\" He looked sorrowfully at me. \"You win that one.\"\n\n\"All I want,\" I said, \"is for people to _be_ truly humane. _Truly_\nloving. But, to gain that, we'd be obliged to give up a great deal we\nnow cherish dearly.\"\n\nWe had lemon ice.\n\nLater, we walked into the Park and sat down....\n\nThe people on the newspapers on the grass, the silo smell of trees at\nnight in heat waves, lamplight and music--as I have said....\n\n\"Cruelty in doctors,\" Tom repeated musingly, after we found a bench on\nthe Mall, where we could feel the breeze if one came.\n\n\"Last night,\" I responded, when he didn't go on, \"I was reading a book\nthat suggested the whole philosophy of medicine was cruel. Saving\nbabies--increasing the life span--only so people will go hungry by\nmillions.\"\n\n\"Vogt? Osborne? I read them. What's true humanity? I don't know--except\nsometimes, in individual cases. What about old people, for instance?\"\n\n\"What about them?\"\n\nHe looked back over his shoulder as if he could see through the night,\nthe trees of Central Park, and the blocks of buildings, to the East\nRiver. \"Out on the Island--I take care of a ward filled with them.\nChronics. Sixty years old. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety. Some been in bed\nfor twenty years. No cure. No hope. No chance--in a high percentage--of\ndoing a thing, ever. An organ's shot--ruined beyond repair. Half of\nthem touched with senile dementia; a quarter, sunk in it. Mess their\nbeds. You feed 'em with spoons. And yet they go on--year after year\nafter year.\"\n\n\"I've seen the ward.\"\n\n\"America has millions of such people. Only a fraction of 'em in\nhospitals. Moms and pops, grandmas and grandpas, hanging on to the\nlast, sick gristle of existence. Spoiling the lives of other millions\nof people. Taking their time and their energy. Absorbing funds that\nyoung kids desperately need. All for nothing. Wheedling and whining\nand complaining if everything isn't soft and easy for them. Reminding\nsons and daughters and grandchildren of their 'duty.' The duty to be\nenslaved by meaningless, useless senility. The food and the clothes,\nthe beds and the service, the tax money, the energy, the topsoil, if\nyou go for Vogt--and the metal--pours down their gullets and is worn\nout by their worn-out bodies--and not one single, solitary useful\nthing is accomplished.\"\n\n\"You're stealing my act,\" I said.\n\nTom laughed ruefully. \"It's an easy act for a doctor to crib! Tell me,\nwhy in hell do people look forward so much to old age? Nine times out\nof ten, it's a mess. Even proud, independent people, when they get old,\nusually lose their pride and their independence--and go down begging\nfor handouts.\"\n\n\"The best reason I can think of,\" I said, \"is that they're disappointed\nin life as they've lived it up to middle age.\"\n\n\"The whole country grows older,\" Tom went on, after nodding to himself.\n\"The American landscape will soon be cluttered with human antiques.\nPension-seeking, vengeful, dogmatic, persecuting, bloc-voting,\nparasitic millions. An ocean of wasteful protoplasm--Old Men of the\nSea--and old Women--riding on the backs of everybody. Is a thing like\nthat humane?\"\n\n\"It is richly sentimental.\"\n\n\"In the labs, thousands of my colleagues are sweating to bring it\nabout. Studying the degenerative diseases. Trying to lick cancer\nand heart trouble and hypertension. Trying to lick aging itself--to\nkeep the old, old indefinitely! Geriatrics--a whole science for the\nmaintenance of second childhood! Sometimes, Phil, I actually think the\nworld is as crazy as you say it is. Sometimes--when I run into a bright\nkid whose parents can't afford to have its legs straightened--and then\nwhen I visit my ward--I'd like to sweep the place clean with a Thompson\ngun and move in the kids who need it.\"\n\n\"There is the Townsend Plan,\" I offered. \"Two hundred dollars a month\nfor everybody who's old, if they spend it right away--and millions are\ntoo stupid to see the catch. In fifty years--Pensioned Old Age may\nbe the great goal that progress and prosperity are today. Of course,\nthere isn't enough stuff to go around, and there will never be, so two\nhundred bucks, if you gave it to the gaffers to spend, soon wouldn't\nbuy a good-sized roast. But they may try for it.\"\n\nTom laughed somberly. \"They are trying. You should see the pension\nliterature in my ward. The letters they write. The voting they do.\nShould I shoot them? What the hell do you really believe about it?\"\n\n\"There is the death wish,\" I said.\n\n\"They don't want to die! Not one in a dozen! Even if they're blind,\nvomiting on the hour, spoon-fed, and in pain--they want to go on\nliving--and are proud of it.\"\n\n\"It's Jung,\" I answered, \"who keeps talking about the law of opposites.\nThe death wish is subjective. But we translate it into its opposite\nform--in this case, the objective. We want other people to die--to\nsuffer--to bear our load--to take our responsibility. We hate. What\ndid you say about your old folks? Vengeful and persecuting and\nparasitic? That's the death wish turned wrong-side-out. Or--take this\npair of opposites. We have applied reason to extending life. So we\nhave automatically obliged ourselves to apply reason to death. That\nis a psychological consequence of administering life--stretching it,\nmaintaining it--of baby-saving and so on. Only--being egoists--blind\nto the basic laws of instinct--we won't kill anybody. Millions of\nRussians, maybe, but not one American. It's even against the law for a\nperson to kill himself, for whatever merciful and laudable a reason. So\nwhat? We insist on our right to save and maintain every life. We also\ninsist on dodging the resultant duty at the other end of the natural\nspectrum: death. The living have no recourse left but to extravert\ntheir death wish. To hate others because of the hatefulness of the trap\nthey're in.\"\n\n\"How do you work it out?\"\n\n\"In the better world,\" I said, \"a person who had enjoyed the long\nconscious control of his life would feel somewhat responsible for\ncontrolling his death. When he got useless, he would give up. He would\nregard it as rational--and as part of that 'greater love' that almost\nno man, these days, hath a sign of.\"\n\n\"Voluntary euthanasia?\"\n\n\"Why not? And if you came a header and couldn't do it for yourself--the\nstate would do it.\"\n\n\"Do you think,\" Tom said with asperity, \"that the people would permit\nanything like that? Or think of it as _idealism_? Why--it's a sin--!\"\n\n\"Sure. Sin. It's one of the sins that keep the churches full and the\nheads and hearts of the folks empty. Vested interest.\"\n\n\"How many people would do it?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"Couldn't say. You've seen cases. You'll likely witness\nanother--my own--before long--\"\n\n\"Good God! I'm sorry--Phil--!\"\n\nI laughed and he relaxed--visibly.\n\n\"The mass of humanity,\" he went on after a time, \"hasn't that kind of\ninsight, education, nerve--\"\n\n\"No. Maybe not. Hasn't--as I'd put it--even that much access to its own\ninstincts. Doesn't know even that clearly the relationship of ideals to\nacts. Of material gains to inner responsibilities. That's the trouble\nwith the mass of humanity. It decides to use atom bombs--the work of a\nfew geniuses who, left to themselves, might not.\"\n\n\"Appalling,\" Tom said.\n\n\"Sure. But the moldboard plow is just as deadly as the bomb in the\nhands of the common mass. And the implications of plows are much easier\nfor the common jerk to understand than the implications of nucleonics.\nBut he doesn't. So why worry about atomic bombs? Merely another aspect\nof the same, deep, and ubiquitous nonsense.\"\n\nWe sat awhile.\n\n\"What,\" Tom finally said, \"will the better world be like?\"\n\n\"Woodsy,\" I answered.\n\nI could hear his grin in his voice. \"To restore and shore up the\ntopsoil?\"\n\n\"Yep. To maintain the ecology that maintains man. And besides, woods\nare pleasant.\"\n\n\"The rivers would be clear. The factories would dump their wastes in\nthe desert. And the sewage would go through processing plants and then\nbe put back on the land.\"\n\n\"Not many factories, anyhow,\" I said.\n\n\"No? Why?\"\n\n\"Not nearly so many people, for one thing. People would--people\ndid--cherish each other more when they were scarcer. That's a\npsychological aspect of overpopulation thus far hardly observed. There\nare so many of us getting in each other's way and making life tough\nby merely being that we tend to hate each other just from congestion.\nThen--the people in the better world wouldn't be so crazed over junk.\nA tenth of the factories we've got now would probably furnish all the\njunk they'd want.\"\n\n\"Cities, do you think?\"\n\n\"Maybe a few small ones--where people put in a few years before going\nback to the open country.\"\n\n\"Villages? Small towns?\"\n\n\"Sure. Lots of schools and colleges. Everybody would be pretty\nbright--and pretty anxious to learn. Everybody would be artistic.\nEverybody would want to do a certain amount of work with his hands.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"That's the instinct of the critter, isn't it?\"\n\n\"How come they'd all be bright?\"\n\n\"Because the biggest fun we're going to have--when we get that wise, if\nwe ever do--is breeding bright people. Living for the sake of future\ngenerations--and having some happiness doing it. Happiness with sex,\namongst other things, when it ceases to scare us to pieces.\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" Tom's tone objected, \"you might finally convince the folks\nthat knocking themselves off when they got useless was evidence of a\ngreat love--an assimilated employment of the death wish. I can even\nsee certain remedial effects in the idea--if that were the common\nphilosophy: people would want to make a bigger effort while they did\nlive, for example. But you can't get dumb babies to knock themselves\noff.\"\n\n\"You could start--though--at the other end. Clamping down on the people\nwho overproduce and are least qualified to do so.\"\n\n\"Birth control for the morons? The Jukes and Kallikaks?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Too difficult. They fornicate when drunk.\"\n\n\"Then set your lab wizards to find an easy, lasting system. They\nought to work toward stopping the output of predefeated babies--of\nsociety-defeating hordes of nitwits--as a compensatory duty for\nworking on longevity and the diseases of old age. Fill the drugstores\nwith something you take a sip of that'll sterilize you for five years\nstraight. Chocolate flavor. And back it with national advertising.\"\n\n\"Try to sell that idea! Every church would say it would mean the\nsuicide of the race.\"\n\n\"Suicide of church members, maybe! Kidding aside, the more intelligent\nspecimens of mankind, who do use birth control, still do have\noffspring--on purpose. It's just that they're outnumbered--and the net\nresult is genetic decline.\"\n\n\"What else--in the better world?\"\n\n\"No mummery about sex. No mysteries. The young allowed to develop\naccording to their impulses--without shame or restraint so long as they\naren't hurtful. The sex manners and aesthetics of the mature built upon\nthat background of unashamed, free experience.\"\n\n\"And what would those manners be?\"\n\n\"Don't ask me! I'm a shame-produced human gimmick, myself.\"\n\n\"You're welching!\"\n\n\"Not exactly. I suspect--in the better world--sex would be such a\ndifferent set of ideas and acts and experiences and feelings that we\ncan't even imagine them.\"\n\n\"Nobody would dare bring up kids that way.\"\n\n\"People already have dared. A school in England does it. A school for\ndifficult kids--not the socially elite specimens. And they turn out\nfine. Normal; and nice people. Which is something you definitely cannot\nsay of the kids turned out by our own reform schools.\"\n\n\"It's hard to believe,\" Tom said.\n\n\"Isn't it! That's the trouble with truth--these days.\"\n\nWe went on talking for a long while about the better world.\n\nAs we designed it, that hot night, I kept thinking how much of our\nenvisioned heaven-on-earth was constituted of what are now considered\nto be mortal sins.\n\nBy and by, Tom said, \"Half the doctors in the Utopia would be\npsychiatrists--right?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Doesn't it follow--in your idea of the state of things? Half the\npeople who go to doctors, you say, have psychological causes for their\nphysical symptoms. And I'd just about agree. Half the hospital beds are\noccupied by nuts.\"\n\n\"The better world, though, is designed to keep people from getting\nneuroses and psychoses--individually. And to stop the massive neuroses\nand psychoses of nations and races.\"\n\n\"So it is!\" He chuckled. \"That's your everlasting premise, isn't it?\nIf all the people understood themselves, they'd live according to\ntheir understanding, and be well, wise and happy, if not particularly\nwealthy.\"\n\n\"Doctors, like factories, would be scarcer in the better world.\"\n\n\"But what in hell would people _do_?\"\n\n\"Oh--they'd do unto others as they'd be done by. And they'd add a step\neven to the Golden Rule. They'd do unto the unborn generations as they\nwould wish their ancestors had done unto them. The existing Golden\nRule--which nobody practices anyhow--is objective. Its subjective\ncounterpart refers to the people to come, not the people around at the\nmoment. That's the Golden Rule of instinct--what instinct is all about.\nEvolution. The increase of consciousness down the aeons. Obvious,\nisn't it--that the history of evolution steadily spells increasing\nconsciousness? Logical, therefore, that such is the inevitable bent of\nthe future of life--as life is conveyed in man, or as it might someday\nbe conveyed in another form, if man doesn't catch on, consciously, to\nthe scheme behind his consciousness.\"\n\n\"Biological immortality,\" Tom said.\n\n\"Psychobiological immortality. Only--modern man, being so pompous about\nwhat goes on in his cortex and repressing so much of what goes on in\nthe rest of his brain, has construed the 'immortal' aspect of instinct\nas a property of his ego. The natural urge to live through his species,\nthrough kids--to love, that is--to be man's father--is drained off into\nthe asinine notion that his personal ego will live in a slap-happy\neternity.\"\n\n\"Man,\" said Tom, \"has a pretty damned powerful feeling about that\npersonal immortality. Hard to shake.\"\n\n\"Why not? It's fashioned out of his most powerful instinct. The one\nthat supports life itself, reproduction, and that at least accompanies\nevolution. Man takes that billion-year-old galaxy of instincts, filters\nit through his cortex, and comes up with the idea of Heaven. It's a\nchildish mistake. But even a child, when it's mistaken about the actual\nnature of an instinct, still has as powerful a compulsion in his error\nas he would have if he were correct. Say he's frightened by something\nthat isn't really frightful: he's still just as much afraid. And\nwe--most of us--are in that state about pretty much all of our inner\nselves.\"\n\n\"And have been, you think, for a long while?\"\n\n\"Sure. Since thousands of years before Christ. You guys in medicine\nought to quit studying tissue per se--and study its functioning some\nmore. Contemporary man--as a rule--never gets even a glimmering of how\nhis personality is split and how the conscious part can bamboozle the\nunconscious part--and believe it has got away with it. You know the\nfact--you ignore the implications. For instance, Tom, we actually see\nupside-down, right?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"In our first few weeks--as babies, we react according to the fact of\nour vision. We want to grab the top of something--but we reach for the\nbottom--because human vision is inverted.\"\n\n\"It is.\"\n\n\"We learn--by experience--that we see upside-down. As we age--month by\nmonth--we develop a 'mind' that makes the correction for us. By the\ntime we're some months old, everything 'looks' rightside-up. And only\nonce in a while, under peculiar conditions, does anybody's mind ever\nglimpse the world the way his eyes see it--inverted.\"\n\n\"So what?\"\n\n\"So--that is an example of useful autohypnosis. An immensely potent\nexample. It shows how the 'mind' can establish a set of facts directly\nopposite to those observed by the eyes. A mind that can go through life\nlooking at an inverted world but 'seeing' it the way it is--manifestly\nis capable of accepting almost any degree of suggestion from its other\nparts, and its various senses--of accepting true suggestion or false\nsuggestion. Manifestly, it isn't necessarily 'right' or 'wrong' about\nanything not proven.\"\n\n\"An argument for empiricism.\"\n\n\"Sure. But for psychological empiricism. That is--an argument for\nrefusing to take for granted any human descriptions of the nature of\nmind, personality, spirit, psyche, soul--call it what you will--until\nthe descriptions have been pragmatically checked. Take my proposition\nthat all ideas of personal survival after death are misconstructions\nof an instinct designed to apply to the psychological and biological\nfuture of men on earth. Then look over some people who, as a group,\nreject the idea of Heaven. The communists, I mean.\n\n\"I've pointed out--and brighter men have pointed out before\nme--that when the materialist dialectic was applied on a mass of\npeople, it became a religion. Reason and logic departed. Dogma,\northodoxy, emotion, creed, saints, apostles, holy orders, a Bible\nwith gospels--the whole, compulsive paraphernalia of religion burst\ninto being. What was intended as an abstract, atheistic, scientific,\nmaterialistic pattern for living turned into the most fanatical\nevangelism, the most bigoted crusade, the least logical movement\nthe earth has seen for ages. Lately, where the facts of the science\nof genetics have proven contrary to communist dogma, the Soviet has\nabolished science. The Roman Catholic Church never did anything more\nreligious, in the worst sense of that word--more superstitious--more\ncompulsive--or more absurd.\"\n\n\"What are you driving at?\"\n\n\"Just this. What happened, psychologically, in Russia is one more great\nproof of instinct. Until and unless you find out pragmatically what\ninstinct is, and what its laws are, no theory of government or system\nfor living will be anything but a set of compulsive simulations of\ninstinct. A religion. Communism was dialectical materialism so long\nas men just talked about it; when they tried to put it in effect,\nit became another faith, with the complete trappings of a faith.\nDialectical materialism not merely denies that men are instinctual--it\nignores the very possibility; as a result, its application drives\ninstinct entirely into the unconscious mind. You can see the proof of\nthat by reading in the daily papers what's happening in Russia or by\nnoting the Russian technique of debate. Pure theology. Pure nonsense.\"\n\n\"I wish you'd written more along those lines,\" Tom said.\n\n\"I'd planned to. I'd even started the first chapters. The calm,\ncollected, documented description of what instinct is and how it works.\nIt was going to be a scientific contribution. Jung explained to the\nFreudians. Wylie explained to the Jungians.\"\n\nTom sat stiff for a minute or so. \"Essays?\"\n\n\"Peaceful ones. Scholarly. No brass and no balloons.\"\n\n\"Golly.\"\n\n\"Why 'golly'?\"\n\n\"We need that tome.\"\n\n\"Not really. Too soon. Jung wrote me, once, that he thought it would\ntake about five hundred years before people began to understand\ngenerally the ideas he elicited.\"\n\n\"More books might help shorten the interval.\"\n\nI nodded my head affirmatively. \"Might. Time doesn't matter, though.\nNot so much. When I first began to see what caused the immense and\nself-evident discrepancy between what some men would like to be and\nwhat most men actually are I burned up with the idea of noising the\nnews around. I learned the hard way that the idea was one for just a\nfew people--too few to be more than leaven in the coming centuries.\nI finally realized that my burn was, mostly, the desire to be the\nmissionary myself. To get a by-line. Ego in a low form. And I also\nslowly realized that the truth would be there, always--and since it\nwas there, steps could be taken by anybody, anytime, toward finding it\nagain.\"\n\n\"You just write off your whole civilization--like that.\"\n\n\"It's what we're here for. To write ourselves off.\"\n\n\"Usefully.\"\n\n\"Well--our civilization has learned enough useful technical tricks to\nlast for millenniums. We served a purpose.\"\n\nTom looked at his watch--and sighed. \"Gotta go.\"\n\n\"I thought we were to have a long evening together.\"\n\n\"So did I. But I have to go back to Medical Center. They called before\nsupper. There's a peculiar pneumonia up there--and something that isn't\nleukemia but acts like it.\"\n\nWe stood up and went across the grass, blinking in the gloom and\nstepping around prone figures.\n\n\"You seem all right,\" he said.\n\n\"I'm all right.\"\n\n\"I still think we could use that book--and I hope that we'll get it.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\n\"Need anything?\"\n\nHe meant medicine. I said I didn't.\n\nWe both waved and a cab stopped.\n\nHe thanked me rather formally for dinner.\n\n\"So long, boy,\" he said, then. \"And don't give up hope.\"\n\n\"I've got plenty of hope--it just isn't immediate, like the fiscal\nprospects of department stores.\"\n\n\"I mean for yourself.\"\n\n\"Hope isn't for yourself,\" I said.\n\n\"Night!\"\n\nHis voice was gentle, affectionate. The door thwacked.\n\nThe cab went away into the torrid murk, its two little top lights\nblinking out when the driver threw the flag.\n\nI stood on the corner, on cobblestones, shaded from nothing by the\nsuffocating trees above me and thinking, I guess, about the book I\nwasn't going to write. All of a sudden my eyes filled with tears. I\nfelt so lost, so lonely, so ashamed of my body and so scared that I\nwanted to have someone put comforting arms around me.\n\nA couple necking on a flat bench beside the Park wall diddled a battery\nradio and it began to sing through its nose.\n\n\"Alllll--thuh worrrrld--is waiting for the sunnnnrise--alll--\"\n\nAll that was coming up was the stone moon.\n\nDiagonally down Fifth Avenue, I noticed the spot where the canoe-hat\nhad poked the girl who looked like my daughter.\n\nI went over there. On the cement sidewalk--a broad, pale path that\nsparkled in the street light--I saw the stains of that bastard's blood.\n\nI wanted to spit in them.\n\nI had an impulse to look around for a tooth--something to have mounted\nfor a watch charm.\n\nI supposed he'd put them in his pocket to give to his dentist.\n\nI didn't feel so lonely after that.\n\n\n10\n\nIt was about half past nine when I came back to my apartment.\n\nI stripped off my clothes and put in two hours of work.\n\nThen the phone rang.\n\nI was sure it would be Ricky.\n\nSome men's wives, calling that late, would be checking up.\n\nRicky would just be missing me.\n\nI jumped over to the phone.\n\nIt wasn't that clear Hello Darling, like a star in clouds, a landfall\nin unknown, tedious seas.\n\n\"Hello. Phil Wylie?\" A pleasant voice. Yvonne, perhaps.\n\n\"Yeah-me.\" I wasn't very civil since it wasn't Ricky.\n\n\"This is Gwen. Can you talk?\"\n\n\"Gwen?\"\n\n\"We met last night. If you've forgotten so soon, it's not my fault.\"\n\nThe redheaded girl at Hattie's--the one who looked studious and\nunaffected--the one who had made me think of the handsome wife of some\nfortunate professor. An interesting one.\n\n\"Oh,\" I said. \"Sure.\"\n\n\"I'm not--interrupting--anything? Hattie said you were being a\nbachelor--and you sat up late. I just asked her.\"\n\n\"I was working.\"\n\n\"And I was hoping you were lonesome.\"\n\n\"Well, I am, as a matter of fact.\"\n\n\"Goody! I'll take a cab.\"\n\nI was going to tell her to do no such thing. I sat down on the sofa to\nexplain my intention of working until the words ran together and all I\ncould manage was a dozen steps to bed sometime, probably, before dawn.\nBut I leaned back and, in doing that, I looked into the other room. I\nsaw myself sitting there, trying to read myself to sleep, eating some\nof Tom's barbiturate to help--and solitude eating me.\n\nI said, \"All right.\"\n\n\"You sound terribly nonchalant.\"\n\n\"It's the telephone,\" I said. \"You can't see over it.\"\n\nShe chuckled and drew in her breath just enough so I heard it and said,\n\"Twenty minutes.\"\n\nI fixed up the manuscript and set the bridge table aside. Then I went\ninto the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. \"Why?\" I said to\nmyself.\n\nThis inquiry may seem to have a connotation of guilt. Such is not the\ncase. It represented introspection, which I continued as I removed, in\nthe now-tepid water that emerged from the tap marked \"cold,\" all track\nand trickle of the night's labors.\n\nMy friend Dave Berne--whom I'd come upon with Marcia in _dolce far\nniente_--once quoted Forbisher-Laroche to the effect that there\nare fifteen hundred and six discrete reasons for associating with\nprostitutes and only nine even potentially commensurate objections.\nDave and I, with an hour or so to spare at the time, were able to\nlist three hundred and twenty of the fifteen hundred and six and\nfelt, upon discontinuing the game, that we had every good prospect of\nrecapitulating the lot from our own joint knowledge.\n\nA degree of doubt was cast upon the Forbisher-Laroche figures in my\nsubsequent association with Dave, owing to the fact that he quoted\nthe same authority on so many other matters--the breeding rate of\nhamsters, for example, the relative climbing efficiencies of various\nkite designs, and the esoteric causes of giddiness. It occurred to me\nthat \"Forbisher-Laroche\" might serve my lawyer friend in lieu of the\nname of an authority or researcher which he could not call to mind--or\neven in lieu of better authority than his own. This, however, was\nremarkably good; so the table, even if specious, may be regarded as\nsound from the order-of-magnitude standpoint.\n\nAmong the nine objections to association with prostitutes were at\nleast two (Dave said) which could be regarded as obsolete: the dangers\nof disease and of pregnancy. Of the remaining seven, only two more\n(he claimed) could be regarded as rational by the man of ethical\ndetachment--one aesthetic; the other, the practical matter of costs.\nThe rest were mere excursions into \"morals\"--a contradiction in\nitself since, were we to apply any genuine morality to sex and sexual\nconduct, we should have to begin by contemplating the field with\nsimple honesty--a process in which the \"Moralistical\" objections would\ndissolve instanter, so he stated.\n\nOf the two objections worth considering, then, one was the expense--a\nmatter to be pondered in all deals and negotiations. The other was\nthat old chestnut which appears in the endless series of candid\nbooks of advice to boys, books advertised as providing \"complete sex\nenlightenment,\" books which, in sum, horribly frighten their readers\nand leave them, as a rule, incapable of any real enlightenment for the\nrest of their lives. \"Would you,\" such books fiercely inquire, \"walk\ninto a cheap hotel, find that the stranger before you had left the tub\nfilled with his dirty bath water, and immerse yourself in it?\" This, in\nshort, is the _aesthetic_ objection.\n\nIt contains certain fallacies. One is the implied idea that sex\nrelations are equivalent to ablution--that they are designed to\ntransfer from each individual to the other such foreign matter as may\nhave accumulated on his or her person. There is the further implication\nthat such individuals are thereafter unable to cleanse themselves of\nthe alleged spotting and staining supposedly got in such a fashion.\nCarried to its logical conclusion, this thought would force hotels, as\njust one example, to discard a bathtub with the checking out of each\nguest. Industry could not keep up with such tub-scrapping.\n\nIn other words, the question is unfairly put. If cleaning one's self is\nto be admitted as a pertinent analogue for love-making, the question\nshould read, \"Would you use the _bathtub_ in a cheap hotel?\" And why\nnecessarily cheap?\n\n\"Would you,\" the interrogator should ask in all equity, \"dawdle\nvoluptuously in the shining, sunken, marble tub of the most gaudy\nhostelry on Park Avenue?\"\n\nAgain, modern chemistry being what it is, and business being ingenious,\nit is a safe inference that the tub in the palatial hotel and the\ntub in its humble competitor would be made ready by the identical\nadvertised product--one having the same statistical effect upon the\nmuck and microbes of the rich as upon the grime and germs of the\nimpecunious. And, even if such were not the case, the Park Avenue\nsituation per se cannot be ruled out.\n\nBut I fear the bathtub analogue is hardly intended to be examined for\nwhat it is. There is no integrity of thought behind it. Its author\ndoes not pause to consider that millions already do plunge daily into\ncommon tubs--swimming pools, which are, presumably, well chlorinated.\nNor does he go on to inquire as to whether his reader uses the dishes\nin restaurants and drugstores and whether, before using them, he\ninspects the dishwashing facilities and practices. There is a lack\nof fairness in the man. He himself--for reasons he would never dare\nto inspect--regards prostitutes as he regards the standing pool of\nsome rank stranger's bath; and he deems it as his mission in life to\npromulgate this obscene and entirely unrealistic simile in the hope\n(and the good expectation) that all his young readers will, for the\nrest of their lives, upon encountering the flossiest of doxies, think\ninstanter of stale tub water.\n\nThe fact of the matter is that the bright and capable girl who engages\nin prostitution will be found, on any count, cleaner and shinier,\nbetter soaped, scrubbed, polished and perfumed than the average for all\nwives in the land. Statistically, she may be slightly more venereal\nthan her married sisters, but only slightly--and, since we have given\nher brightness and capability, it is equally certain (statistically)\nthat she will be more likely to be under treatment and so incapable\nof communicating afflictions which, as noted above, have themselves\nsomewhat lost their menacing aspect. In short, were a woman to be\nchosen by lot from (_a_) the general married group or (_b_) the\ngroup of alert tarts, and were the criterion to be bodily aesthetic\ndesirability, there would be no doubt as to which group one should draw\nfrom. Tubs are tubs.\n\nIt is at best a trifling matter.\n\nThe positive first item on the Forbisher-Laroche list (if you're\ninterested) and the first which Dave and I set down on our own\nimpromptu schedule, was \"fun.\" The idea that sexual congress, erotic\nplay, coition--call it what you will--is _fun_ has very nearly vanished\nfrom Western society. To all persons who approach prostitution with\nthe standing-tub-water philosophy, even the most faithful and the\nmost sanctified relations between man and wife will hardly be even\nappetizing--since, by their acknowledged images, such people will find\nthemselves condemned to a single tub of water in which they will be\nobliged to bathe all their lives. This, of course, is the inevitable\npenalty paid by every denigrator of sex activities: his own, under his\nbest auspices, will still forever seem vile. Also this is the outlook\nof churches. It explains why the churchly so rarely have any fun and\nwhy, if they do, they make sure someone pays for it later--preferably\na heretic, and, if possible, in blood.\n\nBut (to go to the opposite pole for reference--a course which is\nimplicit in all considerations of the well-educated man) even amongst\nthe heretics--amongst sophisticated, intellectual, emancipated\ncitizens--the concept of fun in relation to sexual activity is absent,\nor nearly so. These people--husbands, wives, bachelors, spinsters,\nteen-agers and precocious children--readers of popular slick magazines\nand the newsprint digests, subscribers to book clubs, members of frank\ndiscussion groups--rely for their sex facts upon certain nationally\nadvertised texts which are dispatched through the mails in plain\nwrappers. All such volumes are offered as authoritative manuals of the\nart of love--no holds barred; rather the contrary.\n\nI have read perhaps a dozen of these treatises with close attention\nand I am prepared to agree that their claims are not exaggerated.\nThey do present, in considerable detail and with never a minced word,\nwhat might be termed the classic figures of love-making. And yet\ntheir readers--persons who are presumed to be doing skull-practice\nfor an imminent marital event--will not find in any of these works a\nsuggestion that the subject in hand involves what I have called fun.\n\nThe verbal diagrams suggest, instead, that an extremely intricate and\narduous business is being considered--one to be approached in precisely\nthe same fashion as an inquiry into the manly art of self-defense made\nby a nervous weakling who is about to be exposed, more or less against\nhis will, to an environment swarming with tough, aggressive stevedores\nand millhands.\n\nIn all these treatises, emphasis is put upon the likelihood of early\nfailure--the mere hope of subsequent success--and the stratagems which,\nif meticulously pursued, may ultimately bring about success. The\ndirections read like those for boxing, savate, or judo. An encounter\nof the most dire solemnity is envisaged. Painful knockdowns and other\ntraumatizing incidents are constantly described. Yet it is pointed\nout repeatedly that a genuine knock_out_ will result inevitably in\nUnhappiness, Infidelity, Divorce, Frigidity, Impotence, Neurosis,\nNeurasthenia, Psychosis, Premature Senility, Suicide, et cetera, et\ncetera, et cetera.\n\nThus the \"sophisticated\" individual comes to the practice of the art\nof love without room in his mind for the thought that it might be fun,\npleasure, joy, glee, and a source of high laughter. He (or she) is,\ninstead, nerved up for a clash, the outcome of which is most uncertain\nand potentially of extreme hazard, and the technique for which involves\na repertoire like that of a concert organist, along with the timing,\nmuscular co-ordination, and steady nerve of a trapeze performer.\n\nIt is scarcely necessary to remind the reader at this point that the\nmanuals in question here are the works of accredited physicians, which\nis to say, of scientists. Their observations are astute, accurate\nand complete, from the objective standpoint--and, of course, highly\n_reasonable_. All they have omitted is the subjective, or instinctual,\naspect of the matter--and here is as good an example of that phenomenal\nbut widespread oversight as any.\n\nSome of them even refer to the subject as the \"science\"--not the\nart--of love. Technique is a still commoner term. One can reflect\nsympathetically upon the plight of their mates. And, of course, one\ncan also reflect that, at least in a few instances, these amatory\nscientists should be given the benefit of a solid doubt: were they to\ndescribe love-making as fun, and address themselves to the means of\neliciting pleasure therefrom, rather than to the training-table and\nOlympiad aspects of the procedure, they would be denied the use of the\nmails even in plain wrappers and even if they had fifty university\ndegrees. The United States Post Office is willing (in a gingerly\nway) to disseminate anatomical discourse on sex for the married or\nnear-married; but it draws an absolute line at any suggestion that\nsexual relations are, or could be, consonant with a good time.\n\nThus we see that the churches, on the one hand, and the cognoscenti, on\nthe other, rule fun out of sex and are supported in the matter by the\ngovernment.\n\nThe first good reason for associating with a prostitute is, however,\nunmistakably--pleasure.\n\nThe pleasure is reciprocal--self-evident for the gentleman, and\nfrequently for the lady also. In cases where the gentleman is something\nless than that, the lady still has the pleasure of pecuniary profit.\nThis is not a matter to be taken lightly in an era in which the United\nStates is regarded as the last stronghold of capitalism--and the\n\"money-incentive\" is recognized as one of our chief Ideals.\n\nThere are, it is true, certain nigglers who claim that, since the\nprostitute lends her person to an act from which she may receive no\nparticular direct pleasure (owing to surfeit or to disinterest) the\nprofession itself is immoral--a violation of that American Ideal which\nregards sexual relations as permissible only for the Consummation of\nRomantic Love. Let all such note, then, that fully half the wives in\nthe land report that they seldom or never enjoy consummation, and\nrarely even intense pleasure, in their relations with their husbands.\nMust we say all these wives are therefore prostituting themselves?\n\nA similar question may be asked of those who are finicky about the\nstraight cash aspect of professional cohabitation. Our magazine\nfiction, radio, motion pictures, and other media are engaged in a\nuniform campaign to indoctrinate Miss America with the theory that her\nbest possible operation in life is to marry a man with millions, or\nwith wealth in his background, with a good income, or--minimally--good\nprospects. Hardly one heroine of these legends in a thousand marries\nan oaf manifestly doomed to poverty. Money is an American Ideal--and\nthe plain inference to be drawn from our legends is that sexual\ndesirability occurs for the acquisition of money.\n\nThe nation is elaborately stratified according to the amount of money\nobtained by each young woman upon marriage, or by other means. Of the\ngirl who gets a rich husband we say (even though he has the manners of\na gopher and the countenance of a quince), \"Oh, well, she can own a\nconvertible and sleep on percale.\" Advertising, of course, is wholly\ndirected to this association of ideas: one never sees a homely girl\ndisplaying a fur coat or a roadster or even pop. With such massive\nduress visited upon her from every direction--with women marrying and\ndivorcing wealthy men one after the other and remaining the while on\nelective lists of America's Leading Ladies--a girl cannot conceivably\nbe criticized, on grounds logical or grounds emotional--for slightly\nshort-cutting the standard technique and employing her fresh, gay, sex\nappeal to obtain the money directly, by a somewhat greater volume of\nrelations at a lower net charge per unit. This is, after all, no more\nthan the translation of another American Ideal--mass production--to a\ndifferent field.\n\nOne associates with these young ladies, then, for one's money's worth\nof fun, as I have said. But, lest the reader doubt Forbisher-Laroche\n(as I do in a sense, myself) I set below, at random, a few of the\nputative 1,505 other reasons:\n\n_Company._ A man often finds himself alone--as I did that evening.\n\n_Need._ It has been pointed out that the so-called sexual drive of\nyoung men, at least, is on the order of five times as great as that\nof young ladies of equal age. This is a circumstance which, for some\ngenerations, our imbecile sires have endeavored to deny or conceal.\nObviously, their absurd activities in that direction lie at the very\nheart of the insane condition of the modern mind. Since men have five\ntimes the passion of women in their youth, our sex mores must be\nrevised, and soon, five hundred per centum, or we shall all go wacky.\nIt may have happened to us already, in fact.\n\nIt has been pointed out that, with the increase of age, this enormous\nsex discrepancy tends to diminish. The woman of thirty-five will\nhave undergone an augmentation of desire--her mate a decrease. In\nan unpublished work, I tentatively suggested that--this being the\nbiological fact--a new sex convention might be devised whereby\nrelations between all women of more than, say, thirty-five--whether\nmarried or single--and all unmarried males of less than, say,\ntwenty-one, would be publicly regarded as rising out of \"innocent\nnecessity\" and not counted as in any way unchaste, or unfaithful, or\notherwise compromising. The notion seemed inspirational to me. It would\nat once provide a remedy for a truly desperate situation now existing\nunrecognized among both sexes at certain diverse ages--and it would\ngive useful and socially beneficial occupation to a slew of wives and\nsingle women in America who at present have nothing to do at all.\nIt would provide boys and young men with experienced tutors--women\nwho knew what was in the books but were able to enjoy themselves, to\nboot--and it might, indeed, revive the now-drooping flower of love\nin the whole land. My friends, however, after reading my feuilleton,\nadvised me not to publish it, on the fantastic grounds that it would be\nregarded as frivolous!\n\nBut to go on with the random reasons:\n\n_Variety._ It is a point upon which I feel no comment whatever should\nbe needed.\n\n_Obedience._ This term has its limitations for the intended meaning.\nThe word \"command\" might serve, but it also has connotations not here\nintended.\n\nIn a marriage ceremony, it is true, the wife agrees, as a rule, to\n\"obey\" her husband--and he, her. However, in perhaps half of American\nmarriages, obedience drops out of the relationship the moment the\npreacher closes his prayer book. In perhaps a quarter, the husband\nbecomes the serf of the wife--who has customs galore and the weight of\nAmerican advertising to back her in her commands of what he must do,\nearn, obtain, provide, and so on.\n\nYet the sexual deed itself is one which, if there be command or\nobedience, requires that the command come from the male, the obedience\nfrom the female. (Male aggression, female passivity, the scientists\ninsanely term it.) This circumstance, however loathsome to feminists,\nis--again--a simple fact of nature: a man is physiologically incapable\nof being commanded to make love. He cannot simulate. In acts so\nfundamental to his heart, mind, spirit, and soul as those related to\nsex, it is therefore not only psychologically evident, but physically\nplain, that a certain degree of obedience, or receptivity to command,\nor, if you prefer, co-operation, is necessary on the part of the woman.\nWithout it, love-making, when possible at all, is at best a mere reflex.\n\nSuch is the condition of millions of women today, however--and not\nsurprising, either, in view of the times and the customs--that they are\ninclined to refuse male address, and to whine, scold, heckle, disobey,\nbegrudge, demean, belittle, routinize, particularize, censor, evade,\nscorn, shame, humiliate, et cetera, before or during or after sexual\nrelations. This leaves the male relentlessly insatiate. Geared by\nNature for cohabitation with a willing--nay, an enthusiastic--partner,\nhe finds himself bedded with a cold and prissy marmot of a woman. It\ndrenches his self-esteem, decays his manliness, and either reduces him\nto the shy, stammering estate of millions of our Milquetoasts or else\nsets him in a permanent rage against life so that he is ready to turn\ncommunist, or Ku-Kluxer, to take to drink, or to beat his children.\n\nProstitutes provide the only dependable respite from this dilemma,\nwhich man currently even somewhat allows himself. Inasmuch as they are\nsexually in the employ of the man, they will, if worthy of their hire,\nnot critically submit to, but genially participate in his caprices.\nBy this method, millions of otherwise lost men keep alive somewhere\nwithin themselves at least a flicker of honest, male self-respect. Now\nand then--if only a night a year--and only for a price--they are obeyed\nby a woman.\n\n_Whim._ This is related to the above. As I pointed out to Yvonne, the\nnorm for the human approach to sex relations is the mammalian. Yet all\nforms save one specific approach are today prohibited. State dungeons\nawait even husbands reported by their children as abed off the parallel\nand with angular deviations of more than a very few degrees. This is\ncalled \"bestiality\"--a term devised by no animal lover.\n\nBeing animals, we hunger to be harmlessly animals. Being forbidden\nby parents, schools, church and state, millions are confined in the\ndomestic arts of love to that one simple stratagem which propels\nlocomotives. But amongst ladies of easier, nobler virtue, the parched\nmammal may discover some surcease.\n\n_Beauty._ This, too, is self-explanatory.\n\n_Relaxation._ Ditto.\n\n_Peace._ Also.\n\n_Health._ Also.\n\n_Kindliness._ Many lack it at home.\n\n_Warmth._ Another occasionally marked domestic deficit.\n\n_Mirth._ See above.\n\n_Femininity._ Look over the wives and look over the trollops.\n\n_Youth._ Who does not age?\n\n_Favor._ Some say all women are masochistic and many wives surely are;\nfor these, a slight indiscretion may be a pleasanter thing to suffer\nthan the painless boredom of impeccable fidelity. Whoring as a favor to\nthe frau may be a rare form--but it must not be overlooked.\n\n_Information._ Whole books could be written on this topic alone.\n\n_Practice._ Here, again.\n\n_Courtesy._ Helping worthy girls through college, and the like.\n\n_Testing._ The litmus of another woman.\n\n_Tradition._ No comment.\n\n_Courage._ In these days, it takes a lot.\n\n_Conversation._ A degree of candor is found among filles de joie that\nis elsewhere rare.\n\nAnd so the list goes--to the alleged length of fifteen hundred and\nsix excellent reasons for associating with hired damsels. They hardly\nfurnish a good brief for the sexual slum and erotic underground of\nharlotry today; but they surely show the sores and shortcomings of the\npure, the purulent, in heart.\n\nHence, when, at the beginning of this dissertation, I asked myself\n\"Why?\" I was speculating upon which of the multitude of possible\nmotives governed my assent to Gwen's proposition.\n\nBeauty, to be sure; she was a handsome wench; Loneliness and Fun;\nRelaxation; Information and Conversation, perhaps; and perhaps, also (a\nreason Forbisher-Laroche himself had never thought of) the Imminence\nof Death. It is said that the imminence of death on any large scale\nhistorically produced mass orgy--that, for instance, the Roman streets\nwere littered with connected couples whenever the plague closed in upon\nthe city during medieval times. This urge--sired doubtless by Nature's\ncommand to beget in every eleventh hour--may have had its dark and\narchetypal image within me somewhere.\n\n\n11\n\nThese ratiocinations occupied me while I dressed, picked up the\npremises, and ordered from the Knight's Bar a supply of ice in a\nthermos jug, some whisky, Coca-Cola, glasses, and carbonated water.\nThe waiter had brought them--a waiter wet and odoriferous from a day's\nrunning through the high temperatures, but cheerful withal--and held\nthe card for my signature, and departed, before she called from the\nlobby.\n\nI gave her the number and went out to the elevator.\n\nShe had piled up the sleek filaments of her red-brown hair to keep cool\na graceful neck. She wore a suit of thin cotton--green--and interesting\nshoes of a darker green. She came to my quarters laughing amiably. \"I'm\nvery pleased with myself!\"\n\n\"You should be.\"\n\nShe undid the catch of her jacket and took it off. The green blouse\nbeneath was little more than a broad brassi\u00e8re--a sensible and summery\nthing that left bare a midsection of smooth, sunburned abdomen and rib.\n\"It was my idea to call you up,\" she said.\n\n\"Which pleases me with you.\"\n\nShe sat down near the window, hopeful a breeze might come through it.\nHer eyes rested on mine with gay attentiveness. \"It's terribly slow at\nHat's,\" she said. \"It has been--all month.\"\n\n\"Everybody,\" I said, \"is out of town.\"\n\n\"Leaving nobody home to go out of the world with. Desolating!\"\n\n\"I've got some Scotch--soda--\"\n\n\"Weak,\" she said, \"and lots of ice.\"\n\nI mixed the drink. While I was doing it, she saw the manuscript in work\nand went over to the bridge table. She read a few lines. \"It sounds\namusing,\" she said.\n\n\"It did to me--the first time through. And the second time--when I\ncorrected it. Right now, I'm cutting it, and my own jokes are a little\nless than fresh.\" I handed her the tall glass. \"Too bad we don't have\nairconditioning here at the Astolat.\"\n\n\"I like heat waves. Besides--I spent the afternoon in an\nair-conditioned apartment. I'm all cooled off for the weekend.\"\n\n\"If you change your mind--we'll find a chilled spot later.\"\n\n\"Then I'll change it--\" she looked across the glass-rim--\"later. I\nwas over at the apartment of a girl named Charmaine. Used to work for\nHattie--and then became the friend of a lad who died and left her\nmillions.\"\n\n\"Nice gal?\"\n\nGwen said, with a quick, small indrawn breath, \"Darling!\" Then she\nglanced at me again--and flushed.\n\n\"Hattie told me all about Charmaine,\" I said.\n\n\"It--it--only makes me want a man--!\" She was afraid I'd be indignant,\nor perhaps disgusted. \"That's true! In fact--that's what Charmaine\ntries--to do. She likes to make people all hot and bothered. She--!\"\n\nThe girl was embarrassed--and yet _remembering_, at the same time. The\nglass tilted a little in her hand. I went over to her and touched her.\n\"Didn't they tell you about me?\"\n\nShe laughed, then, and sat down. \"I was fussed, I guess. Some men--\"\n\nI said it for her. \"Some men are so narrow-minded you can't put a dime\nbetween what they don't know and what they'll never learn.\"\n\nThe feeling that she might have made a faux pas--might have prejudiced\nme hopelessly against her--had gone from her eyes. She walked over to\nthe windowsill where the radio was. She switched it on and turned the\ndial back to the minimal volume. While the tubes warmed, she leaned\nforward on the sill and looked out--across the brick terrace and the\nparapet, some half dozen feet away. My floor is on a slight setback.\nWhen she found she couldn't see straight down, she pulled her head\ninside again, found a station playing dance music, tuned it in sharply,\nturned it very low, and smiled at me.\n\n\"Sex isn't logical,\" she said.\n\n\"Not from the standpoint we call logic.\"\n\n\"Take me.\"\n\n\"An idea.\"\n\nShe nodded her head affirmatively and went on smiling. \"What attracts\nme--sexually--to people--isn't their sex. Not whether they're men or\nwomen--or even little kids, for that matter. It's something about them\nthat I never know what it may be. The way they move--or the way they\ntalk--or their expressions--or their looks. It can be any little thing.\nSometimes I think it isn't _them_ at all--but how _I_ feel at the time.\nAnd even then my feelings aren't ever the same. According to what it\nis that attracts me, I'm different. Sometimes I see a man I'd like to\nhave make love to me. Sometimes I see some college boy I'd just like to\nneck. Sometimes I see a woman I wish would have a crush on me and rush\nme--like college girls--and get herself terribly upset about wanting me\naround so much--and not knowing what to do. And sometimes I feel the\nway Charmaine seems to, about everybody she likes. I just try to see\nhow excited I can make them be--and then let them be. Like that. Let\nthem go away. Does it bore you?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"There are some feelings I can't react to. Homosexuality in men. I\ndon't mean it revolts me, or anything. I just can't see why they\nbother--even with all I _can_ see. And the most peculiar part is\nnoticing that the men who hate pansies the most are nearest to it. You\nfind that out, in my kind of life. They'll visit you and act strictly\nlike Marine sergeants--and get very tight--and finally, perhaps,\nask--probably pretending to kid--if there are only girls around the\nplace. When anything like that happens--I feel perfectly blank. Yet\nthat doesn't seem--normal--under the circumstances.\"\n\nGwen's theory of normal libido required the possibility of erotic\nreaction to just about any object, it appeared.\n\nI wondered how close that was to the actual nature of us all.\nThe Freudians would have shrugged it off as adolescent. A\ncarrying-into-maturity of the unsorted, unspecialized yearnings of\nthe infant and the child. I felt that--if a person could choose--he,\nor she, would be far better off with Gwen's libido than the tormented\nfragment that the majority cherished. Cherished as the platform for all\nthat they called love and integrity.\n\nShe was telling the truth. But presently I wondered if she had not told\nit a great many times, to men like myself, and to women--some women.\nTold it as a psychological tapestry against which to pose herself; as\nan advertisement, an inducement. It wouldn't be the first time I'd\nheard a prostitute do that. Tell the truth readily enough--too readily.\nPersonal history--anecdotes--subclinical material. Intellectual people\nwould fall for it. They would be seduced by it. For they have been\ndeprived not just of the erotic play their childhood naturally yearned\nfor but, in most cases, of the opportunity for mere discussion of the\nsubject, which they'd have enjoyed.\n\nSuppose eating, not sex, were the taboo of our century? Suppose it was\nillegal for more than two people to eat together and suppose even they\nhad to get a license for it and eat in secret, while children were fed\nalone in dark closets? Suppose our billboards and newspaper ads, movies\nand books and art, devoted themselves to pictures of food--but never\nto one glimpse of anybody eating? (That's what we'd done about sex--or\ntried our best to do.) Wouldn't it result in secret, general passions\nto try esoteric foods? And wouldn't people like to get together, law or\nnone, and talk about the tabooed object?\n\nI thought about Bali, where people actually were a little ashamed of\neating meals in public. An animal indecency to be ritualistically\nconcealed.\n\nI felt the familiar stab of indignation. How long would it take my\nfellow men to realize what they had done to themselves, and _why_ they\nhad done it?\n\nTo hide the real creature. To dress up the pretense that we are not\ninstinctual.\n\nWould we ever see? Learn? Break down the conceited barricade we'd\nlifted up since beyond the Stone Age--the wall between the old brain\nand the new cortex? Or would we, too, decay? Enter our Toynbean time of\ntroubles, turn military, tyrannical, lucubricious and guilty--instead\nof loving and free, and so in the end fall prey to the outlying\nbarbarian horde--the rest of the world, that outnumbered us sixteen\nto one? Was a Presbyterian, a Catholic, a collegiate agnostic, a\nUnitarian, a socialist nearer to insight than an old Roman?\n\nI juggled the breathless doubt in my mind.\n\n\"The misery and aggression of the world, the hate and warlike\nsentiment,\" a great psychiatrist had said the other day, \"are due\nto two causes: physical hunger in the Orient; in the Occident, the\nfantastic sex repressions derived from Christianity, so called, and\nobtaining still in the materialist societies.\"\n\nThere it was--in the words of a psychological scientist.\n\nNot a single statesman that I knew of had picked up the thought.\n\n\"A penny,\" Gwen said.\n\nI apologized. \"It's too intricate. It's a summing up of various truths\nrejected or denied. We're out of the habit of seeing them. So it might\ntake me a couple of years to explain.\"\n\nGwen laughed. \"Swell! I'll come by, an hour a day--and lie on your\ncouch--and you can explain.\"\n\n\"Maybe,\" I said, \"if they'd listened to you just now--and compared what\nyou said with what they honestly feel--but they won't!\"\n\n\"They will if you get them in the mood--and alone.\"\n\n\"Many?\"\n\n\"Darned near all--that I ever see. You'd be astonished.\"\n\n\"Still--that doesn't matter. Because when they act they act as a mob.\nAnd as a mob--they never admit what they really think and feel and\ndream and wish and long for. They just fight.\"\n\nAn expression came into her eyes that was part speculative and part\ncautious. \"Some like that, too. Like to be hurt.\"\n\n\"Sure. The guilt again. The old quid pro quo.\"\n\nShe watched me. \"They get a kick out of it.\"\n\n\"Pain's their license for any fun. Not in Nature--just in people. And\nwhat--incidentally--is your feeling about that?\"\n\n\"Being hurt? I'd hate it.\"\n\n\"Me, too. Hurting, then?\"\n\nHer wary eyes decided. She raised a shoulder and let it fall. \"What\nwould you do if a guy who loved it asked you to beat him? If you knew\nit was the only kick he could get out of life? If he brought you a\nswitch--\"\n\n\"--just like the kind his mother used--\"\n\n\"--and begged you?\"\n\nI said, \"Scram.\"\n\n\"Suppose _a girl_ did?\" She looked at me intently.\n\nIt was an idea that had never crossed my mind. I thought it\nover. \"Scram,\" I repeated. \"There's pain enough in life--even in\nloving--without asking for more.\"\n\nGwen's eyebrows went up. \"It's another thing I can't feel, either.\" She\ngestured with her hand, pushing the idea away from herself.\n\nShe'd finished her highball long since. She made another, now--a\nstronger one. I didn't want any more Coca-Cola at the moment--any more\nanything. Any more her, even.\n\nAnd that shocked me.\n\nWhat had the sensation come from?\n\nFrom her most recent confession?\n\nNo. It was familiar--undistressing in that connotation--a known,\nacknowledged, assimilated phenomenon, like any other biological datum\nof birds, bees, flowers, our earth. Nothing surprising at all.\n\nIt went back to the question \"Why?\": To Loneliness, Beauty and Fun and\nall that.\n\nThe truth was, I had been unwilling, once again, to face the night\nunsleepy and alone. I didn't want a girl; this one, or any one, except\nRicky.\n\nBut the not-wanting of solitude was the greater negative.\n\nShe'd turned to another radio station and found a slow rumba. She drank\ndeeply--standing--and moving her hips in tempo.\n\n\"Come on,\" she said.\n\nUnwillingly, and unwilling to protest the heat of the night, I began to\ndance with her. She was, as Hattie had promised, very good.\n\nI thought that presently I would stop this and send her home. It would\nbe awkward.\n\nAnd then, as the music quickened and we made a spot turn in the center\nof the room, I saw through the doors to the doors beyond--the doors\nthat led to Yvonne's room. Mine was no longer flatly parallel with the\nwall.\n\nI raised my voice. \"Come on in, Yvonne!\"\n\nI had never relocked the door on my side.\n\nShe came in.\n\nGwen looked at her, at me, at Yvonne again--not troubling to hide the\nfact that she was astonished. But not irritated.\n\nI would have expected Yvonne to be embarrassed--who would not?\n\nShe wasn't. Her gray eyes met mine steadily.\n\n\"I hoped you'd call me today,\" she said. \"When you didn't--I had dinner\nwith dad. I got back after the theater--and I heard your radio go on. I\nfinally decided to knock on your door. But when I unlocked the one on\nmy side--I found yours open. I was just about to say boo! and ask for\na drink. I'll be good and go quietly afterward.\"\n\nShe said it steadily, rapidly, so that I knew, and Gwen knew, she had\nprepared it.\n\n\"Mrs. Prentiss,\" I said, \"Yvonne Prentiss--Miss Gwen Talyor.\"\n\nYvonne turned and held out her hand.\n\nShe was wearing a black dinner dress; black was certainly for her.\n\nGwen took her hand and kept it and said to me, \"Does a beautiful\nbrunette live on the other side?\"\n\nI laughed. \"And a platinum blonde across the hall. Just below me\nlives--\"\n\n\"I know,\" Gwen answered. \"Don't tell us.\"\n\nI carried my glass to the bathroom, rinsed it, and made a highball.\n\n\"We met yesterday,\" I said to Gwen. \"She comes from Pasadena.\" I handed\nthe drink to Yvonne. \"Miss Taylor--is an old friend of an old friend of\nmine.\"\n\nGwen said, \"She knows. She's been listening.\"\n\nYvonne wouldn't look at me, then. But she said, \"I told her. Do you\nmind terribly much? It's your own fault--for unlocking the door.\"\n\nI ignored that. \"Lemme see, then. Just where the hell were we?\"\n\n\"You were dancing. And I wish you'd go on.\"\n\n\"Not the heat--\" I began--\"but--\"\n\nGwen came over to my chair. \"Come on.\"\n\nSo we danced a little--not very well.\n\n\"I wish,\" Yvonne said, \"I could do that step.\"\n\nI took a good look at her. And I looked back, in my mind, at her\nstylized past.\n\nHer gray eyes were wide open and very bright. Otherwise she was\ncomposed. She didn't seem to realize how unprecedented it was for her\nnot to mind that she had been caught eavesdropping on a man she'd known\nfor a day who was alone with a girl she did not know at all. She\nshould have been shocked--shocked as much as if she had suddenly found\nshe had gone up on the stage and begun ad-libbing a part in a play. But\nshe wasn't even concerned; she behaved as if she had always been in the\ncast.\n\nMaybe she had.\n\nWhen she said she wished she could do the off-beat step, I stopped\ndancing.\n\n\"Show her,\" I said to Gwen.\n\nGwen looked straight into my eyes--her back to Yvonne. One curved brow\nwent up, inquiringly. I nodded the least bit.\n\nGwen let go of me as if I had disappeared. She turned and smiled and\nheld out her arms.\n\nYvonne set her drink down carefully and got up and walked to Gwen. They\nbegan dancing--not trying the step--but just dancing. In a moment--in\nthe same moment--without either of them saying a word--they switched;\nYvonne led Gwen.\n\nI sprawled back on the divan.\n\nThey danced for a long time and as they danced it seemed to me Yvonne\nrelaxed a millimeter at a time--until she moved like a nebula--all gold\nand white and black. Gwen just smiled--looking at nothing for a long\ntime, and finally looking down--an inch or so--into Yvonne's eyes.\n\nWhen they stopped, Yvonne said softly, \"That was wonderful!\"\n\n\"Like it?\"\n\n\"I never felt I was doing a rumba before. Even\"--she laughed lightly\ntoward me--\"with the eminent professor Wylie.\"\n\n\"He's good,\" Gwen said. \"But you have to be experienced.\"\n\n\"I used to think I was.\"\n\n\"You will be, lamb,\" Gwen said.\n\nAn announcer lengthily discussed various food products. Gwen turned\nhim down to an indecipherable mutter. When strains of music returned\nthinly, Yvonne asked, \"Can you tango?\"\n\nGwen nodded.\n\nSo they danced again and, by and by, as they passed me, Yvonne said,\n\"Mind if I borrow your girl friend for a brief chitchat?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\nYvonne danced Gwen through the other room and through the doors.\n\nThey closed quietly.\n\nMoments before, I had been embarrassed by Gwen's presence--by the\nrealization that I had wanted companionship rather than passion. Now\nmy feelings changed, showing how incomplete my awareness of them had\nbeen. I was alone and I did not want to be. Yvonne had deprived me of\nmy casual date. I was not precisely jealous of one woman over another,\nbut I was distressed. And this sentiment was not relieved by the plain\nfact that I was responsible, through a series of negative acts, for my\nsituation.\n\nI could have sent Yvonne packing. I could, by not nodding my head,\nhave kept Gwen with me. On the evening before, I could have accepted\nYvonne's invitation for a nightcap, or accepted the later invitation in\nher note to me. I'd been somewhat Olympian on both occasions--a little\nmore detached than there was detachment in the sum of the parts of my\nnervous system.\n\nBut what should one do?\n\nWhat would others do?\n\nThis is a question which I sometimes test by projecting myself into\nothers, not to examine their circumstances, but to imagine what they\nwould do in mine.\n\nI switched off my radio.\n\nI stretched out on my divan, lighted a cigarette and cogitated.\n\nA great many of the men I know would refuse to believe or weigh\nthe facts as they existed. Their knowledge of homo sapiens is so\nsuperficial, so repressed, or so compartmented, that they could not\neven assume an Yvonne would want to take a Gwen into her boudoir, let\nalone that one had done so.\n\nAnd the majority of my male friends would label any narrative of my\npast two days as a boast. They would doubt that I'd encountered two\nsuch extremely attractive girls in so short a space of time. Two?\nThree, by the reckoning of these men--for they would include the\nscalding stare of Marcia as a sexual coup. They would assume I'd\nsomewhat mistaken my own libido for any description I gave of the three\ngirls, in the bargain.\n\nThey would forget how disturbed Yvonne was; hence they would fail to\nsee that the interest she had shown in me was motivated not by myself,\nor any possible charm of mine, but by her wish for escape, or for\nanodyne, or for revenge--and perhaps, also, for mere experiment with\nher insatieties. These men would also overlook the fact that Gwen was\na prostitute. Such liking as she felt for me was merely a fortunate\nvicissitude of business. She would have called me up even if she had\ndisliked me: trade was slow and I had the price. Such men--and I knew\nmany--would even overlook Marcia's attachment to Paul, on the opposite\ngrounds that she _was_, after all, a prostitute. They would imagine\nevery woman's hot-eyed glance as evidence of their irresistibility. In\nmy place, they would conclude that three women, young and handsome, had\ngiven them a tumble because of what they were.\n\nThree handsome young women had certainly invited me; but not one for\nmyself.\n\nThere is also, among some of my friends, an inverted form of chivalry\nwhich causes them to feel they are obliged to respond to every\nfeminine beckon with assent. But they take no responsibility for the\nresults--the tangible and psychological results--of whatever behavior\nfollows such assent. These imagine themselves great lovers and great\nunderstanders of women; they actually hold toward women about the same\nattitude they hold toward roast beef.\n\nTo all these last men, the fact that I had failed to wait upon Yvonne\nthe night before, and dispatched Gwen with a nod, and responded to\nMarcia's luncheon leer with nothing more than analysis, would seem a\ngreat waste of opportunity, a failure to meet obligation, and even a\nkind of hypocrisy. For they would be men who knew that I held no brief\nfor absolute fidelity in marriage. Knowing that, they would conclude\n_any_ refusal of mine to commit adultery was Pharisaic. Such men are\nblack-white viewers; they go through life blind to the color spectrum.\n\nI knew still other men--a few, at least--who would regard my\nassociation with prostitutes and loose women (which is what they would\ncall Yvonne) as proof that I was a bum. To these, all that I did,\nthought and expressed would be discredited by the antics of some of\nmy companions. \"Wylie,\" they would say, \"hangs out with scum.\" _Ergo_\nWylie's discernment, his art, his intellectual ability is manifestly\nnil.\n\nThis is the common attitude of \"Christians\"--though how they explain\ntheir own Christ's various companions is beyond my guessing.\n\nTwo or three more of my friends would take what might be called the\nanthropological view of my situation. They would argue that, being away\nfrom my wife and needing sexual refreshment, having the opportunity,\nbut not taking it, I was acting weakly. These would overlook not merely\nthe motives of the ladies, and my feelings about my wife, but also the\nfact that my share of everyman's borrowed time was apparently running\nout--a circumstance which in itself alters the libido.\n\nTo some of my friends, then, I would have to excuse myself for what I\nhad already done; to others, I would have to make excuses for what I\nhad failed to do. To myself, I had nothing much to say.\n\nIn a minute, an hour, or on the morrow, my reasons, moods and motives\nwould change once more and my behavior might be different. Hence this\nempathetic review had merely shown again how men behave according to\nsets of compulsions--patterns of conscious virtue, conscious sin, or\nconscious animalism--which stem in every case from arbitrary mores.\nAnd neither amongst the overtly virtuous nor the subtly sinful is the\npattern valuable; it makes hypocrites of the former and deprives the\nlatter of joy. The animalists, too, have no solution: they fornicate as\nthrough a wall, knowing a person exists on the other side but not what\na person is.\n\nSo any instinct, when unseen, compels men to abide by some formulation\nof itself. They accept a Faith and are then obliged to play they are\nthe God who rules that Faith. So, too, a man like myself, who quests\nbeyond these compulsive faiths (and is therefore called faithless by\nBelievers of every stamp) foolishly plays God whenever he does not\nquite know himself.\n\nI sat there, sneering at the pompous fashion in which I had behaved and\nwondering how to make peace with my solitude, my recovered mortality.\nEven I had wanted more than I had found for myself. Not redheads and\nash blondes abed in the night of that heat-glazed city, but their\ncompany, their tempting presence. It would be a matter worth thinking\nabout in the future--if my future was to be long enough for that kind\nof thought.\n\nI came close, again, to calling Ricky, at that point.\n\nTelling her. Summoning her.\n\nAnd I thought that most of the men I knew would do precisely that.\nThey like to ride downhill alone; but when the burden grows heavy\nand the grade steep, their wives become wheels on the wagon of their\ndifficulties. So American marriage is too often both trouble-sharing\nand a private sport. \"If you love her,\" they would say, \"and if she\nloves you, it is your duty to let her know and she would be hurt if you\ndid not.\" These, I think, are little boys married to their mothers. If\nI had known the truth of my condition, Ricky would have been the next\nto know. But I was not certain--quite. Let her sleep the night through,\nthen. Live two more contented days. She is my wife. She nurtures me and\nI her and if I told her when I did not need to tell her, that would be\na true weakness in my lexicon.\n\nEven while thinking that, I looked at the phone again and touched it.\nBut I am not quite such a schoolboy.\n\nI may be the only male in America who feels as I do but my feeling is\ndefinite: from the age of about six, I did not want a girl who was\nnecessarily just like the girl that married dear old dad.\n\nIt may be that there are no real men left in America.\n\nAmerica may be as barren of actual masculinity as Sodom of holy folk.\n\nSome of us, however, still take an occasional crack at keeping alive\nthe memory of what men once were--or fanning the hope of what they may\nbe.\n\nOnce, for instance, men behaved with compassion toward women; they\nwere even interested in how women feel; what women did was actually\nimportant to men--once. It may again be so.\n\nBut the likelihood is that nobody ever escaped Sodom alive. Lot's wife\nlooked back for a last squint at the new streamlined dish washers--and\nturned to a pillar of salt. Lot, a moment later, tried to save a\ncharred copy of the financial page--and turned into a pillar of\nbicarbonate of soda.\n\nI got to about that point in my estimates when the doors opened again.\nYvonne appeared--flushed and tousled--a drink in one hand and some\nbooks in the other.\n\n\"Lonesome?\" she asked.\n\n\"Far from it,\" I said. \"I was working with the Lord.\"\n\nShe laughed. \"Join us?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"I thought not. Here! _Amusez-vous!_\" She threw the books on my bed and\nshut the door again.\n\nI looked at the books. Three mystery stories in the conventional getup\nof gaud and grue and one volume without a jacket: Huxley's _Ape and\nEssence_, which Yvonne had denuded to camouflage another treatise.\nI passed up the mysteries--the immunizing doses of mayhem, the\nhabit-forming homicide--with which so many of the better people try to\nallay their critical sensations in this civilization. I took the Huxley\nback to my living room and read in it here and there.\n\nIt was unfortunate, I thought, that the bright Aldous had seen fit to\nshow the world that he, too, could write a screenplay. Did he need a\nstudio job, I wondered?\n\nBut it was only funny that the public and the critics had misjudged\nthe tale. For Huxley's portrait of post-atomic California was not,\nas most persons assumed, the flight of a delirious brain. It was, by\nevery relevant index, the most likely prediction that an intelligent\nman could make, these days. It was just what good actuaries and\ncapable business forecasters should anticipate. Six hundred years\nago, I reflected, the Great Plague had reduced Western Europe to a\nsimilar condition: religion had become corrupt, rogues had seized the\ngovernment, the expiring feudal system had been finally shattered,\nand the people had roamed amidst half-empty towns and cities, living\nby robbery, raping, burning witches, and indulging every horrid\nsuperstition, while knowledge vanished and science stood still. This\ncondition had lasted for more than a century.\n\nThe intervening twenty generations had not been enough to change man\na particle. He was the same specious brainist and therefore the same\npotential dupe of his unaltered instincts. His opposite possibilities\nwere perhaps even stronger--since he had exploited vanity for six more\ncenturies. Atomic bombs, likely, would be worse than Plague and have\nlong-lasting, ancillary effects of the very sort described by Huxley.\nAnd there would be new plagues---military diseases.\n\nYet it had not occurred seriously to anybody, so far as I knew, that\nthe mordant scenery of _Ape and Essence_ was a logical extension of\ncurrent events. Wild fantasy, the critics thought--having insufficient\nimagination to evaluate past or present and no education in the\nsciences whatever, as a rule.\n\nWell, I thought, when and if we reach the state of cannibalism, I shall\ntry to eat a critic. There should be good crackling around fat heads.\n\nAnd next I thought that even Huxley made too little of the fact that,\nafter our earth was literally Hell for a hundred years, man produced\nthe Renaissance.\n\nI also thought how no one apparently had realized that the Californian\ncult of Belial was an inversion of the Roman Catholic parades,\nliturgies, chants and other idolatrous measures. And I thought how\nthe Huxleyan method disclosed, with considerable vim and penetration,\nthat Christian worship--Catholic or Protestant--is all but completely\na paean for Satan today. The Godly serve the Devil through hatred,\nhypocrisy, materialism, conceit and big death wishes. They need only a\nchange of names and symbols to align what they actually do with their\npretension. Belial already reigns over the Church--not God.\n\nSomeday, after the atomic wars--I thought--a practitioner of the\ncorrupted religion of his time, a science-hater (for what he deemed\nscience had done to man), a legless character with three arms and\ntwo navels (owing to the general damage done the genes of all living\nthings), a cannibal (but one who could still read a little), might\ndiscover this volume in the silence of a wrecked library and hail\nHuxley as a great prophet--a man with valuable new ideas for worship\nand fresh notions about sex relations in public places. Thus Huxley\nmight contribute (contrary to his intent but in the same fashion as\nmany other prophets) to the majestic rites of human degradation.\n\nNo critic, however, could possibly contemplate such a matter as\nanything but a joke.\n\nI wondered how the great-grandchildren of critics would view it.\n\nThus wondering, I went to bed.\n\nIt was late, of course.\n\nI put out my light and listened to the seismic nocturne of the city.\n\nFrom the next room came a bold, cajoling giggle.\n\nThen quiet.\n\nThe building quivered.\n\nThe planet turned.\n\nExhaustion lowered me into sleep on a jerky rope that did not loosen me\nfor a long time.\n\n\n12\n\nContrary to expectation, the end of civilization came about through a\nseries of events connected in no way with war or atomic bombardment. Of\nthese events the earliest, so far as careful inquiry could determine at\nthe time, was initially observed by Malcolm Calk of 2531 North Munley\nStreet, Urbana, Illinois. Mr. Calk had just become engaged to Dorothea\nLurp of the same address--the boarding establishment of Sarah L. Rev,\nor Reev--and they were celebrating the happy occasion by spending a\nweekend at the Chicago home of Miss Lurp's parents. The day being\nwarm--it was the 9th of August, in the hot summer of 1953--the young\ncouple determined to repair to the beach.\n\nThey were contentedly ensconced at the lakeside when Mr. Calk's eyes\nwandered from the person of his fianc\u00e9e, who was in wading, to the\nclouds overhead. These were of a cumulus nature, for the most part\nwidely spaced, and drifting southward on a wind reported later by the\nWeather Bureau as of twelve miles per hour at mean cloud altitude.\nCalk's mind was, as may readily be imagined, turned toward those\nfancies which are commonly described as \"building castles in the air.\"\nHe reports, indeed, that the phrase passed through his thoughts as he\nlooked at the vaporous structures overhead.\n\nWithin them he observed a certain slight turbulence or agitation to\nwhich he at first paid scant heed. Clouds revolve and turn themselves\ninside out in a manner that bespeaks air currents and their own\ndiaphanous consistency--a manner that sometimes suggests they have a\nlife of their own in a weird fourth dimension of the blue up yonder.\nBut the young Calk gave the phenomenon only a cursory, occasional\nglance; his head was already \"in the clouds\"--another phrase upon which\nhe recalls musing at the time. He was apparently a person of whimsey--a\npatternmaker employed by the Racine Forge and Tool Company of Urbana.\n\nPresently, however, his focus was drawn with insistence toward the\nslow-tumbling clouds and, as people will, he gave free play to his\nimagination, seeing in the changing shapes now a dragon, now a cat's\nface, and now the chuck of a turret lathe. These gossamer figures\nwove themselves, vanished, and eddied into yet different forms until,\nultimately he found himself viewing a large letter N. About this he\nsaw nothing remarkable--at first. A letter of the alphabet is probably\nshaped by the clouds as often as any boar's head or serpent.\n\nThe \"N,\" however, took on contour and texture until it seemed a\ndeliberate thing--resembling, as Calk put it later, \"Sky-writing done\nbackwards in a newsreel so that the frayed-out smoke pulled together\nagain to make a real clean-cut N.\"\n\nAt the moment, however (so uncritical was his brain and so unrelated\nwas the celestial phenomenon to his thoughts), he came to a different\nconclusion. When the N established itself as a clear and sharply\ndefined capital letter, some two miles in length and many thousands of\nfeet above Lake Michigan, Calk informed himself that it was, actually,\nthe work of a sky-writer. This is a kind of rationalization which any\npsychologist will recognize. Because what he saw did not quite conform\nto his past experience, Calk discounted his sensory impression and\ninterpreted an external fact in terms of orderly recollections rather\nthan of observable reality. Donner, Bates, Breesteen, Cavanaugh, Cohen\nand Wilstein, among other authorities, have noted the similiarity of\nthis process to that by which prejudices are often established.\n\n\"Look, honey,\" Mr. Calk called to his fianc\u00e9e. \"Sky-writer.\"\n\nMiss Lurp looked and nodded in agreement. \"Yeah. Bet it's cold up\nthere! Lucky fellow--the pilot.\"\n\nNo one else in the vicinity appeared to be aware of the process\noverhead. Miss Lurp continued to wade--Mr. Calk to watch her and to\ncast an occasional glance at the sky. A letter U was slowly formed\nalongside the perfect N.\n\nMiss Lurp at this point stepped on a clamshell, or possibly a broken\nbottle, which hurt her foot although it did not break the skin.\nExaggerating the injury, she hopped ashore to solicit comfort, which\nMr. Calk readily supplied. Thereafter, sitting side by side, they gazed\nup at the NU, near which yet other clouds were shifting and shaping\nthemselves.\n\n\"Why,\" said Miss Lurp, \"that's not sky-writing at all! It's just the\nclouds coming together accidental-like.\" To another couple, sitting on\nthe sand nearby, she called, \"Look, people! The clouds are having a\nspelling bee!\"\n\nOne upturned countenance, or even two, may not serve to divert a throng\nfrom its preoccupations, whether sordid or sublime. But four faces\nintently elevated will permeate any mass of people and constrain nearly\nall of the individuals in it to join. This contagion of curiosity\nnow spread over the beach. Soon, persons everywhere--on the sand and\nthe walk behind and in the water--bathers, loafers, nurses with\nperambulators on the Drive, and policemen who were supposed to patrol\nit but who were more attentive to the nurses--looked up to see, in a\nvast blue area above, three letters:\n\n  NUT\n\nSedately the word moved toward the city area. People began to\nspeculate about the product thus being advertised. Two or three of\nthe quicker-thinking formed hat-pools for dimes and quarters--best\nguess to take all. At the same time, a considerable discussion arose\nover the fact that these letters were not being formed by a plane--a\nglinting speck at the head of a comet of smoke--but were the result of\na composing of clouds which had thitherto appeared to be in the random\ndistribution familiar to all. A vague alarm became observable in the\nvoices and the postures of the beholders although it was suggested by\nthe calm among them that the sky-writer had lost the first part of\nhis message--a PEA, for example, or a GRAPE. At the same time, the\ndiscomforting fact remained that no performer, and no aerial equipment\nof any nature, could be descried.\n\nThe growing strain--and strain came easily amongst persons who\nhad lived through eight years of the Atomic Age--rather suddenly\ndiminished. Clouds boiled, rotated and stretched out to make what\npeople began to recognize (in the order of individual percipience) as\na pluralizing S and an exclamation point. The great letters on the sky\nsaid:\n\n  NUTS!\n\nThis, clearly, was a joke. Someone who possessed a slightly malicious\nsense of humor, some technician with a novel trick, had seen fit to\nwrite above Lake Michigan a laconic comment: NUTS! People laughed and\nwent back to their activities--and their deliberate eschewals of all\nactivity. Other clouds appeared and offered no further entertainment.\nA few cars on the Lake Shore Drive ground to a stop. Their operators\nand passengers looked up to see what still intrigued the residual\ngazers--chuckled--and drove on.\n\nPerhaps only Calk, of all those myriads, had a real premonition of\nevil. He referred it, not unnaturally, to the fact that this was the\noccasion of his engagement. Looking at the long, shiny limbs of Miss\nLurp, the nodes on them, at her rather dangly breasts and her somewhat\noverteased brown hair (that now smelled of a plastic bathing cap into\nwhich had been \"built\" a perfume that did not quite eradicate the\ncap's original odor of phenol) he could not help wondering if it was\nauspicious to behold, upon their first venture as affianced persons, a\ngreat NUTS! floating overhead. Following the word with his eye, as it\ndrifted toward the metropolis, he also observed, with distaste, that it\nmaintained its continuity better than any sky-writing he had ever seen.\n\nOther citizens, not having witnessed the formation of the word, took it\nfor granted that some prankster had done the deed and, since Chicago\nis a city where a burp will bring down the house, hugely enjoyed it.\nThe _Sun_ had a box about it. The _News_ had a cartoon about it--bad\nmunicipal government shuddering as the word in the sky threatened. The\n_Tribune_ carried a long editorial attributing the whole affair to\ncommunists.\n\nThe next day was rainy.\n\nThe day after, however, was immaculately clear and from the azure\nreaches above the lake there floated to and over Chicago a second giant\nsyllable:\n\n  CRAP!\n\nThe formation, this time, was witnessed by the officers and crew of the\n_Matthew T. Handless_, a freighter. Her skipper, acting as spokesman\nfor the group, seemed less awed by the reporters and news cameramen\nthan by his memory. \"It was an absolutely cloudless morning out there,\"\nhe said. \"Dry weather. Barometer at 30.46. Nothing in sight. Then\nclouds just seemed to appear of their own accord in the sky. Not a wave\nbelow--flat calm. They worked themselves into this here, now, word--and\nthey started drifting for Chicago on a high-altitude breeze. I watched\npretty much the whole thing with my glasses--and they're good glasses.\nI just had 'em checked at Davis's Optometrical, and there was no plane\nof any sort.\"\n\nThe news spread across an amused United States.\n\n  WRITING IN SKY PANICS CHI\n\n\"Disgruntled Chicagoan\" was the universal solution. Disgruntled\nChicagoan with a new process for sky-writing. Somebody sore about\nthe housing shortage, the garbage disposal, the taxes, the materials\nscarcities, the innumerable blanks to be made out for local, state and\nfederal governments, the new bonus, the rising menace of prohibition,\nthe thousand things at which people were indignant in 1953. \"Chicago\nper se,\" the New York _Times_ rather uncouthly suggested.\n\nIt was not until the 14th of August, however--a day much like the\n9th--that the matter took on different proportions. For, by then, the\nmarshaled resources of science were as ready as set rattraps. When\nthe clouds began to churn significantly, no less than one hundred and\neighteen planes, not counting the planes of photographers and mere\nsightseers, climbed to the region from fields all around the Windy\nCity, which, of course, as on the ninth, was enjoying a mild zephyr.\n\nA huge S took shape. Traffic stopped. Customers and employees poured\nout of stores like lava, offices regurgitated their hordes, housewives\nleft bacon burning and babies sodden; all were witness to an impromptu\nair circus. It had three phases, or acts. First, police planes and\nmilitary aircraft drove off unofficial spectators--light planes and\nhelicopters belonging to the curious and two or three commercial pilots\nwho carried their fares off the flyways for a closer look. Second,\nscience went to work.\n\nThe letter S was photographed. Samples of it were taken. The air\ncurrents in and around it were measured by instruments operated\nthrough ports in airplanes readied just for the task. Various tagged\natoms were then dusted into the letter and their courses were pursued\nby scientists in helicopters, armed with counters. From the ground,\nspectroscopes were trained upon the initial and diffraction gratings\nlaid bare its spectrum. Everything was done that had been planned at\nthe University of Chicago--and elsewhere in the city--and by a variety\nof physical scientists who phoned and wrote in their suggestions.\nMeantime, an H formed next to the S and subdued titter filled the\nwatching streets.\n\nThe third plane followed when an ineluctable I was added to the\nthrobbing sky-scene. As if this was carrying cosmic anagrams too far,\nmilitary aircraft undertook to break up the phenomenon--also according\nto plan.\n\nFour-letter words, so called, are one of the great American taboos. In\nthis connotation, nuts and crap are not considered precisely forbidden,\nthough each has a special reference which is impermissible. All people\nknow all the four-letter words, of course, since they are scribbled\neverywhere and commonly used by lower caste persons when under duress.\nAnd substitute words are employed, by the most devout, for every\nprofane or obscene term. So the taboo is of a magical nature (speaking\nanthropologically). Primitive people, such as the Americans, generally\nemploy medicine men, witch doctors, or priests against magical threats.\nIn this case, however, physical rather than spiritual results were\nexpected from the efforts of the airmen.\n\nFirst, formations of jets flew through the cloud-spelling--along its\nown paths and then in series of crisscrosses. Nothing much happened;\nthe streaming jets blew wisps and curls of mist out of alignment but it\nswiftly filled itself in again. Heavy bombers followed, but the washes\nof their props were equally ineffectual. During the bomber maneuvers,\nfurthermore, one Paul Kully, a student flier, eluded the police and\nventured close to the now-completed T. The pilot of the leading bomber,\na B-36, took evasive action too late, and Mr. Kully's light plane,\nshorn of a wing and set on fire, came spiraling to earth--a sight\nenormously exciting to the already enthralled Chicagoans.\n\nThis ended the main spectacle. Most of the planes descended to\nearth. The word--awful, unprintable, unacknowledgable, obscene\nand illegal--which, as has been noted, many use in private and in\npublic, and everybody sees constantly chalked on fences and carved\ninto cement by rude boys--and which is pronounced \"shucks\" by the\nsuper-superstitious--now rode in the Chicago heavens. The breeze\ndropped. Surrounding cumulus clouds retreated as if to frame the sign;\nair movement died aloft; the four corrupt letters and their following\nexclamation point came to rest directly over the Loop. This was widely\nregarded as the supreme practical joke--until the extras began to\nappear. These were in a way disappointing: photographers had spiraled\nvainly in the high blue, for not one newspaper made bold to print a\npicture of what all could see if they bent their necks.\n\nBut the published statement concerning the scientific investigation\nhad a tendency to diminish the widespread mirth. Dr. A.B. Cummings,\nacting for a General Committee, wrote the report. It said, in part:\n\"... a gross examination showed a special arrangement of clouds which\ncannot be accounted for by the laws of chance. Emphasis should be made\nof the fact that absolutely no clue to human agency, domestic, enemy,\nor other--either in the air or on the ground--was found. There was\nno evidence of interference from the stratosphere above. No abnormal\nradiation was detected. No use of sonic devices may be presumed in\nview of the study. After the mass became stationary, it was found that\ncurrents of air were moving as they should (according to all known laws\nand principles of meteorology) above, below, and on both sides of the\nphenomenon.\n\n\" ... that last fact, taken by itself, is perhaps the most disturbing,\nalthough it is possibly equaled by one other. Viz--the mass is not\nsubject to the known laws of dissipation. The slipstream of jets and\nthe wash of huge propellers ought to have caused it to disintegrate\nin a few minutes. They made only a moderate and local effect which,\nagain in violation of understandable principles, was offset by the\nreassemblage of the mass along its original contours. It has been\nproposed that if there is a repetition of this totally unprecedented\nand inexplicable effect, antiaircraft artillery with ordinary\nfused shells be used in an attempt to break it up. In such a case,\ncitizens will have to be sheltered from falling fragments during the\nbombardment. This will probably be tried--although the tendency of the\nmass to hold its shape, resembling as it does a similar tendency in\nplastics of special molecular structures, at least suggests that even\nartillery may not be effective....\n\n\" ... the demand made by a committee of quite understandably outraged\nchurchmen, led by Msgr. Loyola O'Tootle, of St. Plimsol's Roman\nCatholic Cathedral, that an atomic bomb be used to disperse the\nsacrilege is, of course, impractical, as such a bomb, in the caliber\nnow being stored by our government, would destroy not only the cloud\nmass in question (presumably) but (predictably) the entire city of\nChicago for a radius of four miles. Any smaller atomic bomb is no more\nto be thought of in connection with the riddance of this bizarre pest,\nas not only demolitional but genetic effects....\n\n\"To sum up, the mass seems to consist merely of cloud material,\nsomewhat more densely packed than usual. Its formational aspects\ncannot be traced to any conceivable person or device. Its violation\nof certain simple physical laws is the great scientific puzzle of it.\nBut it is definitely not poisonous or harmful. The only 'danger' to\nbe expected from it, so far as the most elaborate examination and the\nmost learned extrapolation can discern, is psychological. Until science\nexplains the phenomenon, the layman should regard it without dismay--or\nother emotion, if possible. Doubtless when the formed-mass principle is\nunraveled the explanation will not only be quite simple, but of some\ncurrently unguessable great value to engineering, to industry, to the\nmilitary, and hence to the whole people.\"\n\nDr. Cummings's job was detached, thorough--and satisfied nobody.\n\nFor it was a statement of absolute mystification.\n\nAuburn-haired little Jeanne Sheets, aged seven, of Mallow Road\nApartments, running into her yard that afternoon, cried, \"Mummy,\nthere's a dirty word in the sky!\"\n\n\"Yes, dear.\"\n\n\"Who put it there?\"\n\n\"Mummy doesn't know, dear.\"\n\n\"Can I say it? It's in the sky--real big.\"\n\n\"No, dear.\"\n\n\"Maybe God put it there?\"\n\n\"You mustn't think things like that, you naughty child!\"\n\nJeanne Sheets knew as much about it as Cummings, or any other physicist\nor any meteorologist, or anybody.\n\nThe next day, through unimpeachable sources in Sofia, a world that had\nbeen amused--and somewhat agog--learned that, over the city of Moscow\nhad appeared:\n\n  \u041c\u0410\u0408\u0406\u0410\u0420\u0425\u040d\n\nThe smile on the world's face faltered.\n\nWhy?\n\nHere the subtleties of the human spirit are evinced. People were\nstunned for the obvious reason that the appearance of an expletive over\nthe Soviet capital tended to indicate _human_ enmity was not involved\nin the phenomenon. There was a deeper reason. The Moscow affliction\ngave universality to what had been, thitherto, an ailment of the skies\nover the guilty-feeling democracies. The profanation of the Soviets,\nin other words, eliminated all subconscious hope of escape into the\nOpposite, that natural area which the aware mind detests, or at least\nresists, but upon which the instincts depend. Laughter ceased and the\nworld made up its mind that steps had to be taken instantly to solve,\nresolve, and dissolve the indecent chimera.\n\nThen, on the morning of August 27th, in the city of New York, between\nthe Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center, a great B took shape\nagainst a cloudless zenith. No Gorgon's head could have paralyzed the\ncity more effectively. All traffic stopped and most persons who were\nphysically able descended to the hot streets. Amateurs' telescopes on\nLong Island and slot-machine viewers as far away as Eagle Rock Park in\nNew Jersey were turned upon the pale sky in which Manhattan's buildings\nhad for so long fastened their lean teeth.\n\nNew York's streets solidified. Even ambulances ceased to attempt to\nmove--their drivers either helping patients out for a look or resigning\nthemselves to the delivery of D.O.A.'s. Ministers of churches, priests,\nand rabbis now made some attempt at excoriation. A band of volunteer\nhymn singers fought against the steadily forming BAS at Trinity Church;\ncensors swung and holy water splashed about St. Pat's. Useless. The\nTARDS! filled itself out with no regard for fear or fury, lewd ripostes\nor prayers. And all could see that this new comment was less general\nthan its precursors. Here the sky had not simply engraved an expletive\nupon itself but called the most numerous people of any city a vile\nname.\n\nAt the same time, moreover (9:12 in the morning when the first wraith\nof cloud was observed), strange events were occurring elsewhere on\nearth. An underling at the near-deserted offices of the AUP, watching\nthe clatter of a ticker, yelled to his superior some seconds after\n9:30, \"Hey, chief! They got it in Paris.\"\n\n\"What does it say?\"\n\nThe youth perplexedly spelled it out. His chief, better educated\nand possessed of a greater imagination, envisioned the jam-packed\nChamps-\u00c9lys\u00e9es and the azure vault above the Arc de Triomphe inscribed\n\n  MERDE, ALORS!\n\nNew York was the first city to stampede.\n\nBefore the S in BASTARDS! was completed, a loft caught fire in Seventh\nAvenue. The engines were unable to reach it, the fire spread, a wall\nfell into the crowd, and horrified survivors pressed both north and\nsouth in the thoroughfare, screaming. Their hysteria went ahead of them\nand, since the neck-craning throngs could not know the cause of it,\nthey interpreted the oncoming roar in the wildest fashions. They, also,\nturned to run. Central Park furnished a place in which one-half of this\ntumultuous and trampling herd was able to spread out and regain some\ncomposure, though it had left the streets behind dotted with the maimed\nand slain. There was no sizable park to the south, however, and those\nwho took that direction (save for a few thousands who sought shelter\nin the Pennsylvania Station) built up an avalanche of humanity which\npelted and thundered clear to the Battery, itself its own Juggernaut.\n\nThe infection spread to side streets and to other avenues, inevitably.\nWithin an hour, a great part of middle and lower Manhattan became such\nan abattoir as history has no record of. The show-windows along Fifth\nAvenue were burst in by the push of people who were then sliced and\nguillotined by the cascading glass. Wooden buildings were knocked askew\nin places.\n\nNobody could cope with such a situation but the mayor did his\nresourceful best. He ordered airplanes equipped with loud-speakers of\ngreat power to fly over the self-beleaguered city and explain what the\nsource of the great stampede had been. Every morgue and hospital in\nthe city and in its environs was mobilized. All bridges and tunnels\nwere instantly cleared for the transport of the injured, as Manhattan's\nhospitals could not handle five per cent of the casualties. Police,\nusing pistols with little ceremony, brought to a partial halt the\nepidemic of looting that occurred in the early afternoon. People were\ncommanded to take the equivalent of air-raid shelter and to stay there.\n\nThe military, acting with their usual belated but firm ineffectuality,\nagain essayed the problem of the Word itself. Unveiling a new weapon--a\nrocket adapted for air-to-air combat, with a warhead of a secret\nexplosive--the Army launched squadrons of fighters and bombers to\nthe attack. A great cannonade over the city began near five o'clock.\nIt was futile: the blasts disrupted edges and fringes of the letters\nin the sky but they mended themselves as fast as they were tattered.\nArmy Ordinance then tried its supersecret, twenty-four-inch rockets.\nCareless fusing caused one of these to explode at a low level,\ndestroying the upper stories of the Metropolitan Life Insurance\nBuilding--but subsequent accurate salvos of the tremendous weapon\nmerely caused the letters to undulate.\n\nShortly after six o'clock the Navy, carrying out a suggestion of\nCardinal Bleatbier, tried a new tactic--the interposition of a smoke\nscreen between the abomination and the desolated city. The idea was\ngreeted by officers with enthusiasm. The effect of it was not. For,\nafter some fifty Navy planes had laid a great, brown carpet underneath\nthe Word and above the buildings, there came new and hitherto\nunobserved eddyings of the air and the Navy smoke was drawn into the\nwriting on the heavens--not only fortifying and clarifying what it had\nbeen intended to obscure but also giving the letters a phosphorescent\nglow which became visible as soon as twilight descended.\n\nThat night, as electricity began to fail in the city, the surviving\npeople undertook to leave en masse. They had no stomach for another day\nsuch as they had passed through. An additional factor urged them on.\nDuring the years of the Atomic Age they had been living--like people\nof every city--with keen, increasing queasiness. It is not conducive\nto urban content to know that any of a dozen foreign governments\ncan, or potentially can, blot out you and yours in an eye-twinkling.\nIndeed, for many years, people had been trickling away from cities\neverywhere--either openly giving their reason or offering some excuse.\n\nFinally, from the very onslaught of B Day, there had poured forth a\nsuccession of orders setting up various official hierocracies for the\nemergency--deputy police, wardens, and so on, along with the rationing\nof gasoline, restrictions on subway use, abrogation of power supply,\nand other such matters. Americans are not a patient people and of\nall Americans, New Yorkers are the most impatient. Unlike Britains,\nRussians, and Europeans, they had never accepted the brash contempt of\nthe public exhibited continually both by government and industry after\nWorld War II. Nor had they become reconciled to bureaucratic rule.\nThey had resented the multiplication of authorized agents and official\npersonnel. Hence, not being schooled to such vicissitudes at the time\nof B Day, they lost their tempers. They left town. By midnight, the\ntunnels, bridges, and ferries could no longer be held open for the\nevacuation of casualties. By three in the morning, every bridge and\nevery tunnel and every boat was swarming with one-way, antlike movement\nas New Yorkers abandoned New York. All the next day the human tide\nwelled into metropolitan environs.\n\nThe contagion spread to other cities as words began to form above them\nand in some instances even before their skies developed a C or a J or a\nP or an A or the like. Terror begat terror. Various metropolises were\nsoon without electricity, water, food, gasoline, and so on. Fires began\nto rage in them. In no time, Cleveland, Detroit, Birmingham, Boston,\nLos Angeles, and other centers were in a condition like that of cities\nover which a powerful enemy has gained absolute control of the air.\n\nThere is, of course, no general record of the total effect of this\nexodus. Towns, villages, hamlets, and lone farms were unprepared to\nhouse or to feed the scores of millions who descended upon them--rich\nrefugees in limousines piled high with canned foods and guns--slum\nmasses in rags and on foot, with nothing but fear and hunger to drive\nthem ahead. Here and there some man of feudal abilities organized bands\nof the fugitives and these forcibly evacuated whole communities, taking\npossession of them--only to be driven out by bands better armed and\nmore ruthless. Theft and violence became the national way of life; and\nmurder--murder that took the lives of millions--the means to obtain\na meal or a woman or a bauble in some as yet unsmashed village store\nwindow. City people had become the sworn enemies of country people--and\nvice versa. The Hindus and Mussulmans of India on the days after its\nliberation were more kindly disposed to one another than these--and\ndealt more mercifully.\n\nSo it went--fire, blood and turmoil, death, epidemic and ruin.\n\nOnly Russia maintained, for a little while, the mask of order. No\nobscenity in its skies was able to break the disciplined ranks of the\nproletariat. But this calm--this grimly enforced maintenance of social\u0406\ndecorum--was ultimately shattered. On the 3rd of September, while\nthe Kremlin exulted over the downfall of each and every empire and\ndemocracy, there appeared, almost experimentally, over the city of Kiev\nthe phrase:\n\n  \u0458\u0406\u0415\u041d\u0418\u041d \u0414\u0418\u0421\u0418\u0412\u0414\n\nNo mere exposure of lewd words could faze the Soviets; but the hideous\nviolation of the proprieties represented by the simple statement that\n\"Lenin deceived\" sent consternation whistling from the Baltic to the\u04aa\u0418\nBlack Sea. The next day, the sky of Moscow reported that Stalin had\nlied methodically; and the day after that, the people of Ordzhonikidze\nwere informed that the Kremlin feasted, the party guzzled, the people\nstarved. Russia rose against its government and Politburo heads were\ncarried from city to city on stakes. Exodus followed. From the hot\nwheatfields of the Ukraine to the cool timberlands of Siberia, the\npanoply of death began.\n\nLast to enjoy the fruits of organized society, perhaps, were the atomic\nscientists and their families at Los Alamos. These persons, impounded\nby a series of fences and protected by guards trained not only to\nmistrust rumor, but to bear silently all knowledge of however weird a\nnature, and to shoot without asking questions, were protected through\nthe precedents and methodologies of what is called security. The town\nand its laboratories were stocked with food and water against possible\nair attack and resultant isolation by radiation. Hence the planetary\ndebacle, while it became known to the scientists, did not greatly\naffect the local status quo. The guards were ordered to destroy such\nbands of wandering refugees as made their way across the deserts to the\nvicinity. This was done.\n\nMeantime, the scientists took measures to study and if possible to\narrest the universal disintegration of humanity.\n\nIt is the custom of journalists (and it is the habit in fiction) to\ndepict scientists as impractical, dreamy men, absent-minded, innocent,\nand not competent to deal with simple situations--men forever in need,\nlike infants, of overseers. Nothing could possibly be further from the\ntruth. Indeed, it may fairly be said that, had the people of the world\nunderstood this fallacy about scientists, they might themselves have\nbeen more scientific--which is to say aware--and so prevented their\ncatastrophe. Actually, it was known--known statistically--even before\nWorld War II, that scientists as a group were possessed of an all-round\nsuperiority over their fellows. They were not merely precocious,\nbut like the precocious everywhere, they had on the average larger\nphysiques, more strength and endurance, quicker reflexes, greater\nathletic ability, and better looks than common Homo sapiens. However,\nalthough this fact had been published a thousand times and proved in a\nhundred ways, the people preferred to cling to the myth that scientists\nwere inept in all but their m\u00e9tier--na\u00efve, absent-minded, and rather\nfoolish.\n\nThat but affords another index of the general foolishness.\n\nNew York's tragedy convinced the farsighted physicists, chemists,\nbiologists, and others at Los Alamos that the nation and possibly the\nworld would be swept with unprecedented panic. The steps anent local\nguards which have been already described were immediately taken. Under\nXerxes Cohn, the scientists organized research parties; in fifteen\nplanes, they took off to study the situation at first hand. Within\nforty-eight hours they had assembled a full report of events in a\ndozen urban areas and of the gory melee in progress everywhere in the\ncountryside. (They had, naturally, all the information available on\nthe Words from Calk's first account in the Chicago papers, through\nCummings's initial survey, to the latest military data--as well as\nreports of many great savants made before their own flights from\nvarious cities of the earth.)\n\nThese data were now screened, and evaluated. Charts were prepared. A\ndiscussion meeting was held in the hall for top-secret conferences.\nVarious papers were read, including the following:\n\n_Tead's Hypothesis_ that energy, in whatever form, has a sort of\nsubnuclear consciousness and will power and that the watery masses\nwhich made up clouds, revolted by the wretched spectacle of humanity,\nhad taken up word-spelling as a form of rebuke, i.e., as Nature talking\nto human nature.\n\n_Schilch's Theory_ that there were no words and that the whole grisly\nphenomenon was the result of mass autohypnosis. This proposition (which\nmight valuably have been given further investigation) was discarded\nby the scientists for empirical reasons: they, themselves, they felt,\ncould not be hypnotized and certainly their instruments could not be.\n(It will be noted that there was no discussion of the possibility that\nthe scientists could be so hypnotized as uniformly to misread their\ninstruments.)\n\n_Boden's Proposal_ that the human unconscious mind actually formed the\nWords by telekinesis. To defend this (another idea worthy of deeper\nscrutiny) he cited J.B. Rhine--and was laughed off the rostrum.\n\n_Jetefti's_ remarkably erudite _Demonstration_--following studies\nof cosmic radiation around various Words--studies of ionization, of\nstratospheric air currents, of polarization, of the uninterruptibility\nof streams of neutrons, gamma rays, alpha particles, electrons,\nphotons, and other forms of radiation with which the Words had been\nsurrounded, of the Heaviside Layer, etc., etc.--that no external (i.e.,\ninterplanetary) agency or intelligence had _projected_ the Words on\ncity skies.\n\n_Poglief's Discussion_ of God which concluded, \"Religious\nFundamentalism has been the recourse of millions, as might be\nexpected. These persons hold either that God has permitted the Devil\nthus to rebuke humanity, which may be a sound moral observation but\nwhich is not good physics; or else that the Words represent the\nimminence of the Day of Judgment and the approach of the Opening of the\nGates of Paradise. This latter theory, gentlemen, is not, I feel, borne\nout by the specific nature of the abundant tokens.\"\n\nHearty laughter greeted this conclusion. And again--the opportunity to\nconsider the nature of God, a third valuable occasion, was missed.\n\nUltimately, it was decided that\n\n(_a_) No direct harm whatever had come from the Words\n\n(_b_) Thus the disaster was of psychological occasion, up to the\npresent time\n\n(_c_) Wherefore Los Alamos should immure itself as a fort against all\nthreat from the ravening masses, until\n\n  (1) they calmed down (unlikely for years)\n\n  (2) they all perished (not probable)\n\n  (3) a manageable remnant remained (most likely)\n\n(_d_) In which last case Los Alamos could be the nucleus of a new and\nspreading social culture, factual and scientific in nature, which would\ngradually recapture and restrain humanity with a view\n\n  (_z_) to establish a true freedom\n\n  (_y_) to abolish racialism\n\n  (_x_) to end wars\n\n  (_w_) to limit birth to numbers the planet's resources could maintain\n  indefinitely\n\n  (_v_) by the use of genetics and eugenics to raise constantly all\n  levels of health and intelligence\n\n  (_u_) and thus to bring about the halcyon world which had been within\n  the very grasp of the stupid species when they had all but destroyed\n  themselves.\n\nSo propitious was this program that a banquet to celebrate its\ninauguration was called for that night. The entire community, dressed\nin its best, assembled in a mood of new hope to dine from trestle\ntables in an airplane hangar.\n\nIt was during this festival, while postprandial brandies were being\nserved, that Xerxes Cohn stepped outdoors to take a breath of the thin,\npoignant night air of New Mexico and, perhaps, to turn a covertly\nexultant face upon the raw landscape; after all, through persons like\nhimself, man would triumph despite man's folly and its cost. He stepped\ninto the gloom, then, and because he was an astrophysicist as well as\na nuclear expert, he turned his eyes to the familiar constellations.\nHis stocky body grew stiff. There, in the region of Ursa Minor, glowed\na hitherto unknown star--a nova of approximately the third magnitude.\nAt once he called into the laughter-filled area behind him, \"Oh, Tead!\nSchilch! Boden! Come on out! We've got a sign, too--a nova.\"\n\nPeople--including those summoned--began to join the great man and\nmurmur with a sort of primitive awe. As they looked, the light from yet\nanother new star--reaching the planet earth after years of journeying\nat its absolute speed--burst before their gaze. The sign was doubled\nin the heavens--and, soon enough, trebled. It was Jetefti--the\nItalian-Czech--whose keen imagination caused him first to whisper, \"I\nsay, Xerx, it couldn't be--?\"\n\nSilence fell everywhere. More novae flashed into being. And there\ncould no longer remain a doubt amongst even the most skeptical of\nthis enlightened residue of the race. The stars had set forth an\nunimaginably vast initial of their own, an\n\n +-----------------------------+\n | * * * * * * * * * * * * * * |\n | * +-------------------------+\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * +-----------------+\n | * * * * * * * * * * |\n | * +-----------------+\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n | * |\n +---+\n\n\n13\n\nThe phone split my sleep. I was unready for the sound, or any sound,\nripping open my peaceful bivouac--bayoneting dreams and my poor respite.\n\nI grabbed in the dark. \"Yeahhhh?\"\n\n\"Can I come up?\"\n\n\"For God's sakes, Paul, what time is it?\"\n\n\"She's gone!\"\n\n\"Okay, okay. Where--?\"\n\n\"Downstairs!\"\n\nI found the light. Four-fifteen. Went to the door and propped it open\nwith a chair. Turned on the shower and stepped into it--letting the\nmultiple streams rattle against my sleepy skull and sweep away the\nsalty acids on my body.\n\nThe door slammed. Paul stuck his head around the curtain. \"I can't find\nher!\"\n\n\"For God's sakes, it's not that hot! She won't melt! Go get yourself\nsome whisky. Or would you rather have coffee?\"\n\n\"Christ. What do I care?\" His brow was fissured. Sweat had soaked his\nunshaved face--which he had wiped with hands increasingly grimed by\njunketing about the city all night. He looked like a hung-over mechanic.\n\n\"You need a bath, yourself,\" I said, stepping out.\n\n\"You don't understand! I've got to find her! Before she does anything\ndesperate.\"\n\n\"Look, Paul. If she's going to pull one, on the spur--it's pulled. If\nit's not done now--she won't hurry about it.\" I daubed myself with a\ntowel; perspiration came immediately where the water had just been. It\nwas muggier than Miami before a hurricane. \"Don't get the idea that\nbecause it's your first, it's her primary emotional crisis, either!\nMarcia's been through a lot!\" I opened the hot-water tap, let it\nrun, and filled a tumbler. I went into the living room, took a jar\nof powdered coffee from the desk pigeonhole where I kept it, dumped\nin a couple of spoonfuls, went back, and stirred with my toothbrush\nhandle. Then I took a couple of lumps of sugar from a horde I'd been\naccumulating at the Astolat's expense, plunked them in, and stirred\nmore. I drank about half of the hot coffee and lit a cigarette.\n\nPaul had followed every step of this gambit. I felt a little less like\na roused-up mummy with the coffee inside me, so I said, \"I'm sorry as\nall hell, cooky. Tell me about it.\"\n\n\"You did it!\" His eyes despised me for a moment. Then tears came. \"I\nguess I should have known enough not to bring her around to see you.\"\n\n\"What did I do?\"\n\n\"Made her self-conscious. Made her think it wasn't ever going to work\nout for us. She said that when you looked at her it made her feel like\na tart.\"\n\nIt had gone the other way around: when she'd looked at me, she'd\nfelt--not like a tart, necessarily--but not like a faithful wife,\neither. And I was being blamed for that. I skipped the point. \"You two\nkids retired in good order.\"\n\n\"That's what I thought. We got about a block away before she blew up.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\nHe tossed himself into a chair. He slipped down his tie and stared at\nme. \"What in hell _did_ you do?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"It wasn't--a pleasant--lunch. If all those idiotic things hadn't got\nus laughing--then paralyzed--\"\n\n\"Go on. She blew up?\"\n\n\"Sure. She said about a thousand crazy things--things like never being\nable to go around with me where people knew--because she realized she'd\nalways see them knowing--and thinking. I had to get back to the lab.\nWe've got the pile set at--we've got stuff cooking. I managed to calm\nher down enough so she promised to go home and get dinner. But when I\ngot there--\" He held out a note:\n\n  Paul, dear--For people like us, it should always be quick, clean,\n  permanent, and no hard feelings. I love you--that's why. M.\n\n\"Sounds like--going away. Nothing more drastic.\"\n\n\"Drastic enough! And she can't get away with that! I won't let her!\nWe'd have made it.\"\n\n\"What did you do? Bloodhound around the city?\"\n\n\"Went to her old apartment, first. Then--to the people who'd been her\nfriends. Routing them out. Bribing doormen to let me knock and wake\nthem up. Finally--when I ran out of ideas--I went to Hattie Blaine's.\nGood God--what a hideous place!\"\n\nI skipped that one, too. It was no time to argue that Hat's, while it\nhad a few dim facets of one sort or another, was in my opinion (or had\nbeen, anyhow)--rather enchanting. A kindlier spot than many a hearth or\nany city street.\n\n\"What did Hat say?\"\n\n\"Ye gods! She talked. She talked the grimmest bunch of obscene\nsophistries I ever heard in my life! She tried to get me drunk! She\neven tried to get one of the girls to--entertain me!\"\n\n\"It never passed through your cold, reasoning, scientific cranium that\nperhaps she was trying to be decent to you?\"\n\n\"_Decent!_\"\n\n\"Did she know where Marcia was?\"\n\n\"If she did--she wasn't saying. She said she had no idea on earth.\nHadn't heard from her for months. Or seen her--naturally. I begged\nher--beseeched her--to give me any useful address. Any name. Any scrap\nof a suggestion--\"\n\nI picked up the phone. After ringing me, the Astolat switchboard\noperator had fallen back to sleep and I listened to the buzz for a long\nwhile before she plugged in--irritably. The number I gave wasn't in the\nbook. But Hattie wouldn't be asleep--yet. Not unless she'd changed.\n\nViola answered and Hattie came on in a moment. \"Hello, Phil. What's\ncooking? You and Gwen quarrel?\"\n\nSince waking, I hadn't thought about Gwen--or Yvonne. The question\nstartled me. \"Nope,\" I said. \"Gwen, incidentally, has--has gone out\nfor a bit with a friend of mine. Nice gal, Gwen. It's about my nephew,\nPaul.\"\n\n\"Oh. Is he there?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Phil, that lad's in very bad shape.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"I'm serious. I know men. He's apt to do--anything!\"\n\n\"Yeah. Maybe so. Look. You don't have any ideas about Marcia--that\nyou'd give me, but not him?\"\n\n\"Too many!\"\n\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"I couldn't very well give Paul the names and addresses of all the boys\nwho have liked her, could I? In the shape he's in--he'd rout out God\nAlmighty, or run a one-man posse through hell.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Phil. He shouldn't see her now--even if I knew where she was--and I\nhaven't a single good idea about that. Just--lots of possibilities. I\ndon't know what she'd do--I doubt if she'd do anything violent--but she\nhas a right to be wherever she wants, hasn't she?\"\n\n\"Of course. I just thought--if you did have any hunches--he's sitting\nhere chewing the rug--\"\n\nHattie sighed. \"Old enough to do better! Maybe he's a great\nphysicist--but, believe me, he's in kindergarten on women! I tried\nto tell him so--gently. But he just sat there looking wilder than a\npriest trapped in the ladies' can! If I hear anything tomorrow, Phil,\nI'll give you a ring. If I were you--I'd slip Paul a Mickey Finn, or\nsomething, to cool him down.\"\n\nI thanked her.\n\nShe told me she was glad I liked Gwen and I said again that I thought\nGwen was a good deal of damsel and I hung up.\n\n\"Nothing?\" Paul had been on his chair-edge.\n\nI shook my head. \"Hattie's calm about it--and she really knows the\ngirl.\"\n\n\"Really knows Marcia? That bat-faced old strumpet? The hell she does!\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I said. \"Okay.\"\n\n\"Who's Gwen?\"\n\n\"One of her girls. She was down here earlier. She's gone.\"\n\nHe jumped up and came over to the sofa where I sat with the phone.\n\"Fine thing! I thought you said you were here working--not cheating!\"\n\n\"A slight relapse, say. What of it?\"\n\n\"Relapse!\" His voice was thin and high. His fists were doubled. His\nface streamed as if he were shoveling in a boiler room. \"Sweet guy, you\nare! Oh--you've got a good brain! Even talent! But all you do is whore\naround with your brains and your god-damned talent! And yourself! You\nlook at a woman--you just _look_ at her--and you make her feel like a\nslut! You've got a wife that's too good for a good guy--and a thousand\ntimes too good for you! So what? A weekend off--and you louse the place\nup with a chippy--! Somebody tries to dig a decent, lovely girl out of\na bad spot--and you come along and roll your dirty eyes on her--!\"\n\nI said, \"Look, Paul. If you're going to rage around at people for\nkeeping tarts in their homes, start with your own, will you?\"\n\nHe swung but he didn't follow hard and I ducked it.\n\nSo he began to sob, then--back in his chair.\n\nI went to the bathroom, broke out a clean tumbler, dumped in the\ncontents of three of the sodium amytal capsules Tom had prescribed for\nme, added water, swished it around, slogged back to the sitting room,\npoured in three fingers of whisky, and handed it to him. He took a\ndeep, lunging breath and drank the whole business.\n\nHe sobbed a while longer.\n\nThen, in a low, self-pitying voice, he began a rhapsody, or maybe\nthrenody, on Marcia. The drink hit him, and the pills; he grew detailed\nand intimate; finally he said he'd lie down for an hour before going on\nwith the search.\n\nIt was getting light by that time.\n\n\n\n\nPART FOUR\n\n _Rondo_\n\n\n1\n\nPaul's \"hour\" of sleep would last, I felt certain, for the best part of\nthe morning.\n\nI went into my bedroom and looked at him. He had taken off his shirt\nand his shoes. He lay on his back with his mouth open, his lips\nnursing the air, his brow creased with wrinkles set there by a life of\nconcentration--and distorted now with sorrow and pain. He was sweating\nlike the inside of a still: the drops welled and ran on his face and\nhis hairy chest and his ribs. Even his feet were bright-sprinkled. As\nI looked at him he stirred; a murmurous sound of protest and despair\ncame out of the poor guy--a sound tragic and pitiful and weird, for\nthere was nothing human about it. Hurt animals make such noises.\nRidiculous--but I remembered how a young man could feel about a girl.\n\nI would like to say that I dressed, girded my spirit, and took some\nstep on Paul's behalf--or even that I sat down at my table with grim\nand relentless character and put the milk-cart morning to good account\nby knifing further excess from my serial.\n\nSuch was not the case.\n\nI lay on my sitting room couch with the purpose of gathering my forces\nfor both efforts--but I met with failure.\n\nMy head ached. Vague pains beset my body--squirting about mysteriously\nfrom neck to gut to ankle and back again by way of knee and pelvis and\nteeth. My tongue burned--dry and yet sticky--inflamed and evil-tasting\nto itself--the tongue of us millions who sedulously obey the cigarette\nadvertising. (And just possibly the throat of some of us, too, I\nthought wincingly.) Idiot infantilism, scalding oral eros, obsession,\ncompulsion, tobacco! I smoked on defiantly, wretchedly. The jiffy\ncoffee lay in my stomach like a solid and the heat of it ran from my\npores.\n\nI stared at my body--the wens and scars and indurations and red\nblots--the warts and excrescences and moles--the minor tumors that are\nour common response to age and attrition--the crinkling paper of my\nskin--the sun-tan that reflected from a mirror like youth itself but\nthat, at chin-length, lost its satin and was seen to be marched and\ncounter-marched with freckles and a rash of prickly heat. I surveyed\nthe expanded, slack viscera beneath an irreducible fat that slid when\nI turned, like a hot-water bottle under my flabby epidermis. I noticed\nthe cord inside my bent elbow, standing out like an old man's now,\nand poorly covered with a cr\u00eapy mantle that lacked elasticity--the\ntime-shrunk backs of my hands--my toes, warped out of alignment, marked\nand marred with the miles and with the leather boxes we wear--their\nnails, turned in, split, chitinous--small, magenta lace of erupted\ncapillaries--shine and scale on my shins--myself: waxwork--worn\nbattlefield--warrant of decay, incipient cadaver.\n\nI did not need to see my face.\n\nFatigue dwelt in me always, now. Oh--(barring such incidents in a\nsingle one of these tired cells as neoplasm, of course)--I would have\nexhibited my inordinate energy, my vitality, my apparent arrestation\nof age for another ten years or twenty or thirty--I might have been\nan agile old man, supple and good at games (with suitable allowance\nfor the years) whose eyes never clouded, whose hair never fell, diving\noff tall dolphins to amuse my grandchildren and dancing gracefully\nwith Ricky to the applause of other septagenarians and the infinite\nboredom of teen-agers. But I was old already--scribbled with the\nnasty information of years, apprised of slinking hurts, debilities,\ntransient toxicities and nauseas that would increase and increase and\nincrease--or would have done so except for that one, rambunctious cell.\n\nWho wants to be old?\n\nWhat man, in his so-called prime, fails to note his coming scenery--the\nbandaged varicosities, the braces, the cut bunions, the scarification\nand bloodless horn, the smells and tastes of himself, the thickening\nspectacles, the hearing aids, the pills and petit prostheses, the\ngouty overpall, the migraine and vertigo, rheum, sour burp, dyspnoeia,\nheart-kick, cracking, and the myriad painful impediments of urination,\ndefecation, respiration, transpiration, the organic wheeze, the gradual\ninvasion of death?\n\nHe wants to be old who accepts it.\n\nBut we, the people of the United States of America, have rejected it in\ntoto: there must be some way to keep grandpa a gamin and mom nubile;\nmeantime, let us pretend there is a way.\n\nMillions for senescence and not one cent for sense.\n\nSo, okay, I said, it is happening to me with the short and sweet just\naround the corner and a good thing too, perhaps.\n\nOr a bad thing.\n\nA thing, I realized, of no import.\n\n_Now_ is a sufficient tomorrow for all my yesterdays--if I will see to\nthe circumstance in person.\n\nThis summary was a current that carried away the incubus of that early\nmorning and left me sound asleep on the divan.\n\nWhen I woke up I saw by my watch--which slid on its gold band when\nI moved my thin, saturate wrist--that it had passed nine o'clock. I\nbudged and yawned and swam up into the room. I felt better--the other\nside of age having somewhat returned during the nap.\n\nPaul still lay on his back, mouthing and snoring and sweating.\n\nRoom service brought cold orange juice and good, hot coffee with a\ncivilized cup to drink from.\n\nI needed assistance--which is to say, Paul needed it. A friend. An\nattorney. I could hardly spend the whole day with him unless there\nwas no alternative. Yet certainly he should not be alone with his\ncallow impetuosity. And certainly his young colleagues would be too\ninept for a proper handling of all the potential dilemmas. He needed a\nDanaos--he had always needed one, a wise older slave to manage his love\naffairs--a shrewd promoter. Lacking such a companion he had invested\nthe meaningless savings of youth's passion in one whore. Profligate,\ncomical, and a disaster.\n\nI considered Johann Brink.\n\nWomen, he would say, do not exist in the laboratory.\n\nWhen you switch on the cyclotron, you switch off She.\n\nIt was too damned bad they _hadn't_ taken women along in there with the\natoms--_flame inspiratrice_, man's soul. They might have discovered\nmore concerning the nature of the velocity of light and the behavior of\nparticles and even the essence of packing fractions than they'd learned\nby the castrate inspection of their micros and macros and milles.\n\nWhich other set of barbarian priests was it who emasculated themselves\nbefore accepting Holy Orders?\n\nI couldn't remember.\n\nBrink the mental giant and pigmy person would be as much help here as a\nhandful of ice cubes against a forest fire.\n\nI dialed Dave Berne.\n\nHis man Veto answered.\n\n\"This is Phil Wylie.\"\n\n\"Just a minute.\"\n\n\"Hello, you toothless cobra! What the hell are you doing in town?\nWaiting for the women to faint?\"\n\n\"Some of us,\" I said, \"don't have to wait.\"\n\nHe roared. \"No kidding! What gives? God, isn't it hot? If I had a\nhuman head, I could shrink it right here on my terrace--and it's only\nnine-twenty, A.M.!\"\n\n\"Dave, I got trouble.\"\n\nI told him about Paul.\n\n\"I have a ten-thirty conference with some movie moguls,\" he said when I\nfinished, \"so I'll be right over.\"\n\nHe was there in less than a half hour.\n\nDavid Abraham Lincoln Berne is the most interesting man I know--a\nstatement which covers quite a few interesting men.\n\nA lawyer.\n\nA lawyer, furthermore, whose principal employ is with the movie\ncompanies.\n\nHe was not always a lawyer....\n\nDave was born over a delicatessen, in Madison, Wisconsin, of serious\nminded, musically gifted, orthodox Jewish parents in the winter of\n1906, the fourth child of eight, and no culls in the lot. As soon--he\nsays--as he could pound with his porringer, they gave him a violin.\nBut--again, according to him--he swiftly saw that he was going to\nbe only a semiprodigy, so he turned to other fields. He did well in\nschool. One of his playmates, a Milwaukee realtor nowadays, who liked\nDave in spite of his personal limitations, long ago told me about\nthat--and succinctly: \"Some of those bastard Jews are born with a high\nschool education!\"\n\nDave finished at fifteen--and took an extra year to grow in, working\nnights at the delicatessen and reading, for entertainment, philosophy.\n\nHe has a remarkable memory. He might not be able to recall his laundry\nmark when he was in Virginia. But no one who knows him well would bet\neven on that.\n\nA compact guy who--because he is loose-jointed--seems anything but\nsolid. Indeed, his flexibility is such that he could probably learn a\nyogin's basic postures in one sitting.\n\nEverybody liked him in Madison.\n\nThis was not true in Virginia.\n\nHe majored in psychology and went out for football. He'd played on his\nhigh school team. The backfield coach was impressed equally by the\nlength of his accurate passes and the fact that he mastered the signals\nin one night's concentrated study. Letter-perfect and reflex-fast. But\na pair of racially pure Nordic behemoths from Minnesota, sent proudly\nto the team by scouting old grads, decided that, although they had\nnothing personal against the yid, no yid would call their signals. In\nDave's first game they managed to break both his legs.\n\nDave got the idea. He let his uniform hang there, the next year--when\nhe'd got off crutches.\n\nHe made the newspaper--but not the fraternity he'd set his heart on.\n\nHe made _summa cum laude_.\n\nHe went next to Pennsylvania--tutoring, tending furnaces, minding\nbabies, mowing lawns, as usual--and took both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in\npsychology. He got a job teaching it to pre-med students in Iowa. His\nthesis on \"Formulations of Subjective Sexuality in Man\" almost landed\nhim the thing he wanted--a psycho-sociological research position with\na big foundation. They wrote him, however, that they felt certain\ngroup attitudes (outrageous, but there they are!) would prejudice his\nfact-gathering efforts.\n\nA Gentile took over the project.\n\nSeveral of America's brilliant young men in psychology, psychiatry, and\npsychoanalysis are former students of Dave.\n\nA Dr. Wiswell was put over him in Iowa.\n\nThat was when he began to read law.\n\nHe took the New York Bar exams in 1935 and went to work for\nMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer that year.\n\nDuring the war, he was commissioned a captain in the Medical Corps and\nsent (by a General Muller, a Regular Army doctor who thought Hitler a\ngreat man and psychiatry bunk) to Alaska, to study the effects upon\nmental stamina of cold, isolation, and monotony.\n\nFor the first time in his life, and after twenty months of Alaska, Dave\npulled strings in his own behalf.\n\nHe was assisting the OSS--a major, then--in figuring out methods of\nhastening the deterioration of Nazi morale--when they came through\nthe Bulge. Dave stayed at a forward subheadquarters to manage the\ntourniquet on his colonel's bomb-shattered leg.\n\nHurrying German troops took the colonel prisoner and shot Dave four\ntimes, on sight.\n\nSome of Patton's men found him, still alive, in a cellar, three days\nlater. Two of his toes had to be amputated because they'd frozen. He\nlimps when he's weary--but he's still a handball champ.\n\nThe Nazis didn't take care of his colonel's tourniquet and the colonel\ndied. Dave has a Purple Heart, plain--but nothing else to bespeak what,\nin a Gentile, might possibly have been regarded as courage beyond the\nline of duty.\n\nHe had, you will recall, reluctantly decided that there would always be\na Dr. Wiswell over him, in the field of psychology. He had also come to\nthe reluctant conclusion that a Jew without money in America was like\nan unarmed man in a city of quick-draw experts. So he had studied law.\n\nProblems to which he put the lever of his mind usually yielded. The\nproblem of money was one such. He is a completely honest man; he no\nlonger saw any objection to applying his honesty, and talents, in\nplaces where money was abundant. He is worth, I should imagine, a\nquarter of a million, and he has only started.\n\nDave is the ugliest man I know--or, at least, know well.\n\nA huge but thin hooked nose divides his face vertically. Hitler's\ntrained anti-Semites needed only a look at that to shoot. His large,\nround ears are set almost at right angles to his head. He has a\nconspicuous Adam's apple which--in talk, or merely from emotion--rides\nup and down with the acceleration and quick braking of a humming bird\nbefore a hollyhock. His forehead bulges; his mouse-brown eyebrows look\nas if they had been sprayed on as a random afterthought. He is almost\nbald. His mouth takes a generous cut into his pale, gaunt cheeks and\nhis chin retreats. Only his eyes contrast with a face they cannot\nredeem: they are an immortal blue--living proof of compassion, of\nreflection, and of mirth.\n\nHe is a bachelor.\n\nHe was in love, once, with a stately girl from Boston--a quiet, brainy\nbrown-eyed girl who wore sensible shoes and braids but sometimes had\nthe look of wanting to lie in the grass with a man, or even of being\nready to pull a man down. I had hoped that Dave would be granted this\none exception by the unwilling gods. He wasn't. She married an opera\nsinger--and divorced him two years later--and went to live in Milan.\n\nMy Campfire Girl, Dave called her, after that.\n\nHe meant the part about Camps.\n\nIt was in Hollywood that I met Dave.\n\nI was weaving down Sunset Boulevard one night, drunk, desultory, and\nalone. Very much alone. My first wife had taken my kid back East--and\nno blame for that. She was sick of the way it was.\n\nI'd spent the afternoon at an address in Beverly Hills where you could\ndo what you pleased.\n\nI'd spent the evening at a gambling place up on the hillside,\nsprinkling my money around and my IOUs--with a bunch of other writers,\ndirectors, junior producers, and picture girls. You'd know their names\nif I told you and the hell with that.\n\nUp on the hill above the canyon at the Casa Crap.\n\nUp there among the carbolic mountains--the near knees--the far, white\npeaks with snow on their nasty heads. Down below, the spot where God\nsat on the seventh day, and--in the big, flat print of His behind--Los\nAngeles. Ninety square miles of costume jewelry, Technicolor\nstarshine, neon and sodium and all other colored gases, signboards\nwith fifty-foot women in ten-foot brassi\u00e8res and men smoking four-foot\npipes, boulevards under the palms and cloverleaf intersections with\nthe billion paired headlights streaming and swirling, bungalow courts\nand drugstores, pool halls and bingo parlors, buses and trolley cars,\nacacias and roses and pepper trees, open markets with fruit piled in\nmetaphysical polyhedrons, and the fog rolling in on the thin, chilly,\nsting-sinus air of California.\n\nYou can keep it.\n\nI'd spent all my money and cashed a few IOUs to impress the girls.\n\nThe girls.\n\nI'd played Mr. Bones with the bright young writers who go out there for\nthe girls--searching amongst the girls in skirts for the girl that's\ntheir soul--Medea, Medusa and Circe, Sappho and daughter Eve, Calliope,\nClio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia,\nUrania--and Aglaia and Euphrosyne, too--and Lilith--searching for her\non the wrong coast--all evening, a badminton of wisecracks, battledore\nand shuttlecock with the soulless prizes going to the heads that stayed\nclear the longest, the pocketbooks that were the deepest, the tallest\ngold lettering on office doors, and never a Muse or a Grace in the\njoint.\n\nI hadn't been able to find my car in the sepulcher parking yard.\n\nToo lost, ingrown, ashamed to ask the attendant.\n\nToo penniless to hire a cab.\n\nI walked down that Golconda Golgotha, stopping to puke, with my fists\nin my pockets holding to wet handkerchiefs.\n\nIt was on the Boulevard, with the rich night traffic, the skimmed\nscarlet scum of the studios and the magnates from Pasadena with their\ncold, oiled working-model blondes.\n\n The bells rang.\n The iron hands came down.\n Stop civilization. Go civilization.\n Red lights green lights cracking my drunken brain.\n The acrid flavor of tomorrow in my mouth.\n Alarm.\n Headsplitting daylight.\n How about this?\n She sees him get out of the ice wagon.\n She throws a snowball at him.\n Go sell it to the Eskimos, she says.\n I've got it!\n\nShe throws the snowball. That's good. So okay--her mitten sticks to\nit and soaks him square in the puss and instead of spitting out the\nmitten--which he gets in his teeth--he makes like it's a mustache!\n\nHell! He's a football player, isn't he--not just an ice-man? Going to\nbe a big-shot brain specialist someday, isn't he? Quick thinker. So\nokay. So he leaps and spears the mitten and the snowball like it's a\nlong forward and he runs at her and tackles her and spills her--not\nreal hard--but hard--and there's how they meet, the both of them lying\ndown in the snow with her on her back and the guy on top. Is that\ngood--or is it terrific?\n\nAnd there, so help me Christ, after eleven days, and twenty-three\nthousand dollars, is how they do meet.\n\nWrong coast for Aglaia, I say? I'm sure I did.\n\nThat morning's taste.\n\nThe rest of them. The contract. The months.\n\nThe arms and the lights and the bells became lost in the prospect and I\nstepped from the curb and brakes trilled.\n\n\"Want a lift? You need one, pal.\"\n\nThat was Dave.\n\nAt my apartment, I made some coffee and later we went back together to\nthe address in Beverly Hills--because he didn't know it, and he was a\nlonely guy, too.\n\nIn fact he still is.\n\nThe most brokenhearted guy in the world.\n\nYou see\n\nnobody told him about the six-pointed star on the box he was shipped\nin--he had to find out for himself.\n\nAnd he wants to be sure, when he checks out, that he kept it bright\nwhile he had the use of it.\n\nDave came in.\n\n\"By God,\" he said, \"Wylie! The old, articulate cryptogram in person,\nnude as a saint's stool!\" It might have been a bracing autumn forenoon:\n\"I'm glad to see you! I was saying to a friend only the other night--a\njerk named Staunton--Staunton, the town's not the same--Wylie's not\nhere. The old termite has moved to the country--turned himself out to\npasture! And Florida in the winter! The son-of-a-bitch is chasing the\nanalema! Where's the patient?\"\n\nI pointed.\n\nDave took a look and came back.\n\n\"Shall we wake him up? I can take him to the office and get some of\nmy minions looking for his wench. Private dicks, too. They won't find\nher. They couldn't find a luminous memorandum in a two-drawer filing\ncabinet. But it might wear him down a little.\"\n\n\"Let him sleep, for now.\"\n\nDave sat down. \"This is swell! Send for a barrel of iced tea, will\nyou--with a clear gin on the side? I had a hard night last night.\nA bunch of the super-big-shots came in on the Super-Chief and the\nSuper-Century last night. Things in Hollywood are so bad that two of\nthem stayed sober the whole damned evening.\"\n\nI phoned Room Service. \"There's a depraved guest of mine up here who\nwants some neat gin and a lot of iced tea--\"\n\nDave had picked up one of my ashtrays and was looking at it intently.\nWhen I hung up he said, \"Depraved? Depraved, you say? Me? Don't I\ndetect not just one, but two colors of lipstick here?\"\n\n\"Callers from the other rooms,\" I answered. \"Came in to consult the\noracle.\"\n\n\"Depraved,\" he repeated. \"That's the trouble with you Gentiles. Two\nrules for everything. 'If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.'\nBut--'Let not thy left hand know what thy right doeth.' Something of\nthat sort. So you reconcile the pair by going around plucking out other\npeople's right eyes; and not letting your open hand know the other is\ngouging. Consulting the oracle! What a phrasemaker!\"\n\nI told him about Gwen and Yvonne.\n\nHe pretended to be still more deeply outraged. \"There you are! A\nperfect Wylie situation. God, what an imposter! Not one lovely\ngirl--but two--are sent on silver salvers. You entertain them. You get\nall the social opprobrium and none of the benefits. What confidence can\nyouth have in you, after a trick like that? Here you are--the last hope\nfor phallic worship in a dying world. The man with the one message that\nmakes sense. Either the boys get their breeches back--and do things to\nmake the dames respect 'em--or Nature will throw us out of the party.\nYou proclaim it with your foghorn and you play it on your xylophone.\nBut when it gets right down to the bedrocking--what do you do? You\npersonally, Mr. Prophet? Welsh! Walk out on the act!\"\n\n\"Times are changing,\" I told him. \"Phallic worship? Can you build\ngood rituals around our businessmen? A healthy restoration of\nphallic worship would ruin the profitable activities of every vested\ninstitution in the land, from its banks to its churches. People\nwouldn't even care if the trains ran on time, any more. Think of that!\"\n\nDave was leering at me pensively. \"By God. It might be the thing to\nrevive Hollywood.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" I said. \"You open with a prologue that shows modern psychology\nhas found the roots of love in our love lives. Then you fade to the\nAmerican Home, where a Husband is trying to figure out how to arouse\nor enchant or even slightly interest one Beautiful Blonde Mother. She\nis rushing about the house swatting her children for bringing home a\nmagazine full of art studies. Her husband tries to slip his arm around\nher--but she knows he is suffering from neurotic hay fever, makes his\nliving by manufacturing second-rate household appliances which he sells\nowing to better advertising, is afraid of his stockholders, never had\nthe earning capacity of Joe Benson or Harvey Tekker or Don Oaker,\nand is scared of her, besides. Great subject for phallic worship! We\nfade to a contented pagan maiden in the South Sea Isles--ukeleles and\nmoonlight--\"\n\n\"And the MPPA comes in and tosses out the film! It's a conspiracy!\" he\nsaid in a Durantean tone.\n\n\"You guys have worked out the vein--that's all. There can't be any\nmore very interesting movies till there's a new public attitude about\nlife. You've got to where there's no permissible area that you haven't\ncanvassed a hundred times. The new pictures are all remakes. People\nget sick of such things. Jam yesterday, today and tomorrow is as bad\nas none today. All the movies are self-plagiarisms. I even went to one\nwith Ricky this summer.\"\n\n\"We're grateful.\"\n\n\"Remember the _Three Little Pigs_--and the song about the 'Big Bad\nWolf' that people sang to kid themselves in the Depression?\"\n\n\"I remember.\"\n\n\"So all right. We went to see this movie--and we also saw a remake\nof the Little Pigs. Same story. Same art. Same theme song. At the\nfinale, the new inspiration is this: the wolf pops down the chimney of\nthe little pig in the brick house--hind end first. And the pig fills\na caldron with turpentine. The wolf lands in same--and the picture\nirises down on the wolf roaring away, his hind legs held high, his\nturpentined anus dragging, his forelegs pulling--like any dog. Now--I\nwas brought up to believe that you can't tell the same joke twice. And\nI was also taught that putting turps on animals' rears was sadistic.\nI still think it is. And I think it's too vulgar a way to try for a\nlaugh--cruelty to animals aside. That, my boy, is truly obscene--the\ndying effort of a perishing industry. Fortunately--television is coming\nin--and it will be far more vulgar. Television will really speed up the\nfertile necessity of a great change in this disgraceful Western world.\nRight?\"\n\n\"Right,\" said Dave. \"I saw that short. I psychologically snapped my\n_petits fours_.\" He looked at me for a while. \"Phil--why'd you call me\nover here, this morning?\"\n\nKarl came with the gin and tea. I signed. He went.\n\nDave's question startled me. I suddenly saw it from his angle. I'd\nallowed him to skip--or postpone--an important conference because\n(I'd said) my nephew was on an emotional binge and I needed aid. Dave\nwould know that, all else being equal and normal, I could handle my\nnephew. He'd know that, barring some editorial crisis, the cutting of\na serial wasn't so important I couldn't set it aside for a day or so\nto row a relative through the waters of a soul-struggle. He'd know,\nby my cursory attention to Paul--and by the way my talk had slatted\naround--that I had more on my mind than Paul's problem. So he had\nrealized--and I had not--that I'd decided to call in a friend--for\nmyself.\n\n\"I need a good lawyer,\" I said.\n\n\"Oh--oh!\"\n\nI looked at him cross-eyed. \"What an evil mind you have! I keep my\naccounts and the tax people are not particularly interested in me.\nNo brunette has letters of mine and is asking for a thousand bucks.\nNobody is suing me for plagiarism. I just noticed a little nuisance in\nthe back of my throat the other day and went over to see Tom and had a\nbiopsy--and I want my affairs in order.\"\n\nI shouldn't have done it that way. He turned sheet-white.\n\n\"There isn't any report on the biopsy yet,\" I said. \"Won't be till\nMonday. Makes quite a long weekend. But I have a hunch--\"\n\n\"You God-damned dour Scotchmen! Maybe it's nothing.\"\n\n\"Tom thinks it's something.\"\n\nHe looked out the window for a long time--with his shoulders folded\nforward and the sun beating on his face, reflecting into it from the\ncement top of the parapet and bouncing at it from the tile terrace\nbetween. That ugly, fond mug.\n\n\"I suppose,\" he finally said, \"when they have taken everything else and\neverybody else they come around for you in person.\"\n\n\"I never really expected to get even this old. When I was a kid, I was\nsure I'd never see thirty. As I recall, I didn't want to. Seemed a\nstale age.\"\n\nDave grinned feebly. \"Ricky?\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"She well now?\"\n\n\"We think so.\"\n\n\"Get her down here, man!\"\n\nI shook it again. \"Give her the two more days. And it just\nmight--might--and then--\"\n\n\"You didn't take a drink?\"\n\nAgain.\n\n\"By God! What a reform!\"\n\n\"I'm trying to get that serial done--\"\n\n\"--strictly on Presbyterianism.\"\n\nI thought that over. \"Maybe. They'll need the dough. And it's a\nfavorite old anodyne of mine--rolling up the sleeves.\"\n\nDave poured out a second glass of iced tea and gulped it. He nodded his\nhead toward my bedroom. \"When he wakes up, tell him to come down to\nmy office. Tell him we're working for him. We'll do what we can think\nof. I'll keep him stooging around--and sober, if possible--and see you\nlater.\"\n\n\"Going?\"\n\nHe came across the room and put an arm around my shoulder. \"You said\nyou wanted to work. I'll be back.\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\n\n2\n\nI remember, one day on the way to California, when the Chief stopped at\nNeedles. It was summertime and the thermometer on the station wall in\nthe shade said 125 degrees. I was standing around, dizzy, when I saw a\nguy pacing up and down the platform as if he enjoyed it. I ventured out\nin the sunshine to see if he'd lost his mind and he turned around--a\ndark-skinned character. Royalty, it proved later, from Hyderabad. He\nliked it.\n\nMy apartment, that morning, was something like the Needles station on\nthe Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. No baking sand, red-hot rocks, or\nmountains pitching on the miraged distance, of course. Needles was dry,\ntoo, and Manhattan was close to saturate.\n\nI worked along--not minding much.\n\nBut after all, even Negroes sunburn--even Papuans get lazy.\n\nAround one o'clock I began to feel--not hungry but empty--and I went in\nto check on Paul. He was still snoring and sweating.\n\nFour and a half grains of sodium amytal, by itself, wouldn't have\nknocked him that flat that long. He'd have wakened in six or seven\nhours, I thought--feeling fuzzy and feeble and maybe a little sick. He\nstill seemed good for more time, to me. It showed just how much sleep\nhe'd left out in the past weeks, past months--worrying about that girl\nand worrying about making weapons with his beloved mathematics. It was\npossible, of course, that he'd explode awake any moment--look at his\nwatch--throw an outside loop--and get going like a jet plane.\n\nI wrote him a note saying I was downstairs in the Knight's Bar and that\nI had a new search in progress. That would bring him.\n\nI got dressed. The gabardine was like wet newsprint.\n\nThis time, air conditioning was a relief. I sucked in a lungful and Jay\ncame up.\n\n\"Want to sit with Mrs. Prentiss?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nExactly two days before, she had leaned over the same table, an\nimmaculate grooming operation--hurt, snooty, aloof, reading her\ndisguised book. A Cinderella. Avid and anxious--haughty and pretty\nhateful--beautiful and not much good. I could say what was different\nabout her now but it would be difficult to convey the true impression\nof that. Her hair, for one thing. It was just neatly combed--just\ncasual, gold-blonde hair whose owner hadn't taken pains for once, with\nevery single filament. Her dress. Another plain, costly print--but\nthe body inside it was relaxed and not subconsciously trying to avoid\ncreases. It didn't seem to fit quite as perfectly, and yet it suited\nher better: it made--would make--anybody, any man, look at the girl\ninside and the clothes after--not the other way around. The Musak was\ngiving out with \"Dardanella\" and her foot was keeping time under the\ntable.\n\n\"Hello, Yvonne.\"\n\nShe glanced up--from the morning paper.\n\n\"'Lo, Phil.\"\n\n\"Want company?\"\n\n\"Love it.\" She moved over a little. I came around the table and sat\ndown.\n\n\"You look right sweet this morning. Noon. Whatever it is.\"\n\nShe folded up the paper.\n\nI ordered some cold salmon and potato salad and iced coffee.\n\nShe studied me--gravely for the most part. Once, she showed a dimple.\nBut her voice was placid. \"You could be annoyed at me.\"\n\n\"What for?\"\n\n\"Don't be obvious!\"\n\n\"Last night? Annoyed? I was tired. In a talky mood. It was my guest's\nown idea to come down. I said sure--and after she'd been there\nawhile--I changed my mind.\"\n\n\"That's what Gwen thought.\" She ate a little of her fruit salad. Maybe\nher hand shook. Certainly not much. She drew a straight, easy breath.\n\"I imagined I could learn something from her.\"\n\n\"Did you?\"\n\nShe looked at me with frank, gray eyes. She smiled into herself. \"You\nknow I did.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Isn't it strange how much we attach to trifles--love and sex trifles?\nSet up a whole lifetime for happiness--but fix it so that one little\nact for a handful of minutes will ruin the whole thing.\"\n\n\"That.\"\n\nShe flicked her head to put back her hair. \"It's mad! To imagine such\nthings are so important! To imagine whole lives and people and families\ncan be ruined by anything--so little!\"\n\nI gave her the red schoolhouse riposte. \"Knocking a person on the head\nis a little thing that hardly takes even one minute. But it's murder.\nSlipping a hundred G's out of the cash cage takes only a sec--but it's\nrobbery--\"\n\n\"And kissing you in a cab the other night,\" she answered, \"took only\na couple of blocks and I don't love you in the least. We touched. A\nmoment or two. It was fun. We'll never do it again. Or, say--we do. Is\nthat like murder and robbery? Should it ruin lives?\"\n\n\"Not to my way of thinking. I don't feel wrecked.\"\n\n\"Neither do I,\" she said softly. \"Neither do I! On the contrary! You\nhave to find out that how you feel is terribly important--terribly. But\nwhat you do--unless you make it important--that's such a tiny thing!\"\nShe smiled. \"When you think that just forty-eight hours ago--I was\nsitting here shuddering over Rol--\"\n\n\"It occurred to me.\"\n\n\"It seems--\" she sought for the proper words--\"sort of--caddish.\nUnchivalrous. And hideously unsympathetic.\"\n\n\"Aren't you pushing yourself?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"You could have a reaction.\"\n\n\"I'm having one.\"\n\nMy lunch came.\n\n\"I mean,\" I said, \"a reaction to this reaction.\"\n\nShe considered that and her curls moved. \"I doubt it. I'm--cured.\"\n\n\"Cured one way. Maybe you're going to suffer in another.\"\n\nShe seemed frightened for a bare moment. \"I don't know,\" she finally\nsaid. \"How can I tell?\"\n\n\"Wait and see.\"\n\n\"If I suffer, I suffer,\" she finally said. And her eyes weren't alarmed.\n\n\"Good for you!\"\n\n\"May I ask a question?\"\n\n\"Shoot.\"\n\nI waited while she ate a little and formulated.\n\n\"Phil, what would you think of me now if I were your wife?\"\n\nIt was quite a one. It was the second really tough one she'd put to me.\n\"What would you ask God if He came in?\" was the other.\n\n\"I hope,\" I said, \"that I'd cherish you more than ever.\"\n\n\"But you might not?\"\n\n\"I leave room for the possibility. I don't know, after all.\"\n\n\"Why would you cherish me?\"\n\n\"For at last being honest with yourself about yourself.\"\n\n\"Easy answer. Why might you not?\"\n\n\"I dunno. You might have found yourself--by that honesty--to be\nsomebody who wouldn't like me. Ergo--how could I go on insisting--?\"\n\n\"Only that?\"\n\n\"Only that. It's a lot.\"\n\n\"You sure, Phil? Certain?\"\n\n\"My-God-yes! A great, great many of the people I know, and am fond of,\nand admire, would look at your sin as just a sort of timid, dainty\nexperiment. I suppose you're fishing around for rebuke. You'll never\nget much. Most women learn by doing--some men, by just thinking. What\nare you doing tonight, for instance?\"\n\n\"I--I don't know yet.\" She flushed peach-pink. \"I haven't--decided.\"\n\n\"Unh!\"\n\n\"You sound like Rol. Like Rol--after-- Before I left. Dainty--he talked\nlike that.\"\n\n\"They bring us up--in a desert,\" I said. \"Because that's where they\ngrew up.\" I thought of Needles and the metallic sunlight and the Moslem\nprince. \"Still--there are other things in life besides sex.\"\n\n\"Not if sex isn't right, there aren't. Not any other things worth\nliving for.\"\n\n\"Back to Freud and the Western neurosis. Yvonne--I have to scram in a\nmoment. Work. And a nephew. Maybe you'd care to meet him?\"\n\n\"You'll forget to call me.\"\n\n\"Then you call me--later on.\"\n\n\"Probably I will.\"\n\nI scraped up the last of the salmon and tipped the ice cubes in my\ncoffee glass against my upper lip.\n\nYvonne reached over and took my left hand. She ran the backs of her\nfingers slowly through it and shivered with a small ecstasy. \"Phil! I'm\nall new!\"\n\n\"You certainly let your hair down.\"\n\nShe leaned toward me. \"I let down--!\" She smiled and shook her head.\n\"Am I so wicked?\"\n\n\"Nope. If you tried, you might make it. Right now--\"\n\nI left her in that subdued, shiny-eyed jizzle.\n\n\n3\n\nThe door slipped out of my somewhat moist palm when I opened it and\nwas slammed not by the day's breeze, for there was no breeze, but by a\ndraft that sucked through the Astolat Hotel--a current of air bearing\nthe odors of food, carpets, paint, luggage, and the scents of rich\nwomen--a damp, thermal issue that would have incubated eggs.\n\nPaul sat bolt upright in my bed.\n\nHe saw me, first. He stared at the room. He swung his feet to the floor.\n\n\"Gotta get going. Any news of her?\"\n\n\"Take it easy, bo.\"\n\n\"What time is it?\"\n\nI told him.\n\n\"You've let me waste half the day?\" His voice broke.\n\n\"Not waste it. Thought the rest would do you good. Bring you back to\nyour senses a little. Seems not.\"\n\n\"God damn you--you should have waked me up. I feel horrible.\"\n\n\"Snap out of it! Try to remember what the poet says about rags, bones,\nhanks of hair--and a good cigar is a smoke.\" His eyes were so wild that\nI took pity on him. \"Jump in the shower. I've got Dave Berne--an old\npal of mine--working on your Marcia. He probably has detectives on the\nhunt this minute.\"\n\nPaul heavily rubbed the stubble on his face. \"I _thought_ you'd take\ncharge.\"\n\nWhile he used my shower and my razor I had his clothes pressed and\nordered some breakfast for him.\n\nBut he ate the food only because he had to wait for the valet. I\ncouldn't remember having seen anybody in such a tizzy about a girl\nsince the days of my youth--since my own tizzies. And tizzy wasn't the\nright word for Paul's condition. It was pretty nearly psychopathic.\n\nHe ate and ran from my rooms, after I'd made him promise to report back\nlater in the day.\n\nI got into the serial again and the sun moved across the blue-hot sky,\ndriving from Manhattan everybody with the fare.\n\nAmbulances were collecting prostration cases.\n\nCops were going around shutting off the fire hydrants which wilted\ncitizens were opening with wrenches. Cops trying to save the water\nsupply against fall drought, against fires, against winter snow that\ncould be flushed into the sewers, and in behalf of the thirst, cookery,\nand cleanliness of the millions.\n\nThe heat wave had become big headlines in the papers.\n\nSometimes I looked out the window at the glaring roofs of the\nmetropolis and tried archmeasures of cortical autohypnosis, imagining\nthe sky gray, snow falling in hushed and steady spirals, shop windows\ngreen and red for Christmas, and Salvation Army Santa Clauses ringing\nhandbells beside their tripods and kettles on the main intersections.\nIt wasn't any good. My personal limits of trained tolerance had been\nexceeded by a great, tormented gob of atomic fire ninety-three million\nmiles away and right here on my windowsill.\n\nStill--I made fair progress.\n\nThe light was losing its intensity, though the air was no less fevered,\nwhen I got a call.\n\n\"Is this Phil Wylie?\" It was a man's voice--bland, on the booster side.\n\n\"Yo.\" I was not very enthusiastic about being Phil Wylie.\n\n\"This is Socker Melton. Friend of your father. He told me to look you\nup, here--and I've tried a time or two before now. Glad to catch you\nin. May I come up?\"\n\nWhat do you do? I told him I was working hard--on a rush operation--but\nto come up anyhow.\n\nThen I raged around the sitting room for a bit.\n\nChrist badger every old friend of the family!\n\nThe oaf's knock was pompous. Bonk and pause, bonk and pause, bonk.\n\nLike the pass-signal to a kid's shanty.\n\nI opened the door, being careful to cling to the knob.\n\nMy dimmest view was justified.\n\nSocker Melton was a big chum--sixty-two or -three and about two-hundred\nand twenty-five. He had a face that would have been square if he'd\nsacrificed his extra chin--large, blue, eager-beaver eyes--a babyish\nsnub nose--and a rather thick mouth, not very clearly defined; but\nthere was nothing repulsive in the ensemble--he looked like a star\nBuick salesman. He wore--maybe I should say sported, since he probably\nthought of it that way--a white flannel suit of a light weight and he\ncarried a panama hat, the sweatband of which was earning its keep. A\npoor day for those big boys and I felt sorry for him. His clerical\ncollar was doing its best to stand up for Jesus--but there were folds\nin it and his black dickey was mussed.\n\nI propped the door open.\n\nHe inventoried the place after a passing gander at me. You could see\nthat he liked nice things--and the Astolat is well heeled. His eye\nrested especially on some mirror-backed hanging shelves.\n\n\"I hate to intrude like this--\"\n\n\"Any friend of pop's--\" I said.\n\nHe gave the panama a scale--to show me he was an informal guy like\nme--and dropped into one of my chairs. The thing squeaked hard and\nbraced itself. I figured to be charming for about ten minutes.\n\nI'm a sucker for people who get to see me, anyway. I like most\npeople--as individuals, to begin with; and although I do what I\ncan--and the family does what it can--to keep the more extraverted\noddities from jimmying doors and peering through bedroom windows, I\nspend a God-awful amount of time chitchatting with visiting strangers\nof all sorts.\n\nThe chair he'd taken was in reach of my MS, so he reached for it. It is\npossible that he was trying to adjust to the fact that I was wearing\nonly a pair of shorts.\n\n\"Sounds amusing,\" he said, after reading a few lines.\n\nThat was what Gwen had said the night before. I was glad to see the\nCloth in agreement with the professionally unclad. Competent magazine\nfiction should appeal to all tastes.\n\n\"Pleased that you think so.\"\n\nI told myself that I had no right to be irritated at the preacher's\npatronizing tone, or at his unasking and uninvited reading of my\nmanuscript. After all, when artists paint in public places, people feel\nfree to look over their shoulders.\n\n\"I'm the rector of St. Shadows, over on Park,\" he said. \"But don't hold\nthat against me.\"\n\nI'd heard of the guy. The \"Socker\" came from intercollegiate boxing--at\nwhich he had been champ of his class many long years ago. My old man\nthought he was a \"great personality, a liberal, a true intellectual of\nthe church, and a profound modern philosopher.\"\n\n\"I won't hold it against you if you say not.\"\n\nHe laughed--about four watts too heartily. \"Mind if I take this coat\noff?\"\n\nI did mind--because that meant he'd stick around longer. But I'd asked\nhim up. What the hell! I usually give myself a break around four or\nfive, anyhow--for coffee.\n\nI told him that. \"I was about to knock off--\" and so on. \"Would you\nlike something to drink?\"\n\nHe said he'd have a sloe gin fizz. This was to get across his modernity\nand liberality.\n\n\"Don't drink, myself.\" I took some trivial pleasure in his visible\nsurprise.\n\n\"I thought all authors--?\"\n\n\"Used to be a lush. Quit.\" I told Room Service about this new guest and\nhis taste for wild plum juice.\n\nHe had said, \"Oh,\" anent my confession. I hung up and he grinned at me.\nHe'd taken off his collar and dickey by that time and was sitting there\nin a wet undershirt. \"In town for long?\"\n\n\"Nope.\"\n\n\"You're here a good deal, though, your father tells me.\"\n\n\"Sometimes. At the moment--we're building in Florida--and my kid\nattends school there--so Florida is where we spend most of our time.\"\n\n\"Hot, in the fall and spring, isn't it?\"\n\n\"Not this hot!\"\n\nHe thought that was amusing, too. \"Hurricanes,\" he said.\n\n\"Yep. Hurricanes.\"\n\n\"You've been in them?\"\n\n\"Repeatedly.\" I passed up a grade-A chance to dramatize Wylie, since it\nwould give him equal privileges, when his turn came.\n\n\"I'll tell you, frankly, why I'm here,\" Socker said. \"I want you to do\nme a favor.\" He gave me that ministerial look--the beaming meekness of\na man who is never denied a favor.\n\n\"Like what?\"\n\nIt dashed him a trifle. \"Well, Phil--\" (old friend of dad, I reminded\nmyself) \"I don't suppose you've been in a church for a long time.\"\n\n\"Not to my knowledge.\"\n\nThat got him again. \"And I don't suppose you've ever been in a\nchurch like mine. Don't get the idea I'm about to ask you over to\nhear me preach. A preacher like yourself--you see, I've read your\nbooks--wouldn't be much interested in the rhetorical efforts of a chap\nlike me.\" He was a little nervous, now, and actually a shade humble.\n\"What I'm driving at is this. We've got a young people's society that\nhas thrown doctrine out the window--not caring how much stained glass\nbroke--and is trying to get some meaning out of religion by putting\nsome new meaning in it.\"\n\n\"Sounds trenchant.\"\n\n\"I want you to come over, Phil, and talk to my young people. They're\nreaders of yours. We've discussed your books at meetings--gone through\nthem chapter by chapter--had some real battles! It's our feeling that,\nat bottom, you're as earnest a Believer as any of the rest of us. I've\nsprung some surprises on my young folks--Phil--but springing you would\nreally rock them.\"\n\nThe Buick salesman touch.\n\nI told him--as nicely as I could--about never making speeches, and why.\nIt's always embarrassing.\n\nHe covered up his very annoyed disappointment and decided all I needed\nwas a working-over. He began this by ignoring the invitation--after a\nlittle more pressure got him nowhere. He talked about his church and\nthe young people and their outlook:\n\n\"You'd be interested in learning what's going on among religious\nliberals, Phil. In fact, you owe it to yourself to find out! And your\nwriting shows you don't know! Dogma has simply gone overboard--and\nI mean overboard. We're studying psychology as hard as you are. We\ntake up a book like the late Liebman's _Peace of Mind_--and learn to\nunderstand it. Hell-fire and damnation--original sin--that sort of\nrubbish--is out. We'll listen to a communist over there as attentively\nas to a priest. We believe Christ would have made the fair distribution\nof goods His business--if He were alive now. We sit around and air\nsex problems as frankly as the professors. Use their lingo. We don't\nbelieve religion ought to be a lifelong way of pain and hardship and\nself-torment and sorrow--\"\n\nI'd been thinking about the Law of Opposites. What he was saying, I'd\nsaid, myself, in some instances. But not all. Some of it made me a\nlittle sick. I tried to interrupt but he barged ahead:\n\n\"To us, religion is a practical attitude and a source of _joie de\nvivre_--or it's mistaken. We've got a gymnasium in my church and we\nhold weekly dances and weekly bingo games there. When we talk about the\nMaster--we talk about a Man who is our Friend--not an Oriental mystic\nwho left His disciples puzzled by contradictory advice. If you can't\nsee your way clear to visiting with us--at this time--you certainly\nought to be able to see the value of catching up with the status of\nmodern Christianity--\"\n\n\"There are a couple of points that worry me,\" I said.\n\n\"Come and thresh them out with us!\"\n\n\"I don't imagine Jesus would have been interested in communism, for\nexample.\"\n\n\"Because it's antagonistic to orthodox religion? Wasn't He an\nantagonist of orthodoxy, Himself?\"\n\n\"The logic escapes me, there. If I'm not mistaken, Jesus was\nexclusively concerned with the inner world. He was completely\nantimaterialist. Social systems were superficial to Him. He was agin\nthe obsessive materialism of Near East capitalists two thousand years\nago--and I strongly suspect He would see dialectical materialism as a\nmere spread of that unilateral pall over the conscious minds of the\nmasses.\"\n\n\"Superb! Come over and tell us that!\"\n\n\"You're supposed to know it, already,\" I answered. \"And to be teaching\nit. Besides, I am a firm believer in Original Sin.\"\n\n\"_What!_\"\n\nThe sloe gin and my iced coffee arrived.\n\nHe offered to pay--a unique point--clumsy, but pleasant.\n\nGeorge looked him over twice. George had never seen a clergyman in my\nhaunts, except my father, whom he knew.\n\n\"I believe in Original Sin,\" I said, when George went and when the\nparson had taken a cool, deep pull, \"since I believe every religion is\nthe attempt, the compulsive and unconscious attempt, to make a schemata\nof instincts that will be palpable to the sense perceptions of human\npersonality--and since I also believe that religions have generally\nfailed in that function--causing the sin.\"\n\n\"Failed how?\"\n\n\"Failed by being turned to the support of the ego.\"\n\n\"But we'd agree with you, there!\"\n\n\"So I must conclude there is some basic error in the entire religious\nphenomenon. Believing that religions express a genuine psychological\ncompulsion--a need to discover the inner pattern of behavior, the inner\ndesign of consciousness--but observing that the orthodox patterns\noffered so far have led only to a succession of material advances that\nended in social collapse--I must conclude that there is some _human_\nerror which repeats itself down the millenniums. Some terribly deep\nperversion of Nature that at first lets man advance a little--then\nthrows him back nearly the whole distance--gets him going once\nmore with a newer, 'truer' religion--and so on, ad infinitum. This\nperversion is what I call Original Sin.\"\n\n\"Pretty abstract,\" he said.\n\n\"Not at all. Here's the Sin. Religions have been used not so much\nas formulations for guidance as to convince their various Believers\nthat man is, himself, godlike, wherefore God. Not an animal with a\nfresh neurological awareness. Not a beast of the field, who knows\nit and who therefore knows that what goes on inside beasts is\nnothing to sneer at. But God Almighty, personified according to His\nself-personifications of Zeus, Amon-Ra, the Prophets, Jehovah, or\nWho-not. God Almighty--destined to live forever with all the numerous\nGods-Almighties--in the Elysian Fields, Nirvana, or Wherever. You\nfollow me?\"\n\n\"I think so.\"\n\n\"You don't. Let's try it again. Imagine a band of apes that developed\nself-awareness. Apes that suddenly saw themselves _as selves_. Imagine\nthose apes interpreting the new cortical phenomenon not as a fresh\nand fascinating development amongst animals--but as evidence of their\nmetamorphosis from the flesh to something Higher. They don't know\nwhat, exactly. They work out What in a series of mythologies and\nreligions. 'What' turns out, in our era, to be Sons of God, Brothers in\nChrist, Redeemed Eternally by Grace. That's where they are today. Not\nhumble animals, carrying on the business of Evolution for species yet\nunguessed. They feel sure (in Christ) that they are the perfect biology\nright now. They sit at the end of an age-old endeavor to acquire that\nseeming. An endeavor which has shucked off or hidden every aspect of\nanimal reality it can.\"\n\nHe was shaking his head. \"I feel puzzled--\"\n\n\"The use of religions, in effect, has been to conceal and deny the\nanimal nature of man. That is perverse. Man eats--a simple, animal\nactivity. How many religious rituals--turned into social functions in\nhow many cases--could you list, all of which were designed to give a\nnonanimal cast to eating? Hundreds?\"\n\n\"I suppose you mean feasts and fasts and such?\"\n\n\"Food taboos, food rituals, food symbols--like your bread and\nwine--religious dietary laws. Sure. Man--like the beasts--must eat.\nBut he has tried ten thousand tricks to make it seem nonanimal, or\n'godlike.' Now. Consider sex--another human function which is exactly\nlike its animal counterpart. Here there is less exigency than in\neating--more time-lag for ritual and style. Man went passionately into\nthe business of developing systems which would conceal the animal and\ninstinctual nature of sexuality and lend to it the superior qualities\nof his various gods, religions, his self-glorifying self-images.\"\n\n\"I think I begin to see--\"\n\n\"Exactly. By now--we dwell amid a species that is twenty or thirty\nor forty thousand years away from the contemplation of its instincts\nas germane to animal instincts. The distance in time is matched by\ncountless steps in illusion. It is hardly possible for a man to think\nof himself as an animal in the true sense, any more. It is all but\nimpossible for him to feel, to experience, his animal fact. And--since\nI believe instinct seen locally in time and space is as 'good' as it is\n'evil'--and that, in sum, it is _all good_--I find this long attempt to\ntranslate natural instincts into ridiculous and unnatural dogmas and\ngod-images--is a very sad mistake. A very great sin--the 'original' sin\nof assuming a superiority toward terrestrial, psychological, and cosmic\nNature.\n\n\"Each new religion may be--usually is--an 'improvement' in some\nway upon its discarded or waning predecessor. But each is, always,\nfounded on the premise that man is 'above' that which works within\nhim and occurs around him. So, in the end, even though intelligent\nreligious premises may benefit humanity in many ways--for instance,\nthe search for truth inspired by Jesus, led haltingly to the birth\nof the scientific method--the fundamental premise is _always false_\nand the benefits are finally fouled by the basic blunder. Instinct\nfrustrated by the delusions of Believers of all sorts _has_ to go into\nautonomous operation on the multitudes, simply because they deny and\nrepress instinct until this society or that--and all of them--fails to\nmeet their instinctual needs. And instinct, acting in violent fashion,\nupon such blind, willful repudiators of necessary process--always\nbrings calamity. It _has_ to wipe out or at least reduce each new\naggregate of the self-deceived. So another civilization topples. Then\nanother creed arises and we begin again. Until we get straightened\nout about _what instinct is_--get, so to speak, a real picture of our\ninner selves, of what it is in us that we have made into all gods and\ntheology--a picture congruent with such truths as we _can_ see and\n_can_ admit--we're bound to operate in this roller-coaster fashion.\"\n\n\"In other words, your Original Sin is the church itself!\" He sounded\ndisturbed.\n\n\"It's--any ism. Any person or group with sure-fire dogmas that you have\nto accept on faith--as offering ends justifying physical means and\npsychological means that are illogical, unethical, unreasonable, that\nfail to take into account the innate facts of our animal instinct, that\nexclude valid opposites to their tenets, and so on.\"\n\n\"And you think God is what might be called the _cause_ in instinct?\"\n\n\"The cause, the pattern, the existence of it in animals and man,\nthe physical laws and forms of the universe, and the instincts of\nliving things that match those laws and forms. What's the difference\nbetween the laws of instinct--the great drives of life taken with\nthe opposed drives that balance them and the harmony possible in a\nperson who understands these--and other laws? The attraction and\nrepulsion of electrical energy, for instance? We do not regard _them_\nas 'mutually exclusive.' What are you going to say about a question\nlike Schrodinger's? He shows that one fragment of one atom hitting\nanother atom in a gene will change the nature of the resulting being.\nI'd add that the instincts may change, too. Schrodinger shows you that\nwhat we know of energy lies at the heart of what we know of form. You\ncan also see that form lies at the heart of what we know of behavior\nand of consciousness. When they understand the laws of the energy in\natoms--they'll probably have a brand-new parallel, like that of other\nnatural laws, for instinctual laws. They may even have a potential new\ninsight into instinct. For how can anybody who notices the perfect\ninstinctual pattern that corresponds with every living form, and who\nsees these forms evolving in awareness down the aeons, doubt that the\nuniverse has purpose or wonder what its purpose is? Unfortunately, in\nthis putrid day and age, new discoveries in many fields are military\nsecrets--so we, the people, won't be told them.\"\n\n\"You sound extremely bitter about that.\"\n\n\"Bitter? Yes, I'm bitter, in a way. All my life I've devoted myself\nto following the inquiry into the nature of Nature. This pursuit has\nled me--by way of psychology--into finding out a great deal about\nwhat is popularly called the nature of God. But now, knowledge at\nthe source is restricted, classified, forbidden, secret--to protect\nthe damned atom bomb. My government, as a security measure, has cut\noff my inquiry into God, my power to extend my own religion, my\nequivalent of your faith, my access to truth. Perhaps I'd never even\nmanage to persuade anybody that the time has come to connect instinct\nand energy by theory. But the _right_ that I hold most valuable has\nbeen taken from me. And from you. And from everybody--if they stopped\nto think. Freedom--that precious necessity--is _actually_ freedom\nfor the mind. There is no other pure liberty. All other freedoms\nstem from intellectual freedom--but all others are qualified by the\nmaterial, social, political, and spiritual desires of people. What we\ncall liberty in America is the right to know and to change: to extend\nor limit this liberty for the sake of that advantage or because of\nthat prejudice--and then to learn better and shift the position once\nagain--and so on forever. That is all there is to liberty insofar as it\nconcerns behavior. But when the behavior of the mind is circumscribed,\nliberty is dead in its one absolute sense. It is dead today. We live\nin a midnight imposed by fear--a time like all dark ages. Truth and\nlearning have gone underground. I am forbidden to know any more. What I\nthink might be centuries in advance of what common people are thinking.\nIt is still--at least potentially--obsolete, or inadequate, in relation\nto what other men may know--that I am not allowed by my government to\nfind out. Wouldn't you be bitter--or sad--if your church were shut up\nby the Congress, if you were forbidden to learn more about your God,\nand if you were obliged to confine even your thinking to bootlegged\nguesses?\"\n\n\"It's a pretty remote argument,\" he said.\n\n\"Is it? Remote to destroy the source of freedom?\"\n\n\"Would you have us tell the Soviets how to make a bomb?\"\n\n\"Is that the question? They know how! You have been told and told\nand told that they know how and have known since the Smythe Report\nappeared. And even that's not the point. When it became evident that\nthe people of the United States faced the alternatives of maintaining\nthe freedom of knowledge--at the risk of atomic conflict--or of\ndestroying liberty at the source to gain the dubious advantage of a few\nyears' time--the people chose the phony safety of secrecy for a mere\nunknowable dozens of months. They were too dumb to see they had sold\ntheir birthright.\"\n\n\"What would you have done?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"The hell with it! If we had understood science and if we\nhad believed in freedom we would have been willing, the minute the\nproblem appeared, to fight for both--because they're one. We would\nnot have permitted any bleak tyranny to interfere with the world-wide\ncourse of knowledge and the existence of our freedom.\"\n\n\"You're asking a good deal.\"\n\n\"I ask nothing. I merely point out that the fear of holocaust has been\nmade permanent by our fearful failure to act. Freedom throttled will\nbe difficult to revive. The habit of intellectual tyranny is already\nseeping into the pores of a world destined to be more panicky each year\nuntil either freedom of knowledge is restored or the far more likely\nchaos ensues. After chaos will come the regimentation, by opportunists,\nof a world that will have lost its grip on liberty. We bought a little\ntime at the cost of all the values our ancestors piled up for us in the\nages. It is a cheapskate civilization.\"\n\nThe Reverend Socker Melton suddenly chuckled. He had, in the midst of\nat least mild anxiety, hit on some straw, some philosophical prop.\n\"Don't take it so hard! You sound as if you felt responsible for all\nthe woes of man!\"\n\n\"Don't you?\"\n\n\"Good Lord! Certainly not!\"\n\n\"You are a man, though.\"\n\n\"Just one man.\"\n\n\"Just one. But if you had access to instinct, you might realize that\neach one, to the degree he is aware, is all men.\"\n\n\"A cold, distant, impersonal idea, I must say!\"\n\n\"The hell it is! The idea I'm putting forward involves being and acting\nwhat instinct orders in us--and the constant sense of that process. It\nrelates me to every man--to every king and statesman and politician\nand movie queen and carpenter and garbage man--to every creature that\nwalks and flies and swims and crawls--and to the sea, the setting\nsun, the stars. I see them all and I find in them the response that\nrises from being related to them. I consider them in my cortex--but\nmy God consists also in _feeling_ them. I do not stumble about in\nschisms and dichotomies. An infinite number of aspects of life which\nseem antithetical to most people seem merely two manifestations of one\nawareness to me. You're the kind of fellow, reverend, I bet, who goes\naround saying, like Will Rogers, that you never met a man you didn't\nlike. I can buy that--and still know, besides, I never met a man I did\nlike altogether, including me. I can say, there was never a moment when\nI altogether liked myself, or disliked. Warm sentiments pervade my\ncoldest thoughts. Heaven and hell are here in this one room.\n\n\"There--you see--we get back to the original sin, again: the static\nstandards that must be maintained if the ego is to be kept intact.\n_This_ is evil--_that_ is good; he is saved--she is damned; my opinion\nis right--yours is wrong; my faith makes me perfect and whole--yours,\nmeaning all the other faiths on earth, is imperfect and fragmentary at\nbest. For why? Simply because my faith is mine. Me, me, me. I, I, I.\nThat is what happens--that is the tragifarce--of taking instinct away\nfrom the brain and being entire, and investing the gigantic force of it\nin the little front lobes. From then on--'I have faith--and I, alone,\nam right. I, alone, am God.'\n\n\"Well, in my book, I am God, padre, and so are you, and so are all\nthe people on the street down there, and so is the heat wave, and so\nare scorpions and rattlesnakes and botuli bacilli, and so are the\nintergalactic clouds. _One thing._ It is not necessary for me to\nelevate myself above these--to commit original sin by defining that\nunity in terms of my fatuous self-admiration. I do not have to give\nmy days, my doings and my dreams to the establishment of the general\nillusion that I am no animal--whether by fasts or feasts, by fish on\nFriday or by Easter celebrations, by shutting the door when I tend my\nbody, and especially, dominie, I do not have to pretend the procreative\nurge in me is superior to that same urge in cosmos--by delimiting it,\nstylizing it, codifying it, and hiding it wherever and whenever it\nmust have expression. Chastity, celibacy, virginity, purity--these are\nthe lowest terms of original sin. These condemn the animal to a vile\npsychological and social beastliness by forcing him to pretend he is\nnot the unashamed pure animal that he is.\"\n\n\"You want free love--promiscuity--no moral ethic--\"\n\n\"Nonsense! I want to build our sex behavior around what is learned to\nbe true nature of man--to establish an aesthetic from instinct--not\nfrom the instinct-perverting demands of ego and superego.'\n\n\"And what would it be?\"\n\n\"Loving, for a start.\"\n\nHe moved impatiently. \"Spiritual love--\"\n\n\"I mean the same. What spiritual love has man today? What friendliness\ntoward other men? What regard for Nature? Man fears. Man hates. And as\nto Nature--he is the hostile parasite on the whole of it, and calls\nhimself its conqueror. Let him conquer his ego--and then--if he should\nprove to be--in some almost unimaginable era of clean passion--capable\nof as wide a variety of ways of loving as he is capable of simulating\nand extending the other faculties of other species--he will have to\nbuild his aesthetics around that. Love takes two people. If neither is\ninjured, made less, turned hateful, rendered afraid--if the purposes\nof instinct, become aware and consciously directed, are not finally\nfrustrated--no specific behavior will offend this dim-seen Nature.\nShameless awareness lies far nearer to a way for mankind to grow loving\nthan any so-called love of a Jesus which requires a man to think he\nis impure, vile, inevitably born a sinner, inferior physically to all\nother living things in Eden's Garden--and this, so he may publicly\nproclaim himself and secretly imagine himself to be their 'spiritual'\nsuperior. Isn't that clear?\"\n\n\"Sometimes I follow you--sometimes not.\"\n\n\"Look at it this way. You say you've chucked out heaven and hell--or\nhell, anyhow--you modern religionists. I say, you cannot do so. I\nsay--if your God is a god of what you consider pure goodness--you\nhave to have a devil to balance Him. I say that all the saints and\nholy men and all the simple, human people who have managed, by one\nreligion or another, to get some sense of the integration of their\ninstincts, have done it because the religions did give them a semantic\nfor instinct--a heaven-hell formulation of their nonverbal impulses--a\nyang-and-yin for Christianity, so to speak--or a Jehovah-Satan for\nTaoism. Take that away--and you take away all opportunity for the\nreligious--the instinctual--experience. You produce a bunch of gassy\nbounders who--since hellishness is everywhere but since they've\ndiscarded hell--confuse the goodness of the species with goods, good\nhealth, prosperity, long life--things that may be possible devils for\nthe species. They lose sight of the inwardness of the nongood and see\nevil as a material fact, entirely. Modern devil-seekers--men like\nSheen, like Niebuhr--are closer to the mechanics of human nature than\nthese idiot modern congregations that throw out Satan and his kingdom\nand as a result are condemned to evil behavior because they have made\nthemselves blind to evil's source. Closer--but still not very damn\nclose.\"\n\n\"What, then, is your criterion of good and evil?\"\n\n\"I could give you dozens. I give you a sample. When you consider what\nyou are doing, or what any man does, or any group of men--ask yourself\nwhether that particular deed will benefit or injure the chances of\nfuture generations to evolve toward increased consciousness.\"\n\n\"Great heavens, man--most _preachers_ wouldn't be able to decide a\nquestion like that! Let alone plain folks!\"\n\n\"Sure. Did I say that preachers--let alone plain folks--or any handful\nof contemporary men--knew what they were doing? Or why? Or what anybody\nelse was doing? They don't know. So they go on by instinct--the\nstatistical sweep of impulses that lop off nations as readily as the\nwind lops trees. I said we _could_ know. I said we weren't trying.\nInstinct is the immortal property--the urge in behalf of the future.\nAnts are doing what they can for ants, bees for bees, fish for\nfish--without much individual hesitation. But not men for men. Men\ntoday are trying either to get themselves into heaven, or to make a\nmint, or just to get by, as individuals. The future, to most men, means\ntheir own here--or their reward in heaven. To instinct, the future\nmeans the future of awareness, and men are but its most conspicuous\nexponents here and now. If we began to plan life for our progeny--what\na world!\"\n\nI was getting sick of the guy. Sick, rather, of myself--my endless\nefforts to put a simple idea in some form that would perfuse skulls\nhardened against it--sometimes even by what they imagined to be\nopen-mindedness. \"Look. You believe, don't you, that you could sit down\nand write out a mode of behavior satisfactory for man to the end of\ntime?\"\n\n\"I could take a crack at it,\" he said.\n\n\"Well--I don't. I believe that future men should be left free to make\nup their minds without consulting any bulls and fiats from me. I get\nsome sense of orientation, a _raison d'\u00eatre_, from giving thought to\nthe rights of the species now and to come. Not saving adult souls for\npresent bliss--or spiritual cradle-snatching, either--but forwarding\nthe whole, rolling business of biology on this sin-drenched planet, is\nthe fun--for me.\"\n\n\"You are totally pessimistic about the present scene, apparently.\"\n\nI looked out the window. It was getting on toward sunset. \"Excepting\nfor a few physical technologies--are we so different from our human\npredecessors? Crueler, it may be. And weaker physically, perhaps.\nOtherwise--not any different. And has there ever been a time in\nour past history when optimism for even one era or one society was\nwarranted? History says not--the record. It is hardly an encouraging\nfact.\"\n\n\"No hope, then? No fringe of lining on the cloud--?\"\n\n\"I didn't say that. The record has at least--continued. I hardly expect\nmankind to be blotted out. I just don't have a very high opinion of\nman's present works in relation to what he really is, desperately\nneeds, and someday could be. There are compensations. I give you one.\nWe won't be missed.\"\n\nHe began putting on his dickey. It plastered itself against his sodden\nundershirt. He ran his thick fingers around his collar.\n\n\"You're a hard person, Phil.\"\n\n\"I am a very gentle guy, Socker. The men of the earth are hard. They\nhave confused another instinct here--and think to be hard is estimable.\"\n\n\"Somehow, I believe you're all wrong.\"\n\n\"Of course. So much of what I think is the opposite of what you do. And\nthen--I believe a lot that Jesus said. While you don't believe any of\nit at all.\"\n\nHe flushed. \"I'm not sure I'd want you to talk to my young people.\"\n\n\"You relieve me. And you've been very decent to listen--yourself.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" he said, fairly jovially, now that he was about to be gone, \"I\nlisten to them all. Crackpots, nuts, psychiatrists, anybody--\"\n\n\"Listen to yourself, once.\"\n\nSuddenly he was sore. \"Who in hell do you think you are?\"\n\n\"Somebody,\" I answered, \"whose religion doesn't insist it knows all\nabout all truth for all people for all time. Somebody who isn't a\nstuck-up, luxury-struck, fatuous, patronizing jerk in a black vest\nwho carries around God's credit card in his hip pocket and keeps in\nthe collection-plate business by holding smut sessions in the church\ngymnasium. Now, for God's sake, get out of here and let me work.\"\n\nHe stood at the door. He smiled again. \"I'm sorry for you, Phil. Truly\nsorry. You're a brave man--in a way--and so arrogantly blind.\"\n\n\"Sure. We all are.\"\n\n\"Do me one favor?\"\n\n\"Do me one. Cross the hall--poke the bell--\"\n\n\"Pray.\"\n\n\"You pray. Wear holes in the sky. Tell God you're coming, soon. And\ntell Him I am, too, while you're at it. See you there!\"\n\nWhen he was gone, I felt washed out.\n\nWhy had I bothered to try something that couldn't come off? Didn't\nI know the work I'd done--the hells I'd gone through to get my\nInkling--would never tempt that fat bastard past the first six steps of\na million rugged miles?\n\n Houses on sand\n paper roofs\n putty pillars\n no brains\n\nWhat is conscience but fealty to truth?\n\nWhat man can have good conscience if his beliefs conceal the smallest\ntruth--or especially if they conceal himself from himself?\n\nWith honesty toward science--and toward the inner sciences--man and\nethic are one.\n\nEthos is, indeed, what man has, and is.\n\nCome off it, Wylie! The serial!\n\n\n4\n\nBut I couldn't work, any longer.\n\nI filled my tub, instead, with the coolest water in the tap.\n\n_You_ pray.\n\nHe would, too.\n\nA lugubrious joke uttered itself within me.\n\nFather, bring insight to this sincerely mistaken man--\n\n(Taking the words out of my mouth: you right--me wrong)\n\nOr,\n\nSpare us the ineffable harm of the intellectual, the Antichrist--\n\n(All who oppose us oppose Jesus--but didn't He say, In my house are\nmany mansions?)\n\n Prince of Peace!\n (Peace, in a pig's eye.)\n A mighty fortress.\n Onward, Christian soldiers.\n The Son of God Goes Forth to War.\n He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible\n swift sword--\n All the clayfaces, upturned to the ceramic excellence\n of the dominie\n Let us pray:\n Father, forgive them--\n The hypocrites!\n\nPerhaps some--the widow kneeling in the stained-glass\neffulgence--clutching her mite--debating love against appetite--a\npossibly hungrier widow against bread and her own belly--she might see\nGod there--\n\nOur organ cost thirty-six thousand dollars and has five keyboards\n\nGod,\n\nwe migrants, traveling with galaxy, sun, slogging sphere, geological\nbudge of continent, movement of races, American transportation, feet,\n\n we\n on our journey-forever in time-space\n are sure as hell, unmistakably, definitely--as the saying goes--\n en route.\n Hence,\n I deem the status quo of ego\n unimaginative.\n Is this a sin?\n A sin to hunger for more Light?\n Or is it\n goodness\n\nto reject the surrounding brilliance--call it The Dark--in order to\nmake personal hay with the pewee flashlight of Episcopalianism.\n\n Judge not that ye be not judged, Wylie, He said.\n Then shall I sit\n like a Buchmanite on the john\n waiting for guidance?\n And there shall be laughter in heaven\n They omit that chapter.\n Anger is their meat:\n Gabriel's pinfeathers, torn out by handfuls.\n Pluck yourself a quill, pal.\n Make yourself a pen from a seraphim.\n Remind them they should enjoy it.\n Nature, that's all, simply telling us to fall\n In love.\n And that's why Chinks do it--\n Japs do it--\n\nI got out of the tub, scattering water, and turned the radio loud.\n\n Let me communicate again in the idiom of man--\n my conceit has suddenly tired me out.\n I lay\n forlornly in the water, the water browned off by rust\n in the\n Astolat's pipes, the waters of life, but not much left.\n Sadness encompassed me.\n The sadness of little children dying by merely growing\n up\n\n  of mature men turning childish again\n  of American trees\n  of the disinherited\n   the stood-up\n   the disappointed\n   the deserted\n   the uncomprehended\n   of the walking wounded\n I hate to see\n that evening sun go down\n The love songs of the world are sad.\n\nThe old English ballads quaintly drone--murder and rue.\n\nGypsy violins have wet the eyes of European centuries.\n\nItalians shake their opera houses with love's grief.\n\nDon Juan dies young--and Romeo grows old.\n\nThe Hindu on his fetid riverbank throbs to the guillotine moon.\n\nThe damsel in Xanadu may be different--it doesn't go on to say.\n\nBut--\n\nFrankie shot Johnny.\n\nWe Americans have had to borrow rue from our slaves; they have enough,\nand to spare\n\nWe call it blues--and the origin's appropriate to us.\n\nThe child in his cradle listens to locomotives talking themselves up\nthe long grades, bidding the counties farewell in the night.\n\nOurs is a civilization of pistons, motors turning, electrons peppering\nfilaments into light. We are\n\n a racy people.\n We got rhythm.\n\nThe tempo of our love and the momentum of our woe are one.\n\nOur exultation soars with edifices that scrape the sky--then falters\nunderground where we have iron rivers to carry the people home--and\nthere is no home when they get there but only the percussant streets\nagain, the shooting tabernacles, the radiance, the tumult in time.\n\n We sleep.\n Morning comes.\n\nIn the mammoth sunshine of our cities we remember our blues the way the\nslaves remember.\n\n No heart, no intellect, but we got rhythm!\n Look at the towers!\n Look at the sky--that's blue, too, baby!\n\nThe streets are straight, the blocks are square, the intersections\nregular. The shadows are geometry--they dive one hundred stories. It\nis a gameboard, ruled and sharp by transit here and plummet there,\nconcrete and rectilinear.\n\n This\n we call traffic.\n It is the way we move on the board.\n\nTrucks and taxis playing fast chess to the beat of the\nChristmas-colored signals. We are a great, free, democratic people\nwhose trains run approximately on time. In this civilization,\neight-o'clock children make skip-ropes of rainbows and slide down\nthe balustrades of sunbeams. One contraction of our chamber of\ncommerce ventricle will thrust ten thousand tons of ore from Duluth to\nPittsburgh.\n\nWe rate fireflies in kilowatts.\n\nBut we hate to see the evening sun go down.\n\nPaul Bunyan's ox was blue. So--our hills, the evening in our\nthoroughfares, our dying lips.\n\nHence, when we talk about rue in these United States, brother, we do it\nin brass! We put\n\npistons and kilowatts in our lament, grief, sorrow, lostness!\n\nWe take a breath of our American air and we-the-people burst.\n\nThat's blues!\n\nThe mood would have led to God knows what charade in the auditorium\nof my senses--the multitude of watching, listening \"mes\" reacting in\nall their various ways at once; it might have become a ululation you\ncould have heard on Mars--or frozen as if the head of Medusa had come\non stage--or, by that third unanimity, blazed into laughter, revolted\necstasy at ecstasy itself.\n\n The singing woman stopped.\n There was a knock.\n\nI yelled, \"Come in!\" relieved--thinking it might be Paul.\n\nFor more than an hour, now, worry over him had cankered me.\n\n(Do you imagine I tell you all that happens, here? I nearly would if I\ncould--it is not that. But the compendium of the eighteen simultaneous\ntrains of consciousness (the intrications and alternations and separate\nchains that run in a man's mind and that you could see in your own if\nyou tried) would, in a weekend fill up all the books a man might read\nin his life. I give you hardly the essence, my friend--but only a\nsample of the aggregate--a biopsy of its own sort.)\n\nA knock, then.\n\nI realized it was the door in the bedroom.\n\n\"May I come in?\" Yvonne asked.\n\n\"Certainly.\"\n\n\"Your radio's positively shaking the building!\"\n\n\"Turn it down. I hope you won't mind I'm in here--slightly naked.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" I couldn't see her, or she, me. The rooms waited because she had\nstopped. \"_Slightly!_\"\n\n\"Barely, if you prefer. Barely nude. Covered in a meager depth with\nrusty water. Concealed in soapy murk, besides. And, in addition,\nprotected by scum. It's hard water, you know--Croton.\"\n\nPresently the radio went down and out--a moron throttled in midspiel.\n\"I'll sit in here,\" she said.\n\n\"Any place you like.\"\n\n\"I'll bet! I'll bet if you heard me coming--you'd grab the shower\ncurtain--\"\n\n\"Flowers for tonight?\"\n\n\"You certainly have a long, mean memory, Philip Wylie! So that's just\nwhat I do bet!\" She was approaching. She exclaimed, \"What do you\nmean--soapsuds?\"\n\n\"An invention for the Puritan mind. A burlesque. After all--!\"\n\n\"After all--what?\"\n\n\"In a better world--but skip it.\"\n\nShe did. \"You certainly know how to upset people,\" she said.\n\n\"Now what?\"\n\n\"After lunch--I phoned Gwen--to come over this evening.\"\n\n\"So?\"\n\n\"And after that--I began to feel jittery.\"\n\n\"And now?\"\n\n\"I came over here.\"\n\n\"To ask me how to feel? Ye Gods! I recommended having your own\nfeelings--and I thought you were catching on.\"\n\nShe was wearing a faintly rose-pink frock of some shiny, translucent\nmaterial. You could see the garments beneath--you were supposed to see.\nThere were two--and the lace hem of the lower one showed below the\nblush of her dress--as it was supposed to show. She looked like a kid.\n\n\"I've got too many feelings at once.\" She walked toward the window,\nwhere I could now see her only by leaning a little. \"I almost called\nRol this afternoon.\"\n\nI said nothing.\n\n\"Did you hear me?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Why didn't you?\"\n\n\"Because I wanted to see Gwen again. Once more, anyway.\"\n\n\"Suppose she couldn't have come?\"\n\n\"That's unkind of you!\"\n\n\"Would a friend have done as well?\"\n\nShe didn't answer for so long that I leaned out again. She was swinging\nthe cord of the window blind. The last debilitated glow in the sky made\nher look like a flower at twilight--like a single tinted object in a\nblack-and-white photograph of a room. She caught sight of me.\n\n\"Maybe even better,\" she said falteringly. \"What sort of person am I!\"\n\n\"The sort that a person is, when a person begins finding out what sort.\"\n\n\"But not the final discovery?\" The turn and set of her head was eager.\nI couldn't see her eyes.\n\n\"Who is?\"\n\n\"You mean--you think everybody--?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" I said, swirling the water around. \"Everybody. Most--when\nthey're young. Most grow out of it. Some--hardly notice it. Some have\na minor case of it all their lives. To others--it's an intermittent\nhint--a leftover that crops up as a suggestion, not a fact. Lots--are\ncarried off stage for good by it. The great majority insist they have\nno such feelings--never could and never did and never will. The result\nof that--\"\n\n\"Is what?\"\n\n\"Look out the window and see the crummy mess yourself, honey! If you'll\ntoss me my dressing gown--from the closet--\"\n\n\"I'm scared,\" she said, when I came into the sitting room.\n\nI kissed her once.\n\nShe said, \"Again.\"\n\nSo I really kissed her.\n\nShe stepped away, afterwhile. \"I'm not so scared now.\"\n\n\"It's good for you to be.\"\n\n\"Why is it?\"\n\n\"Because you so seldom knew you were. You spent your time trying to\nfrighten other people--instead of knowing.\"\n\n\"Not frighten. Impress, maybe--\"\n\n\"Another word for the same dirty deed: convince them of your inherent\nand cultivated superiority. Whenever people achieve that--they also\nconvince others of their relative inferiority. And when that conviction\ncomes from a false estimate of the situation--believe me, it's\nupsetting. Frightening is the realer word.\"\n\n\"Which implies that I'm not superior to anybody in any way.\"\n\n\"Check.\"\n\nShe stood there, looking at me through the murk. \"Not even--prettier?\"\n\n\"What's prettiness? The power to attract. If you were a genuine,\nall-around, Grade-A woman--you'd have the power to attract, without\ntrying to impress a soul. As a pretty girl--you're not superior to a\nhundred thousand others--and inferior to tens of thousands.\"\n\n\"At least,\" she murmured, \"I'm trying.\"\n\n\"Are you?\"\n\n\"Am I not?\"\n\n\"Who can really tell but you? For all I know, Yvonne, you may just be\nindulging in some new paroxysm of the spoiled rich matron.\"\n\n\"I did want to call Rol, though.\"\n\n\"Sure. When you had the jitters. Flight, maybe.\"\n\n\"Then do you think I ought to wallow in myself?\"\n\n\"It's your word--wallow.\"\n\nShe was silent for quite a while. Finally she drew a breath and\nstretched voluptuously. \"Did you ever feel as if you'd like to seduce\neverybody you saw?\"\n\n\"Just the good-looking women.\"\n\n\"Are you trying to impress me--now?\"\n\nI laughed. \"Guess so.\"\n\n\"Couldn't I begin with you?\"\n\nI shook my head. \"You don't know yourself well enough to suit me, at\nthe moment. And--anyway--I'm booked.\"\n\n\"A date!\"\n\n\"A wife.\"\n\nShe considered that at length, too. \"Gwen said last night she knew from\nthe minute she saw you that you wanted company, but not particularly\na pretty girl. Just a person. She said she told you all those things\nabout herself, hoping--\"\n\n\"They had their little effect,\" I reminded Yvonne.\n\n\"Your Ricky,\" she answered, \"must be some gal.\"\n\n\"She's my gal--which makes her some gal to me.\"\n\nThe door knocked again--the front door, this time.\n\nIt was a box of flowers--yellow roses, again.\n\nFor a minute I thought the manager had slipped up.\n\nThere wasn't any card.\n\nThen I knew.\n\nThat, I thought, was what it meant: a perception of the nature of other\npeople.\n\nFlowers are for the living, and I'm fond of yellow roses.\n\nThey'd be no use to me, dead. So I had these now. To remind me that\nthe idea of flowers for the living, though seldom put in practice,\ndescribes the immortal essence.\n\nExcept for taking Paul off my back awhile, there wasn't anything else\nthat Dave could do or say. But this, he did and said.\n\nI stood there, rooted with the comprehension.\n\nYvonne fumbled womanishly through the stems.\n\n\"Who sent them?\"\n\n\"A guy I know.\"\n\nShe gasped. \"Guy!\"\n\n\"It's the grown-up manifestation.\"\n\n\"Manifestation of what?\"\n\n\"Put them in water while I get dressed,\" I said. \"Of something you\nmight learn--someday.\"\n\n\n5\n\nWe had dinner together in the Knight's Bar.\n\nShe with one white orchid.\n\nJay received us with just the right look of appreciation for her--just\nthe right glimmer for me. He was sorry such things happened, but he\nadmired my taste.\n\nThe hotel staff, I knew, was by now vigorously discussing the matter.\nThe girls who ran the elevators, the telephone girls, the room-service\ncheckers, the cashiers, the waiters, the bellboys. Pros and cons:\n\nHe's an artist--and they're different. She's just another of those\nrich wives on the make. I bet you wish you were one, yourself, you\nhypocrite! Poor Mrs. Wylie! She's a nice, quiet girl and I'll bet he\nswept her off her feet--because that's what newspapermen and writers\nall are: chasers. Those quiet ones knock over more husbands than all\nthe flashy jobs in town! We all do, if we get a chance. I don't blame\neither of them. I think both of them are stinkers. Whose business is\nit?\n\nUp with the dishes, down with the cars, in with the stapler, out with\nthe phone plugs--and on and on while typewriters paused and adding\nmachines stood briefly still. Romance or scandal--take your choice.\nAnd never a sign to me but Jay's gleam--never a future syllable to\nRicky: a conspiracy of employed custom, reinforced by a small world of\nreciprocal liking.\n\nI wondered what they'd think if they knew the truth.\n\nBut, then, I always wonder that.\n\nI'm the silly jackass who does.\n\nLook--waiters, busboys, and you over there in the cage with the pointed\nauburn haircut and the long eyelashes and the tight dress--here we\nhave a handsome young woman who has set about, by means not nearly so\nrare or unorthodox as you pretend among yourselves--to find one or two\nuniversals, or fundamentals, which are not in the book.\n\nWhat book?\n\nNot in any?\n\nOh--yes--those banned novels. And those mournful characters who thought\nonly of their pale, poetical brows plunging into the Pit, the lonely\nwell. Or sordid sun-tan oil on Jackson's vulgar beach.\n\nWhen will the poets get the censors off _their_ backs, too--and write\nlike men, for a change? God's no fairy, or Satan, either.\n\nWhat foul compulsion is this--that every page of the Tragedy must\nitself be mournful stuff, sinister, or sick?\n\nFarce, instead!\n\nDoes the tragic deer, the beautiful, the doomed, imbue his every\npoolside hour with dolorous contemplation? Must all the activities\nof the woodchuck be regarded as dismal? To write the stark terms of\nour essence on every breath and sentence of the moment is to be the\nown advocate of death, the white bones himself, and to overlook the\nsplendor with such eyeless concentration that the poem becomes a joke\non the poet.\n\nI flirted with Yvonne--told her stories of Paris and Hollywood and\nMiami Beach--held her hand--all, in chivalrous camouflage.\n\nPaul came at last.\n\nI hardly needed to see the stoop--the broken reach to push open the\ndoors that enclosed our cold air cube--to know that, between us, we\nhad not lifted his oppression. For, when it is succubus that's lost,\nincubus perforce remains.\n\nHe looked disapprovingly at Yvonne. \"Mrs. Prentiss, this is my nephew,\"\nI said. \"Paul Wilson.\"\n\n\"Hello, Mrs. Prentiss.\" He turned from her. \"I'll barge along, Phil. I\nthought you'd be alone.\"\n\n\"Oh, hell, sit.\"\n\n\"Really--it's not possible!\" His ardent features were emphasized by\npallor--and shooting about on his face, besides.\n\n\"Sit,\" I said, \"and eat--or otherwise you'll force me to leave the lady\nand go with you. She has a date after dinner, anyhow.\"\n\nHe groaned and sat down--nipping the menu from the waiter's hands\nroughly. \"No news.\"\n\n\"Tough.\" I turned to Yvonne. \"His--fianc\u00e9e--is lost.\"\n\n\"How awful! What happened?\"\n\nPaul glared at me for a moment. \"Your friend Dave,\" he finally said,\nin a tone more polite than his facial expression, \"did all he could.\nGot an agency looking. Sent a fellow over to stay in my--our--place. We\nhunted up some more friends of hers--that Dave got track of--and they\ntold us of others. We've been seeing them. It isn't much fun.\"\n\n\"Why not quit, then? Wait for her?\"\n\n\"If all she did was walk out,\" Yvonne agreed, \"that's absolutely the\nonly thing to do. Sit tight. Have a good time. Suppose she finds out\nyou're apparently raising heaven and earth to locate her? She'll just\nhide in a safe spot and enjoy things that much more.\"\n\nPaul turned to her. \"Are you serious?\"\n\nYvonne was working on him--signaling interest with her gray eyes (they\nhad come considerably alive)--tossing the organized gold shower of her\nhair--moving herself about in such a way as to emphasize her sex. \"It's\na darned good generalization. But what happened?\"\n\nI wondered how he'd put it.\n\n\"Marcia--\" he began, and described her. We were made to see a woman\nsomewhere between Elaine-the-Fair and Florence Nightingale. \"I was\njust about licked when we met! I'm a physicist--work on atomic energy.\nShe made me live--filled me with new feelings--taught me what love\ncould mean to a man like me. Then--we scrapped. Over nearly nothing!\"\nHis eyes moved reproachfully to me--then back, confidingly, to the\ngirl. She was listening, nodding with understanding, frowning with\nsympathy, and keeping her red lips parted the whole time. \"We scrapped.\nShe decided we weren't suited to each other. So she left me. That\nwas--yesterday. I'd give everything I own to get her back! Everything I\nown--and am!\"\n\n\"What exactly did you fight about?\" Yvonne asked.\n\nPaul's expression became vague. \"Never mind. It wasn't important.\"\n\n\"Are you sure?\"\n\nHe gave both of us a dark, defiant stare. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"Then,\" Yvonne said, \"I'm right. You mustn't continue this search\noperation. You should wait. And entertain yourself. Let her do the\ncoming back--since she ran away.\"\n\nIt was the first hope he had felt. \"I wish I could believe it would\nwork.\"\n\n\"Take my word for it. I'm a woman.\"\n\n\"And how,\" he asked scornfully, \"do I start this gay, forgetful act?\"\n\n\"With me,\" Yvonne said. \"I'll break my date. You can escort me to the\nmost conspicuous place in town.\"\n\n\"You?\" Paul took his first careful look at her. She undoubtedly\nsatisfied him. But he was not altogether persuaded of the plan. It\nrepresented merely a new idea--and, as such, offered a small unexpected\ndegree of optimism.\n\n\"I'd like it,\" Yvonne went on. \"For a lot of reasons. I wasn't sure I\nwanted to keep my date. I think you're nice--even if terribly foolish.\nAnd Phil bailed me out of a tizzy the other night--so I could hardly do\nless for a nephew of his.\"\n\n\"What if I did it--acted blas\u00e9 as hell--and Marcia was just relieved\nwhen she found out?\"\n\n\"Then, Paul,\" she said, \"nothing would have helped, anyhow.\"\n\nYou could see him grinding his jaw down on that one. He wanted\nMarcia. He was determined to get her back. Into what he regarded as\nhis love had gone a good deal of unrecognized pride. Furthermore,\nhe had undertaken to recover her by what he thought of as logical\nsteps--ignoring his own hysterical condition--and unaware that his\nbrand of logic did not, would not, could not apply in such a situation.\n\nYvonne knew that to interest men you talked about them. She started,\nindirectly. \"Is he a good scientist?\" she asked me.\n\n\"Terrific!\"\n\nI told her of his achievements in school; of his appointment. \"He\ndidn't quite make Saipan for the first bomb drop. But he was at Bikini.\nAnd he commutes to Eniwetok.\"\n\n\"I guess they're born,\" she said.\n\nPaul took that up. \"Born, hell! Made. You have the urge to study\nsomething. You happen to get going on math. In the end, you're a\nphysicist.\"\n\nI argued that. I thought an argument would change the subject from\nMarcia--on whom he'd concentrated ever since he'd brought up her name\non Thursday. \"Aptitude's hereditary. You can't take ten kids--even with\nhigh IQs--and turn out ten mathematicians.\"\n\n\"I say you can!\"\n\n\"So does the Soviet. Marx, Lenin, Stalin. Communism depends on the\ntheory that, given the right environment, people will turn out the\nway you want--since they start with equal possibilities. If that isn't\nso--communism doesn't make sense.\"\n\n\"It's silly on the face of it,\" Yvonne said.\n\n\"The geneticists think the communist idea is silly,\" I agreed. \"In\nfact, they know so.\"\n\nPaul said, \"Nuts.\"\n\n\"Do you,\" I asked, \"know anything about genetics? Are you _au courant_\nin this particular affair?\"\n\n\"No. But--\"\n\n\"Then stay out of it. Good God! Isn't that like a damned scientist?\" I\nturned to Yvonne. \"He'd laugh at me if I tried to argue with him about\nmesons. He's been briefed to the eyeballs on that. But he'll argue with\nanybody about genes and chromosomes and heredity--because he hasn't\nbothered to learn the known facts!\"\n\nPaul didn't rise. \"Okay!\" he said. \"Okay. So communism is based on that\nfallacy. Others, too. We have a few fallacies to contend with, in this\ncountry.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" I agreed. \"I pointed one out to the Reverend Socker Melton,\nwho called on me today. Old friend of pop's. Pointed out that, if we\nunderstood the importance of our celebrated liberty--we'd have been\nready and willing to go to war the instant we realized that the Soviet\nholdout was going to force a restriction of knowledge. So what? Do our\nfaults entitle other people to faults? Or vice versa? That's merely the\nmaudlin attitude of Joe Doaks!\"\n\nPaul looked at the girl with a mock sneer. \"Phil hates the common man.\"\n\n\"Hate, hell. I'm about the last friend he has left. Nearly the\nonly one who refuses to boost common man exclusively, so as to\nexploit him--consciously or unconsciously. I'm one of the few\nwho still care enough about poor old common man to criticize\nhim. Everybody else is a planner or a mere booster--presidential\ncandidates--Stalin--Hitler--just rah-rah-for-humanity boys. I'm still\ntrying to save common man from himself.\"\n\n\"You chill me,\" Paul said sarcastically.\n\n\"Chill you?\" I would have picked up any lead to keep this bicker\nalight. It wasn't about Marcia.\n\nHe spoke to Yvonne. \"Phil is the champion lost-cause defender of them\nall. Whatever he's for is sure to fail. He has the mildew-touch. My\nchildhood is pockmarked with embarrassments that came from having\npeople read his stuff--or having them barge over to see us and tell my\ndad that his brother-in-law was off the beam again.\"\n\n\"I can imagine,\" Yvonne said.\n\n\"Phil was out there hollering for rearmament in the thick of the old\npacifist days. He was an air-power promoter when the brass was folding\n'em in like eggs in puddings. He predicted we'd have to fight the\nSoviet a dozen years ago--and our boys immediately chummed up with\nStalin. He went roaring out for intervention in the last war--bucking\nisolationists and practically cracking his insides when England and\nFrance went in without us. The minute the bomb was shot off--he\nstarted battling military control and telling the folks the mess we'd\nbe in--and are in--right now. Once--down in Miami--where he lives--he\nstarted a big health crusade. It's a prize pesthole. But that collapsed\nin his face, too. What he says is usually right--but what happens\nalways makes him look like a louse. If he's championing common man\nnow--well--draw your own conclusion.\" He winked at me.\n\n\"I'm championing the Better Man, these days,\" I said. \"Breeding the\nBetter Common Man. Another noble prospect doomed to fail in our time.\"\n\nPaul snorted. \"I'm for training them better. Education.\"\n\n\"And I'm not against education--either. But you can't polish a brick.\nYou can't make--\"\n\n\"Watch it! The chemists can make anything out of anything.\"\n\n\"Take me,\" I said. \"All my life, I've hired somebody to give me lessons\nin something.\"\n\nPaul grinned a little. \"You _are_ a hard case. We admit that.\"\n\nYvonne laughed. \"If he means dancing lessons--he's done all right.\"\n\n\"People,\" I plugged along on the new topic, \"ought to summarize their\nprofessional, postschool lessons and see what they've learned. Consider\nme. In New York, I once took boxing lessons. Can't box for a damn. In\nHollywood, I hired a strong man to live with me and teach me to lift\nweights. I got all beefed up--and then got sick in Poland--and the beef\nevaporated. I took lessons on the piano accordion for a year, once.\nI've also taken piano lessons, saxophone lessons, and mandolin lessons.\nUkelele, too, in 1919. Can't play a note. Took golf lessons for years.\nThe last few times I played, I pushed 110. Took tennis lessons. Haven't\nhit a ball over the net in twenty years. Got a whiz to teach me\nping-pong--for five bucks a throw. Can't return the serves of children.\nStudied a couple of foreign languages, besides the ones in school and\ncollege. Can't even say, 'Good morning' and 'Thanks' in 'em, any more.\nAnd horses! Great God! Hired cowboys to murder me every day, all day,\nfor six months. Went to a dude ranch in the Carolinas and got briefed\nin eastern saddles. Hundreds of saddle-hours. And what? Hate to ride.\nNever do, if I can avoid it. Is that all? I haven't begun! Hired some\nOlympic champs to give me fancy diving lessons. Got going good--and\nfound out in a couple of years I was slowing up--couldn't snap around\nany more. Had to quit that. Spent a lot of time in the North Woods. Had\nan Indian for a guide. Learned to stalk game. Learned to shoot--taught\nby experts. Can't hit a barn. Don't enjoy hunting. Spent a fortune\ndeep-sea fishing. Don't even rate as an 'Expert' at my club. Bridge\nlessons--God Almighty, the time I've fussed with that! And what? Some\ndays I'm fair--and some days I can't remember through jacks--which\nis how I was when I began! Learned once to identify all the flora and\nfauna in the Adirondacks. Moved away and never seen the region since.\nCouldn't tell bluebells from burdock. Well, maybe those. But--\"\n\n\"Is all that the truth?\" Yvonne asked doubtfully.\n\nPaul chortled. \"The funny thing is, it is! Old Phil's spent his whole\nlife trying to discover something he could learn!\"\n\n\"I draw myself up,\" I answered, \"with dignity. As a modern gentleman,\nI am the complete sciolist. The most-smattered man you'll meet in your\nlifetime. There is almost nothing that I'm not slightly versed in and\npretty poor at. Why--I even took archery lessons, once. Got second\nprize in Palm Springs--\"\n\n\"Good heavens!\" she said.\n\n\"I gave him some lessons in quantum theory, myself,\" Paul continued.\n\"Rotten student. Wants to know the final formulation and what it\nmeans--and detests to brush up his calculus first. He can do magic\ntricks, too--earned his high school pin money that way. He used to spin\nropes--jump through 'em. When I was a very small kid, I looked forward\nto seeing him. Like a one-man circus. Then I caught on--at about four\nyears old. Uncle Phil was in kindergarten in about every subject there\nwas. Never got any farther. Just took different primary courses every\nyear.\"\n\n\"In a minute,\" I said, \"I'll leave you guys to your libel and go back\nto my serial. Somebody taught me how to write fiction, along there\nsomeplace--\"\n\nPaul grinned and said, \"_Touch\u00e9_--a little.\"\n\nI felt better than I had all weekend. Paul surely would calm down with\nYvonne. And she wasn't going to loiter with Gwen that evening.\n\nIt left me with nothing to worry about except a no longer very sore\nspot in my throat--and with no emotion to grapple--except a feeling of\nbeing lonelier than God.\n\nI went back to my room and turned the lights on bright and sat down and\nlooked at the roses Dave had sent.\n\nThey were my flowers-for-the-living and, being alive, they should be\nappreciated.\n\nThere they stood--with lighter green stems and leaves than most roses\nand perilous, pale-green thorns. The blooms weren't quite full blown,\nin spite of the heat, and they were as large as any I'd ever seen--as\nlong as my fingers. The many lamps in the room highlighted the curved\nouter edges of the flowers and left only the deep, inner shadows. The\npetals were as voluptuous as a woman's skin; they seemed to glow, like\nan aniline dye in ultraviolet rays. A slightly sharp perfume filled\nthe room--a mnemonic of things that could not be materialized, of tea\nroses in childhood gardens and people who had been nice to you and died\na long time ago. There they stood--stiff and radiant and hopelessly\nbeautiful.\n\nI let myself feel them--feel them the way you let yourself feel when\nthe concert hall goes dark and the baton makes its first, swift oval.\n\nThey came from hothouses.\n\nI thought of gardens.\n\nAll the gardens I had made or cared about.\n\nRoses of my own, on carefully pruned canes standing in New England\nmulch. Rented roses on rose trees in Hollywood. I thought of sweet\npeas--fragrant rainbows along old fences. Of delphiniums--hybrids\ntaller than my head, rockets frozen at the climax of blue burst. Lilies\nand phlox and poppies. I thought of annuals--of planting the grains,\nsetting out the frail seedlings--and walking the later carpet--a\nhundred styles of color: zinnias and marigolds and asters, verbenas\nand lavender, sweet William and candytuft and pansies, nasturtiums,\nforget-me-nots and primroses. I thought of foxglove, too, and\nCanterbury bells. For a long time, of hollyhocks regimented against\nwhite clapboard--red, mauve, yellow, pink, purple, orange. Then I\nthought of sunflowers growing like Jack's beanstalk. Spring flowers\nand the years I'd spent changing a steep rise of field into a rock\ngarden, plowing, bulldozing, wading in a cold brook to collect the\ngreat, flat stones, trucking them home, embedding them one by one in\nthe slope--on aromatic rainy days, in the sweet spring sun, and in the\nhard dirt of October. A wall here, steps there, an outcrop yonder, and\na place for a pool below.\n\nThen the little hill opened into memory's bloom of crocus and\nnarcissus, daffodil, tulip, hyacinth and scilla, the creams and livid\nwhites, pale yellows and money-gold hues, and the many blues of\nspringtime, bright, pastel, lilac. The bells and stars and cups--and\nthe spring scent that is the honeyed promise of summer coming.\n\nNext, I thought of the woodland flowers--flowers before men found\nthem. The precious arbutus, inexhaustible spring beauties, violets,\nthe anemones, the lady-slippers, bloodroot, showy orchis standing in\na wet glade beside a moss-shawled log, and pitcher plants--red rubber\nflowers on the sphagnum belly of weird bog. All summer long the rues\nand cardinal flowers and gentians; ferns--goldenrod, when the clear air\ncooled--when night's sky throbbed with wings and carried to earth the\nenthusiastic, strange twitter of migration.\n\nI, too, migrated.\n\nI came to my other home in Florida--the crashing flowers, the trees\nbigger than houses and bright as a florist's potted plants: poinciana,\nbauhinia, spathodia, jacaranda. Extravagant vines--alamanda, yellow\nas these roses, trumpet flowers as orange as Mexico's sunsets,\npandoreas, solandras, and the holy, nepenthic stephanotis. Jasmine.\nGlade hammocks with orchids blooming on stumps like swarms of sucking\nbutterflies--great white wading birds watching and vultures pinned\nabove in the blue, cloud-dappled sky.\n\nBrief glory of flower-upholstered deserts.\n\nAlpine flowers in the high, thin, whimpering air with near snow.\n\n And trees. Great God, the trees!\n It was, taken by itself, a many lifetimes.\n All good.\n All beautiful.\n\nA great magic given to the modern man who thought of beauty never.\nOr who thought beauty was a ship's engine, or the line of high\nferroconcrete, or the color scheme of a porch, or--adoring Christ\nforgive us, a new car! Something _he_ made, anyhow.\n\nThis was some of my lives.\n\nRicky had shared a number of them with me--created and divided the\nhours and days in the years of the flowers.\n\nWhy should I wonder concerning anything, who knew and loved flowers\nlike this--why not, in the continual floral celebrations, take all\ncontent from marvel itself?\n\nMen missed it, most of them.\n\nGenerals detailed insensate GIs to set square borders of ageratum\naround the headquarters lawn.\n\nStatesmen wore bachelor's-buttons into their deadlocks. Or maybe\ncarnations.\n\nDowagers and whores--cattleyas: spilled on avid breasts and icy\nshoulders.\n\nMillionaires decreed. Gardeners dug. Who looked--who saw?\n\nBusiness executives had something sent up for the office, daily, and\nnever noticed the color or knew the name. Flowers executed and embalmed\nto add their priceless prestige to dirty bucks.\n\nSchoolboys planted beans and watched the halved cotyledons ascend. Then\ngrew and prospered and spent their lives sawing women in half.\n\nAt last, tired relatives recriminated while they embedded melancholy\nmetal pots in the green grittiness of graves.\n\nWho cherished?\n\nWho left them alone in the forest?\n\nWho else--like Ricky--knew each plant to be an individual?\n\nI put a call through.\n\n\"Hello, darling,\" said her clear voice.\n\nOh, look--love--we've had--centuries together--so beautiful, so\nvarious--people, yes--each other, yes--the topaz mornings and the\namorous unsleepiness--the vague rainy Thursday afternoons--the\nincandescent, rose-petal you--the touching--we've had--places--Havana,\nfor instance--this vaulting steel town--but also flowers, dear. I was\nthinking how long flowers really lasted. Surely, you won't mind, that\nthe end is here? After entire histories of evolution shared by just the\ntwo of us? I knew you wouldn't--now.\n\nI said, \"How's Rushford?\"\n\n\"More important--how are you?\"\n\n\"Sprung-witted. Weary. And pursuing.\"\n\n\"Nearly finished?\"\n\n\"I should make it--tomorrow. If I hold out tonight.\"\n\n\"Phil! What's wrong?\"\n\nThe echo--the electrical overtone--that long way.\n\n\"Nothing's wrong, dear. Things are picking up. I picked up a blonde,\nfor instance--and Paul's taking her out. So maybe his mental health is\nimproving.\"\n\n\"And maybe you should have taken her out yourself! You sound like\nsomebody playing an ocarina in Mammoth Cave; positively sepulchral.\"\n\n\"The heat. Expanded my sinuses. Gives me that hollow ring. Is it hot up\nthere?\"\n\n\"Eighty-six tonight. The natives are dying of it.\"\n\n\"It must be a hundred here.\"\n\n\"I read about it in the Buffalo papers. Gee!\"\n\n\"It's pretty lurid. They had a veterans' parade yesterday--and\nI went over to Fifth to watch--and it was damn near immobilized\nin the asphalt. It would have been funny--millions of guys stuck\nthere--blocking traffic all winter--! If you go out just to get a\npaper, you need asbestos shoes. Any minute, this joint may run like\nparaffin.\"\n\n\"I think you ought to knock off and go see somebody.\"\n\n\"Town's evacuated. Wouldn't be emptier if Molotov was threatening to\nA-bomb.\"\n\n\"Do you feel all right?\"\n\n\"Sure, Tud. As all right as you can when you're standing by to swim\nup out of your own sweat, any minute. How's mother? What new mess has\nPopcorn made?\"\n\nShe gave me the country news.\n\n\"Won't be too long now,\" I said.\n\n\"Miss you.\"\n\n\"Miss you. Been thinking about the gardens. See you day after\ntomorrow--barring acts of God.\"\n\n\"I'd rather wait longer--and have you sounding better.\"\n\n\"You wait till I get there and I'll do my own sounding.\"\n\n\"Good night,\" she said. \"I love you.\"\n\nWhen I hung up, I was quivering.\n\nI'd come pretty close:\n\nWell, Ricky, I am worried. I went to Tom's. Of course, it's probably\ngoing to turn out to be nothing. But until I know for sure I feel--the\nhell with it! I'm ashamed of being this way!\n\nI sat there, taking divots out of myself and not getting on the green.\n\nI looked at the roses again.\n\nThey were just yellow roses--big ones--in a glass vase. I yanked out\nthe bridge table, batted the bridge lamp around, sat, and bent into it.\n\n\n6\n\nYvonne came through the connecting doors about one o'clock. I was still\nbent--bent enough so it took a moment to turn and straighten after she\nsaid, \"Hello, Svengali!\"\n\nShe was drunk. Not happy-drunk, or mean-drunk, either. Nervous-drunk.\n\n\"Your pure relation left me,\" she said.\n\n\"Left you how?\"\n\n\"Left me in this condition. Buy me a Scotch.\"\n\nI sent the word.\n\nShe threw herself on the divan, blew down the front of her rose-pink\ndress--which was wrinkled now, wet under the armpits, city-smudged\nat the edges--and fixed her fidgety eyes on me. \"We went down to the\nPalais and danced a bit. He's lousy. We started in having a flock of\ndrinks. He talked. Good God, how Wylies talk! He told me the story of\nhis life--including the full saga of Marcia. He got to that later--at\nthe Club Mauve.\"\n\n\"Nice little spot!\"\n\n\"He said we were both in a revolting mood and so we should go to some\nrepulsive place.\"\n\n\"Then you told him the story of your life, too?\"\n\n\"Up to when I met you.\"\n\n\"Is that going to be a date, from now on? Milestone? And millstone,\ntoo? Try to bear in mind--it's your life and you're of age.\"\n\n\"So all right, lambie-pie! No hard feelings. The point is--the more\nhe told me about his Marcia--the less he noticed me. We switched to\nPlanter's Punches, in due time, and had a zombie somewhere along the\nway. For a while I thought the rum was going to do what my gilded\nfleece couldn't. We necked. It's dark as a bat's groin there, anyhow.\"\n\n\"Pretty metaphor.\"\n\n\"We necked, I said. Back in the old days--last week--I could neck\nwith a boy from the time he cut me out at the prom until bacon and\neggs at Child's--and never feel a thing I didn't want to feel.\nTonight--though--I lost ground so fast you'd think I was a juvenile\ndelinquent trying her first reefer.\"\n\n\"Poor premise--but I get the idea.\"\n\n\"And what?\"\n\nShe turned and smiled with excess brightness at George, when he carried\nin the round, silver tray.\n\n\"And what--?\" She revived the question. \"Just as your cute little\nPaulie-pie was getting interesting--and I thought, interested--he\ntalked himself right into going on the hunt for his Marcia again!\"\n\n\"That's too bad.\"\n\n\"It's too bad--and what are you going to do about it?\"\n\n\"Remember what I said concerning how I don't like girls when they drink\ntoo much? Even a little bit too much?\"\n\nYvonne gulped explosively. \"All right, then! So I call up Gwen! And\nthat's your fault!\"\n\n\"Telephone's right beside you.\"\n\nShe looked at it sulkily. Then she grabbed it and gave the number.\n\n\"Hello ... this is Mrs. Roland Prentiss ... is Gwen Taylor there?\" She\nstuck out her tongue at me. \"Gwen, darling!... dad's gone, at last ...\nsure ... that would be lovely ... of course!\"\n\n\"Ace-in-the-hole,\" I said.\n\n\"Don't be--\" She shrugged and laughed restlessly. \"Oh--all right. It's\nmy life, though, isn't it?\"\n\n\"That's the idea.\"\n\n\"Phil!\"\n\n\"Present--and unaccountable.\" I didn't feel witty.\n\n\"You come with me--\" She was standing and she finished the highball\nstanding.\n\nI shook my head. \"I'm going after Paul.\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"Here and there.\" I had one idea, anyway.\n\nShe undid her dress and stepped out of it and threw it over her\narm. She looked at me for another moment with eyes both jumpy and\nexpressionless. \"You wouldn't regret it.\"\n\n\"Some other time, baby. I got to go find that cluck.\"\n\n\"See you,\" she said and swept out in her bra and petticoat.\n\nThis time, when I heard her shower begin, I locked my door. Then I put\non a dry, newly pressed seersucker, a light silk tie, and went out\nbefore she decided to try again.\n\nThe cab tooled along Fifth Avenue a ways, dove through the Park, and\nrattled into a semislum section--an area of delicatessens and bowling\nalleys, dated, disreputable hotels, massage parlors, shrieking truck\nbrakes, trickling electric signs, jaded cafeterias, and a crosshatch\nof streets narrower than the avenues, darker, lined on both sides with\nidentical brownstones that exuded a smell of senescence and rotted\nbrick tenements upon the fa\u00e7ades of which hung rusty fire escapes. On\nthe fire escapes were people, their pets, bedding and potted plants,\nbeer pails and radios, along with their accents of Crete, Sicily and\nthe Balkans, Bohemia and Slovakia and Sudetenland--the wonderful poor,\nthe authority for democracy--they said, the intellectuals who had made\ngods of them without touching them.\n\nI looked, listened, sniffed attentively.\n\nLast chance.\n\nAnd I remembered.\n\nNot far away, probably torn down, probably only a greasy ghost sharing\nthe fourth dimension of some new structure with a marquee and a\ndoorman, was a hall bedroom within spitting distance of the curved\nrails of an extinct elevated railroad where I'd made my abode for a\nyear. Not far away, the loft in which I'd earned my eighteen simoleons\na week with the other sweated youths. The counters of that department\nstore where, with the stupendous poor, I'd cut yard goods. Far away,\nthough, the farms I'd labored on and farther still the crewmen of the\nfreighter. In time, however, Rushford was near--the American rustic\nwho will not call himself a peasant because he drives a Ford. Cruel,\nunwashed, suspicious, insanitary louts and ugly lasses--poor.\n\nSalt of the earth. Savor of dung.\n\nBackbone of the nation. Spineless.\n\nIn a properly informed electorate, the majority will make intelligent\ndecisions.\n\nAgreed.\n\nThen, gentlemen,\n\nshall we not inform the electorate that this is the age of knowledge?\nShall we not rectify the schizoid discrepancies between these people on\nthe fire escapes, bumpkins, and the inhabitants of penthouses? Give the\ngood-natured fornications of the poor back to the taut middle classes?\nInform the poor of the ways of children? Release the entombed libido of\nthem all? Having done that, so they may vote sanely--having revealed\nthe democracy of desire--how shall we set about to teach them advanced\nalgebra, genetics, relativity, and bacteriology--so that their acts\nwill be in some small measure relevant to the exigencies of our times?\n\nFreedom of the mind is immured in the vaults of the Navy and the War\nDepartment and the Air Forces.\n\nFreedom of speech is chained in the cellars of the churches.\n\nFreedom of action is spread-eagled on the wheel of business.\n\nThere is no information in the electorate.\n\nInstinct only.\n\nIt is a fact we had better face unless we are prepared to lose our own\nselves in the stunted years of an American feudalism.\n\nLiberty, or death, gentlemen.\n\nWe who would not fight for liberty because we did not see the\ninvolvement of it are staring into the hot barrels of death.\n\nThe time for sacrifice is at hand. What have we? Production, instead!\nAnd compulsory reproduction.\n\nI went up to Hattie's bagnio because I am a middle-class American male\nin the higher brackets, of Princeton extraction, who was denied the\npoor man's access to females during adolescence and early maturity\nand who (owing probably to that abnormal deprivation) belongs to a\ndistinguished group that makes blah per cent of its sex contacts\nwith prostitutes, blah per cent by unorthodox means, and blah per\ncent with males. That is evidently why I knew the address. I went,\nowing to the fact that a member of the generation behind me--a\nprodigy, similarly conditioned--of superior stature, superior health,\nsuperior life expectancy, superior stability (_sic_), and a superior\nhappiness quotient--far above the average by the tables!--had come a\npsychological cropper in a tart's arms owing to the fact that the Age\nof Kinsey is also the Atomic Age and he, briefed in the latter, was\nemotionally distrait over the conundrum: how to tell the people on the\nfire escape all about the effect of neutrons on chromosomes--a datum\nto be regarded as utterly essential for political judgment. And other\ntroubles.\n\nPersonally, I was of the opinion the poor could not be told at this\nlate date and would have to learn by doing. Also the rich. And this\njudgment, while it in no way impaired my faith in democracy, and while\nit gave me a good assurance of the long future, singularly blighted my\nassessment of so-called democratic practices in the land during the\npast century and filled me with a ribald contumely for the poor-doting,\npoor-blind, wisdom-spurning, technologically blank intellectuals,\ntogether with nearly everybody else.\n\nI wanted to get my nephew out of a jam before he got into one.\n\nThis is a sentiment I bear toward all humanity.\n\nMy successes in its prosecution are, sometimes, trivial.\n\nBesides which\n\na man who thinks he is soon to die\n\nenjoys kiting around in a city he has cherished all his life, among the\npeople he loves, at night, in a cab.\n\nI rode up through the marble lobby and past the floor-ledges of the\nbuilding in the gold elevator cage with the colored boy whose face\nshowed no trace of his fascinating, perennial opportunity to look upon\n(before and after) the persons and countenances of hundreds of the\ngreat, the prominent, and the rich, who were not quite satisfied with\nthe legal sex mores of their environment and the permissions of their\nacquaintances.\n\nI inhaled the many-doored hallway.\n\n\"Hattie,\" said Viola, \"is out at a party.\"\n\n\"Is my nephew Paul here?\"\n\nShe shook her elegant head. \"He hasn't been in.\"\n\nWell, I could have phoned. Why didn't I?\n\n\"Miss Taylor's here.\" The jungle-bright eyes sloped darkly toward me\nand away.\n\n\"Is she? I thought--\"\n\n\"I'll call her.\" She led me to the same room--Hattie's parlor.\n\nI sat down. I could stick around a while. Paul might not come here, in\nhis humiliating chase. He probably would. He'd had--no doubt--other\nleads to check first.\n\nGwen appeared. She was wearing her hair down, tonight, and a silk dress\nthe color of a new penny. A matching dress. \"'Lo, Phil.\" She walked\ngracefully to the phonograph, clicked records, turned dials, and filled\nthe room with soft bongoses, maracas, the background thud of a conga\ndrum.\n\n\"I thought you were going downtown?\"\n\n\"Soon. Did you mind--about last night?\"\n\n\"Tonight--I never mind about last night. Rule of my life. Look, Gwen.\nHow did you know--so quickly--exactly what that gal was like?\"\n\n\"I told you,\" she said. \"I get feelings.\"\n\n\"I don't. Just surprises.\"\n\n\"You try to think,\" she said. \"Figure. Then you go by the results of\nthat. It's no good. You just--relax--and see what your sensations are.\"\n\n\"We were never allowed to relax about it. From the cradle to the\ncrematory--we have to be either tensely on guard or else proficiently\non the job.\"\n\n\"It's a wonder people like you ever have babies.\"\n\n\"We don't have many.\"\n\nGwen smiled. \"On guard?\"\n\n\"And proficient.\"\n\n\"Nature's way,\" she said, \"of reducing the number of real dopes! Tell\nme something.\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"If Yvonne hadn't busted in last night--?\"\n\n\"The answer is no.\"\n\n\"That's what I thought.\"\n\n\"It wasn't you.\"\n\nShe stirred her red-brown hair. \"I know that. If it had been me--if\nI'd thought so--I'd have repressed my own feelings about your blonde\nroommate.\"\n\n\"What's going to happen to her?\"\n\nGwen curved one shoulder toward me and straightened it--a shrug that\ndismissed responsibility. \"How do you think a girl like me feels--about\none like her? She has everything. She's always had it. And thrown\nherself away.\"\n\n\"Save the tough act for somebody you can fool!\"\n\nGwen came over and put her fingers in my hair and turned my head up and\nkissed me where it wouldn't show. \"She wants to know--that's all. Why\nshouldn't she? She's been dying all her life from not knowing.\"\n\n\"A hundred and fifty million people--\"\n\n\"Save out a few million, Phil. Not everybody has the sordid past or no\npast at all--or none to speak of. Some just grow up naturally.\"\n\n\"I'd like to meet 'em.\"\n\n\"Oh--\" she sat down near me--\"you'd never know, anyhow. Because\nif you found out--or anybody found out--they couldn't go on being\nnatural any longer. It's against the law to be a person in this world.\nNaturalness--that relaxation I spoke of--has to stay in the bootleg\ndepartment, to stay at all.\"\n\n\"Pity.\"\n\n\"You're telling me!\" She thought awhile. \"I'll give you some news. I\ndon't know whether Hattie would, or not. Marcia's here.\"\n\nI waited till a small shock was absorbed. \"Yeah?\"\n\n\"Came in this afternoon.\"\n\n\"What doing?\"\n\n\"Working.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Want to talk to her?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nShe kissed me again. \"If the unfaithful mood ever comes over you--\"\n\n\"Don't count on it.\"\n\nShe chuckled. \"You're one of the lucky ones. Only--you don't know it.\nThat's the way they are, mostly.\"\n\n\"Some compliment.\"\n\nShe nodded. Her metallic hair swung before my eyes. She got up from the\narm of my chair. \"So long! Don't worry about--you know who.\"\n\nMarcia came to the door in a few minutes. She was wearing a black\ndress--a thin black dress and--nothing else. Her blue eyes were defiant.\n\n\"Hi!\"\n\n\"Paul is apt to barge in here any minute.\"\n\n\"I know. I thought he might.\" She shut the door.\n\nI went over to the window and squinted through the dark heat at the\nJersey rivage. \"He might. And you were going to have him sent in.\nYou were going to go through a prepared routine. You were going to\ndisillusion him--but quick--break his heart right now--and get it over\nwith. You were going to tell him about the cute salesman who dropped in\naround four. The newspaper publisher who stopped by at five. The nice\nbanker who hung around till he was late for dinner. And the college kid\nwho'd just left.\"\n\n\"You read minds,\" she said.\n\n\"Don't.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" She walked over to me. \"What else? All you had to do the\nother day was to take one quick look at me and see I was a tramp. Oh--I\ncould feel you paw me. I could see you putting your damned twenty\nbucks on my bureau. You knew--so you knew how to look. And--sooner or\nlater--everybody would know. And know how to look. And look that way.\nAnd where would a good kid's wife be, then?\"\n\n\"You might have thought of that sooner,\" I said, ignoring the false\ncharges for the moment.\n\n\"I suppose I make the world go around! What _did_ I think about? What\nwould anybody think about? They'd think--this is how a sweet guy treats\na nice girl. This is how he talks. This is how he holds your hand.\nHolds your hand, for God's sake! You'd get a real kick out of that--the\nrealest one you'd had in years. You'd think--_maybe_. _Maybe_ the life\ncould end. Maybe I could have an apartment someplace and kids and a\nguy people respected. Maybe I could get into the bridge games and\nthe theater parties and the midnight snacks next door and the church\nsuppers, even, and drive a sedan around a suburb, buying groceries at\nthe chain stores and not forgetting to pick up Junior's shoes.\"\n\n\"Forsaking all others?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, \"I thought about that, too! I'm human. Feelings come\nover me. I'm maybe even like a kleptomaniac that can't resist a box of\ntacks in a hardware store or a pair of cheap earrings on a counter.\nMaybe I could learn to choke it down. Control it. I did--for months.\"\n\n\"And now?\"\n\n\"Now it doesn't matter.\"\n\n\"Months isn't years.\"\n\nHer eyes fixed on mine. They were not defiant now--but speculative.\n\"Sure. So I'm human. So Paul knew that. I told him he couldn't expect a\nletter-perfect show, forever.\"\n\n\"Did you?\"\n\n\"Certainly, I did. And what did he say? He said I couldn't expect one\nfrom him, either.\"\n\n\"He's being pretty--devoted--right now.\"\n\n\"That's what has to stop. That's why I hope he does come in here.\nThat's why I asked Hattie to let me stay here--instead of just putting\nme on the phone exchange, the way it used to be. I wanted to go back\nwith a bang. After the way you looked me over the other noon--that's\nexactly what I wanted to do.\"\n\n\"Funny.\"\n\n\"I see nothing funny.\"\n\n\"I thought--you were looking me over.\"\n\nShe sat down suddenly--folded in the middle and dropped into a chair.\n\"You did?\"\n\n\"Yes, I did.\"\n\n\"Well--here I am.\" She spoke in a low tone--not with resignation, not\nwith spite. \"All you have to do is say so.\"\n\nI skipped that. \"Marcia, I never needed to consider what sort of person\nyou were. All I needed to think about was what sort of guy Paul is. And\nI could see--I thought I could--the whole thing coming apart--slowly,\npainfully, rottenly--\"\n\n\"Go on. Play God with us poor mortals.\"\n\n\"My opinion--that's all--sure. I know Paul pretty well, though.\"\n\n\"Better than I do?\" She grinned sarcastically.\n\n\"Better. I know better what he comes from. Then I saw you. I had the\nimpression, Marcia, that your maternal instincts were involved. You\nwere pulling the child to your warm breast and nourishing his starved\nlittle body. Feelings like that. No-good feelings, for wives.\" She had\nsucked her lips into a point; she glanced at me almost with fear; so\nI went on. \"Maybe you thought about running errands for his kids. But\nactually you did more thinking about fondling his emotions--taking care\nof him--working for him. And you even did work. You sat there in the\nKnight's Bar looking at Paul like a proud female parent--like a doting\nmother sharing in her son's discussions of his conquests. You were the\nconquered--but you were the string-pulling mamma, too. Take it or leave\nit--that's how I felt you felt about him! And then I caught you looking\nat me--looking at me the way a girl with warm insides looks at a man.\nSo if I didn't give you the impression I was struck silly with the\npossibilities of the match--that's also why. I'm sorry--but there's the\nwhole answer.\"\n\nShe was breathing evenly--but more deeply than anybody needed to\nbreathe, just sitting. Down the hall, doors opened and shut. Raucous,\nfaintly nervous male laughter echoed. \"Some of the boys from the\nconvention,\" she said, almost reluctantly--as if she found it necessary\nto explain so I wouldn't stop, and as if she was afraid the explanation\nwould stop me.\n\nI looked at her--at a breathing, beautiful girl--and I thought for a\nmoment about the canoe-hats. Then I shook it off. \"If a good gal--a\nsweethearted dame who had no stomach for the life--had started living\nwith Paul, I'd have objected. In your case--I didn't believe you were\neven that--\"\n\nFeet marched on happy excursions down the hall. Somebody tried the\ndoor--opened it, to his surprise--and apologized gruffly without daring\nto carry the impulse through and look in.\n\nMarcia was staring at me. \"So all right,\" she said. \"Paul's just a\nlittle kid. He's not even a good boyfriend. Too jittery. I thought I\ncould teach him. He doesn't really want to learn. He thinks a dame is\nmade of soap bubbles and lives on a pedestal a mile high. He thinks sex\nis something for pack trips in the mountains and spruce boughs. I got\nsick to death of his pack-trip monologue! Who wouldn't? Lying with a\nguy on a good inner-spring mattress and listening to him yak about pine\nneedles! Drenching myself in cologne--and hearing him rave about stable\nsmells! I was ready to spring myself, when we had that lunch. And you\ngave me the excuse. I'd saved up mad enough for six girls--and I let\nhim have it.\"\n\n\"He asked for it.\"\n\n\"Did he!\"\n\n\"But you gave him the wrong medicine. Why didn't you tell him it wasn't\nthe disapproval of an uncle--the looks to come from men--but--the\nspruce routine?\"\n\n\"Haven't you any feelings? That was his dream. Why louse that up,\ntoo? Let him dream! Someday, God knows, he may even meet one of those\nspruce-loving dopes with cute little things in her flannel blouse and\nher jodhpurs. Let him have her! I got tired of my uptown personality\nthe minute I realized it led straight to the Rocky Mountains--and the\nfarther from camp the better.\"\n\n\"He grew up in the West.\"\n\n\"Pardon my spurs!\" Tears filled her eyes. \"I'm a sap, too. For a\nwhile--I really was in heaven. I really thought--this is love. Ye\ngods! What can happen to people who should know better is--unfair to\nhumanity! And then I began looking for an out. I worked. Sure. Honest\nworking wife--for a couple of weeks. Then--working wife has lunch with\nthe floor manager--in a hotel room rented for the lunch. One club\nsandwich--and one good, busy change from Paul. Then the stockboy--a\nhot-looking wop with long hair--took me out in his department to show\nme the new materials--and the place was deserted. So I knew I was a\nsap!\"\n\nI thought that over. \"I'm glad you told me. I know how it is. I don't\nmind. It's you--and that's that. But there's one thing I wish you'd do.\nWrite Paul a letter. Don't try to teach him a lesson by letting him see\nyou here. He'd just tear up the place--or maybe hurt you--\"\n\n\"We've got a boy in the kitchen to take care of rough stuff.\"\n\n\"So Paul would get tossed on the street. And come back. And you'd have\nto call cops. I'm sure Hattie knows the ones to call. Then I'd get a\nbuzz from jail. And Paul would have that indignity to sweat out--on top\nof everything else. Don't you see he holds the whole business against\nme--and he likes me? Against family, friends, the kind of people from\nwhom he comes? Against the people he cares about--and the way of\nlife he's been brought up in? If you'd write him the truth--he could\ntransfer the damage to the place where it belongs. He'd hate you for a\nwhile--and what would that mean to you? Nothing. By and by--he'd see\nthat he didn't even hate you--maybe even liked you. Understood. Then\nhe'd be pretty grown up. Enough to hate the way we do on the earth, all\nof us, if he had to go on hating anything.\"\n\nMarcia smiled gently. Her eyes were inaccessible. \"You're right. I\nliked you--at lunch.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\n\"It could be. I'll tell you what. I'll write--on one condition.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nShe moved quickly. She moved into my lap and put her arms around me.\n\"My room's just three doors from here.\"\n\nI didn't say a word.\n\n\"You'll remember it all your life. And I'll have something to remember,\ntoo. Paul's uncle! They all go for Marcia! Then--there's about Gwen--\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"She told us this afternoon. I'm jealous of Gwen. I'd like--just for\nonce--to fix her. After all--you're not like Paul; it isn't as if you'd\nnever met a girl in my trade before. What have you got to lose? And\nI'll write that letter. When he sees it--he'll toss his damned torch in\nan icebox.\"\n\nWhat about this Greater Love stuff? I asked myself.\n\nShe was kissing me--giving me, not invitations, but commands.\n\nI got up with her and set her on her feet.\n\n\"No, baby. You're something. I don't blame Paul. But I play only for\nmyself. Never mix romance in a deal.\"\n\nShe slapped me and ran out of the room.\n\nMy ears ring all the time, anyway--night and day, day and night, as in\nthe song, a sound like spring peepers at a distance, sometimes like a\nmillion dinner bells tinkling, tinkling, tinkling, and at other times\nlike a flutenote I'd give a great deal to stop. They rang harder,\nnow. She'd hit with her hand taut and compressed hard air against the\nshrill, soniferous membrane. It hurt like the dentist. I scrunched\nmyself together and let the sweat roll and looked out the window. The\npain calmed down and I kept staring out, hating the earth, afraid,\nmiserable, cheap. I fought back.\n\nOnce upon a time, billions of years ago, there was a Knower who is\nidentified these days by the name of God.\n\nHe was totally conscious.\n\nHe was the Custodian, which is to say the Other Property, of\nmass-energy and space-time. He was the sublime entropy of the\nprimordial atom, It, the universe, the stable pattern, the All,\nharmoniously balanced, a fixed ecstasy unmoving and so without Age.\n\nUnfortunately, He-She developed an Ego. (Serpent? Eve? The Old Adam?)\n\nIt occurred to Him that the perfection whereof he was the Cognizant\nComptroller might be more interesting if set in motion. A slight swirl,\nperhaps: something gentle, along an elliptical path.\n\n(Such an impulse, of course, expresses a Flaw in God's consciousness,\nor perhaps only an extra electron in the whole, or--it may be--the\ninfinite tedium of Infinity; most likely of all, the idea that\nPerfection is predictably unpredictable.)\n\nAnyhow--one deduced that He gave all His electrons and His positrons a\ntwist. Naturally, there followed an explosion. Naturally, this puffed\nSpace into existence, to make room for itself.\n\n(Out went the windows, the doors, and the walls.)\n\nIt follows that a fragment was a writer in the pre-Sanskrit tongues,\nand another was Abb\u00e9 le Ma\u00eetre.\n\nOf course--we want to be God's Little Helpers, wee bits of Him, and\nput it back together again so as to become Timeless composites of His\nAwareness.\n\nShall we, therefore, on the epochal day when the island universes start\nhoming, be wise enough to rejoice?\n\nWhen brighter, brighter, brighter glows the firmament?\n\nWhen night becomes as day, and day as a blast furnace?\n\n(Or--will the infalling clots by then be cold and ourselves so drowned\nand immobilized at the bottoms of hydrocarbon oceans as to be already\navid for one more experimental whirl?)\n\nThink why you fornicate! Is it not to bring together again these\nthunderous, silent fires? To perform your little, local reassertion of\nthe reburgeoning I-am-so-God-is?\n\nLook at the stars! What suitable illumination shines for love from\nevery pretty pore of heaven!\n\nLook at the city! The noisiest palaver of tenement, of factory and\nstore--the talked-up edifices that speak back anathema--(removed some\nways, or in some degree) lose their ugliness. Even they are like the\nstars which are beauty at a distance and might be beautiful close\nup--if you knew how to see, there.\n\nHeat's haze--night's dark--snow--the gentle perspectives.\n\nLook at the night!\n\nThe infernal Jersey shore battled the oblivion with Mazda bulbs, neon,\nsizzling arcs, and the globe's shadow eliminated all but beauty.\nLights swam on the river. Antediluvian animals with pairs of red-green\neyes swam up and down the Hudson. Fish from the abyss--mammoth--with\nladders of light along their shining sides surfaced and sloshed in the\ncurrent, hooting and humming. Ah, Jersey! Fields of phosphorescent\nflowers and hills set out with lantern-bearing trees! Night-blooming\nparadise! The magic is our own--collective. What matter that beneath\none particular lavender string of streetlights mad boys pitch clinking\npennies--curse--push frowsy, young, reluctant girls up alleyways--and\nmad, obscene old men tipple in bars that reek with millenniums of human\nhellishness--and mad, subpersonal old women maliciously fling slops in\nthe yards of their neighbors? This is not the one man but his panorama.\n\nFor can they not, all of them, stinking of their sweat and overswarming\nwith diseased intent, look east across their river and see a pattern\nof illumination that would have made Nero hang himself with envy and\nRameses change his gods?\n\nManhattan!\n\nThey look. Great Heaven, they never see!\n\nDirectly below, on the sidewalk, a woman went one by one through the\ncircular pools of street light. I could hear her heels crossing my life\nand every time she reached a new radiant circle I could see she had\ngolden hair. The very beasts in the river ceased boasting to let her\nprint the small, enchanting sound of woman's passage on the attentive\ndark. Her dress was green.\n\nI soon took my leave.\n\n\n7\n\nMy double bed was a sea and I was its derelict.\n\nI read an article by a steelmaker that tish-pished those who are\nconcerned over the possible exhaustion of America's iron ore. Run\nout in twenty years? this tycoon asked. Ridiculous! There is iron\nenough for a century and no corporation is anxious at all, where such\nextensive futures can be seen.\n\nI gave this oaf a hundred years to come to his senses in the third\ngeneration.\n\nIt was an insufficient period. The iron ran out and he still\nforaged--a ghost rummaging in the raped premises of his\ngreat-great-grandchildren.\n\nGo rue the deserts man's already made!\n\nPaul didn't come.\n\nI read some poetry I could not understand in _Harper's_.\n\nI got out the medical book on cancer and looked at throats for a while.\n\nI took the Gideon Bible from the bureau drawer and read the Thirteenth\nChapter of First Corinthians.\n\nThen Psalms, awhile.\n\nThen Luke, awhile.\n\nI went into my bathroom and swallowed one of Tom's capsules.\n\n\n8\n\nIt could have been morning; it could have been night; the light on\nthe airfield was such as seeps across the northern pole in winter.\nEngines hiccupped and caught fire within themselves. Gouts of blue\nfire streamed from their steel nostrils and human figures warily aimed\nextinguishers as they crouched under the great wings. One B-29--a\nspecial craft--sucked up its ladder.\n\n\"Good luck!\" a thin voice called.\n\nThe slam of a hatch replied. The plane snorted, bellowed, vibrated\nagainst its chocks, and lurched about. Like a house on casters--like a\nhouse-sized aluminum insect, it moved in the opalescent murk.\n\nThere was a pause.\n\nAt Flight Control, the ground officers of the Twentieth Air Force made\na last check. It was not sergeant's work, or lieutenant's. Brass looked\nat the weather maps--high brass read the bulletins, squinted into\nthe instruments, followed the meterological balloons, talked through\ntelephones. Anxious brass at the hangar interrogated the mechs--studied\nthe quadruple checks, the four-colored V's ranged after a list of\nthirteen hundred and eleven critical parts of a very heavy bomber. In\nthe officers' mess, captains, young majors, young lieutenant colonels\nfilled their trays, walked to the tables, sat, listened while the juke\nbox sang--\n\nMy mammy done tole me--\n\nListened not to the song but to the quartet of motors on the gloomy,\nloud field.\n\nAbove the coughing and the clamor, the roar and thump of other\nengines--came the long run, tightening nerves.\n\n\"There she goes!\"\n\n\"War's over.\"\n\n\"Shut up! And who told you, lieutenant, anyhow? And what?\"\n\nThe ship--wider than she was long and just under a hundred feet from\ntailfin to bombardier's glass snout--gained altitude. Below, the island\nsank in the sea of air--palms, runways, warm, damp tropical odor of\nmold, hangars and administration buildings, flags.\n\nThere was now only the sky and the Pacific....\n\nThey would--someday--laugh at the B-29 even while they admired her,\nand more especially, the men who flew her. Schoolkids in a museum of\nthe far centuries--walking along plush ropes--examining the early\naeronautical exhibits. \"What a clumsy contraption! How dangerous! They\nused to explode in the air, you know. They could only fly about five\nthousand miles--bumped along at three hundred an hour. Hour, mind you!\nWhat on earth did they do to pass the time in such tight quarters?\nThey fought with guns--yeah--those tubes. Central fire control, they\ncalled it--they could shoot eleven pairs at once. Shoot? A chemical\nexplosion that pushed streamlined bits of metal from the tubes at low\nvelocities--fast enough, though, to kill a man--or bring down such\na crazy craft. Who'd think--one just like that--took the first real\nmissile--?\"\n\nThe bright kids-to-be, perhaps. Their galleons and triremes.\n\nShe took off--the then-perfect air-frame, slick and silver --a\nmultiplicity of engineering feats. She climbed. Five thousand. Eight.\n\n\"Okay. Pressurize.\"\n\nThe ears, hearts, lungs of sixteen men lost the feel of altitude and\nswiftly accepted the bubble of air that now flew in a metal skin.\n\nColonel Calm turned over the controls to Major Waite. The colonel's\nfamous fighting smile flashed upon the proud navigator, the flight\nengineer, the idle bombardier, and the co-pilot. \"You know the course,\nmajor.\"\n\nThe course, he meant, to the enemy.\n\nThe major had set plenty of cities on fire in his time. His brief time;\nhe was twenty-six. Twenty-six years old and he'd flown courses that\nhad burned out, smothered, smashed, and otherwise eliminated something\non the order (he figured, being a man of mathematical bent) of three\nbillion hours of human life. Expunged on that milk run. (You take the\naverage life expectancy in enemy cities, multiply by days in a year\nand hours in a day, and multiply that by two further factors: average\nfatalities in a raid and number of raids led by Major Waite. Three\nbillion man-woman-child hours, conservatively).\n\nColonel Calm glanced at Mr. Learned, the lone journalist permitted\nto go along--to write the eyewitness account. Mr. Learned sat on a\nparachute, his spectacles aslant, his hair awry, lost sleep whitewashed\non his sharp countenance. His knees made a desk for an aluminum\nhospital chart board and on this, on yellow paper, using a pencil of a\nsoft sort with which his pockets bulged, he scribbled. Once, he hitched\nat the collar of his unfamiliar uniform. A moment later, he glanced up.\nHe smiled.\n\nColonel Calm nodded and scrambled into the tunnel that ran to the rear\nof his ship.\n\nIt was a journey he detested.\n\nThe passageway--a straight, metal intestine lined with cloth--traversed\nthe bomb bay and was of a diameter sufficient to contain one crawling\nman. If a pressurized B-29 were hit badly--or if it blew a blister--a\nman in the tunnel would be rammed through it by compressed air like a\nprojectile and hurled against a bulkhead--head first, or feet first--at\nthe speed of a hundred and sixty miles an hour.\n\nThe colonel crawled--gnawed by claustrophobia. He pushed his chute\nahead in the dim tube--because that was regulations. He wished he had\nchosen to drag it, instead. The thing stuck. He lunged up over it and\nhis ribs came in contact with the curved top of the tunnel. He was\nhalf-jammed there. Sweat broke out on him--he tried to breathe--his\nribs hurt. He could yell--they could get a rope around his foot and\nhaul him back. He inched clear of the chute--pushed it forward, and\nwent on more slowly, struggling now with the afreets of panic--putting\nthem down like mutineers, savagely.\n\nNow he thought of the bomb bay--the oblong maw atop which he fought\nhis way. Big as a freight car. Big as two garages set end to end. Big\nenough to hold--how many horses? A dozen? And what did it contain?\n\nHis sweat dried up. His skin pimpled. Coldness seemed to flush the\ntube as coldness flushes a belly into which ice water has been gulped.\nWas the air here invisibly alive? Did uranium exude invisible, lethal\nrays--like radium? Or did it lie inert--in uncritical masses of unknown\nsizes (but not big)--waiting for union?\n\nHe went on.\n\nWhen, at last, his head appeared at the far end of the tunnel he wore,\nagain, his placid fighting smile.\n\nThe top CFC man dawdled in his swivel chair. The two blister gunners\nnodded and looked back into the neutral nothing of their provinces. The\nthird chap smiled softly.\n\nColonel Calm came down the ladder, stretched, picked up his chute\nfamiliarly, and went on to the radar room. It was, he thought, glancing\nback at the tunnel opening, hardly bigger than a torpedo tube. The\ncraft in many ways resembled a submarine, when you thought about it.\n\nThere were four men in the radar room. Two at tables. One squatting,\nrocking with the plane's slight motion; and one stretched on the Army\ncot. He saw the colonel.\n\n\"'Shun!\" he bawled.\n\n\"At ease, for God's sake!\" Colonel Calm went to an old man who stared\ninto the hood of a scope with the fascinated pleasure of a child seeing\nhis first stereopticon slides. \"Well, doctor? How is it going?\"\n\nSopho glanced up--and he smiled, too. That was the thing about the\ncolonel's mouth and eyes: you saw and you also smiled. Even when the\nkamikaze had connected, when Number 3 engine was on fire--pluming smoke\nand the CO2 wasn't making headway, when flak splashed black flowers\non the morning, when tracers rose like tennis balls, the deck was\nslick with gunners' blood, and when the inadequate, high, freezing air\nwhistled through the ship--scaling fast, bits of plexiglass. Even then,\nhe smiled--and you smiled back--and went on.\n\n\"Wonderful gadget,\" Dr. Sopho said, pointing to the hood, within which\nthe colonel could see a scanning light-streak and the radiant wake,\nfollowing and fading perpetually. \"After this trip,\" the scientist went\non, \"maybe we can go back to work. Real work. Maybe--\" he pointed at\nthe scope--\"use that for saving a few lives, instead.\"\n\n\"Hope so.\" The colonel thought of his tedious wife--of weary years in\nWashington--desiccated military establishments in Texas--the drain and\ndrag of peacetime. \"Hope so,\" he lied. \"Everything set?\"\n\nSopho grinned. \"Hope so.\"\n\n\"There's a chance of a dud--?\"\n\n\"Some. Partial dud, anyhow.\"\n\nThe colonel seemed agitated. \"In that case, wouldn't they get the\nsecret?\"\n\nThe old man had a goatee. He reached for it. \"Yes. Yes, they might.\nAnd spend the next twenty years trying to put one together.\"\n\nColonel Calm continued down a narrow passage and opened a small door.\nFreckles Mahoney was taking his ease at the breeches of his tail\nguns--rocked back--staring at the vault where the powdery light was\nleast. Daydreaming of a gum-chewing, short-haired, underbreasted\nKalamazoo High School babe--and keeping his eyes peeled.\n\nThe door shut.\n\nThe colonel nerved himself for the return passage. Worse than being\nborn--so far as he could remember. Dragging a placenta of parachute\nand harness through an aluminum canal with an atomic bomb beneath. He\ngave the three gunners his smile and they did not know it was--this\ntime--a smile of fighting himself. At any rate, he thought, after one\nmore crawl through eternity he could stay in the control compartment,\nforward. Unless Sopho wanted him.\n\nHe took hold of the ladder, sighted through the black tube to freedom's\neye at the far end--and his blood turned to water.\n\nThree men besides the gunners?\n\nHe felt horror between his shoulder blades--gun, knife, and worse. He\nchecked crew and passengers.\n\nHe pretended to be untangling his chute straps, preparing to go\nthrough the round-eyed hell. Jordan on the top blister. Smith left,\nhere. White right--and the unknown man beside him. No visible rank.\nCoveralls--insignia worn or torn off. Bearded like a submariner or the\nmen he had relieved on Guadal. Hawk nose, brown eyes--extraordinarily\nintelligent, too--firm mouth, a gentle, definitely civilian look. Never\nsaw him before.\n\nThis, the colonel realized, was obviously impossible.\n\nHe'd trained the crew, himself--picked each man, with special help\nfrom Headquarters--and met all the passengers weeks ago--old Sopho\nlast--but, still--weeks ago.\n\nEach member of the company--cleared, checked, quadruple-checked,\ntraced by G2 back through every childhood peccadillo, back through\ngenerations. Truman himself couldn't have got a man on board without\nthe colonel's okay--his invitation and acquaintance.\n\nHe felt sick and feeble; he clung to the ladder under the tunnel mouth\nand staggered as the B-29 dived ponderously through a downdraft. Some\nlast-minute thing, he decided; certainly the impossible passenger\ndid not appear to be dangerous. One could not look at him and think\nof sabotage at the same time. These bloody, accursed, God-damned\nscientists! Very Important Person--he looked every inch a VIP--a VIP in\nscience, not military affairs. No bearing to speak of--and that kindly\nsmile at the corners of that mouth.\n\nLast-minute stuff.\n\nIt would be assumed the colonel knew--but his four-way check had\nslipped.\n\nWhen he returned to base--chevrons would fall. Lieutenants, captains,\nmajors would drop back a grade.\n\n_See who he is._\n\nThe colonel went over to Smith, squatted.\n\n\"Skipper!\" Smith said, returning the smile, the Air Force treasure.\n\nThe ship thrummed. Buzzed. Hummed. Ate air. Hurried toward the enemy\nislands.\n\nColonel Calm feigned to look from the blister. He supposed he saw, in\nthe gray below, the corrugations of the Pacific, and above, the pearly\nheavens, the solid stretch of wing, the streamlined engine-housing.\nThey were there, at least.\n\n\"The man with White. His name. Can't think of it.\"\n\n\"Chris.\"\n\n\"Chris what?\"\n\nSmith seemed embarrassed. \"All I know. He came through the tunnel half\nan hour ago. 'Call me Chris,' he said. And he said, 'Mind if I sit?'\"\n\nThe smile was a mask. He could keep it on his face even now. Eyes\nlighted up by the battery of will, corners crinkled, lips relaxed, a\nhuman twitch of the nose--man-loving, disdainful of blood and death,\nenemy and calamity. He could.\n\n_Came through the tunnel._\n\nThe man had not been in the control cabin, to begin with.\n\nNo bearded man.\n\nNo--Chris.\n\nThe colonel turned on his bent toes, the stranger watching.\n\nShould he jump the guy?\n\nTell Smith to dive in with him?\n\nGo back for a pistol and shoot from the tunnel?\n\nThe man smiled pleasantly.\n\nColonel Calm stood up, went round the post and track--the high barber's\nchair--and the gear and machinery that subtended the gunner in the top\nblister.\n\n\"Hi,\" the colonel said.\n\n\"Wonderful--a ship like this!\"\n\n\"I've forgotten your last name.\"\n\n\"Chris.\"\n\n\"Oh. I don't believe I've had the pleasure--?\"\n\nThe man held out his hand. \"We've met. It was long ago, though.\"\n\nColonel Calm had the momentary sensation of remembering. Seen him\nsomewhere--that's a fact.\n\nChris was smiling. \"My being along was arranged late.\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"You'll want to look over my papers, perhaps? My orders, I should say.\"\n\n\"Yeah. White House stuff?\"\n\nThe man shrugged. \"Pretty high up, I'll admit.\" He began unbuttoning\nhis coveralls.\n\nThe colonel wished the man would stop looking so directly at him.\nPowerful eyes--like a lot of those scientific birds. They could, with\na glance, give you an impotent sensation--a feeling that you weren't\nin command at all. A feeling that they commanded a force which could\noutlast you and would defeat you in the end. They made you feel--Christ\nbite them!--like a tin soldier, sometimes. And yet--high up. VIP. This\nwas a trick mission--the trickiest of the war. You couldn't afford to\nmake a fool of yourself. \"Never mind,\" the colonel said. \"My major\nprobably checked you in--and forgot to mention it. The strain--\"\n\n\"I know your major, yes. Sad.\"\n\n\"Sad? Greatest flying officer who ever took a plane off a base!\"\n\n\"Cold-blooded.\"\n\n\"Right! Veins full of liquid helium. Have to be!\"\n\n\"Have to be? Perhaps. I always hesitated--though--to think of men as\nnumbers.\"\n\nThe colonel felt relieved. Major Waite's discussion of flight\nplans--his harangues in the briefing rooms--sometimes left the colonel\na little chilled. Emptied-out. Obviously this Chris knew the major.\nHe wasn't--fantastically--impossibly--an agent of the enemy. Now the\ncolonel gestured toward the bomb bay--the radioactive uterus of the\nplane. \"You--helped put it together?\"\n\nThe man seemed to grow pale. His smile disappeared. \"No.\"\n\n\"Then what--? In God's name what--?\"\n\n\"I am here,\" Chris said in so low a tone his voice scarcely carried\nthrough the pulsing air, \"because I promised.\"\n\n\"Promised? Promised who--when--?\"\n\n\"Because I said it. Lo, I shall be with you always, even unto the end\nof the world.\"\n\nThe colonel stared--and remembered. He turned the color of ashes. His\nright hand, ungoverned, made upon brow, shoulders and chest the sign\nof the Cross. His knees bent tremblingly.\n\nBut before he could genuflect the man called Chris touched his arm.\n\"Don't, colonel!\"\n\nThe officer, in his distraction, was muttering a woman's name, over and\nover.\n\nChris smiled painfully. \"I am here.\" He glanced, then, at the watching\ngunners.\n\nThe colonel looked that way, too, and recovered something of his\nfighting smile. They were--after all--his command. It wouldn't do\nto let them see him prostrate. The gunners responded to the direct\nglance--and the return of the smile--by a brightening of their eyes\nand a faint curving of the corners of their mouths; their attention\nwent back to duty--the duty of scanning the void outside the domes of\nplexiglass.\n\n\"My Lord--\" the colonel all but whispered--\"what shall we do?\"\n\n\"Return.\"\n\nThe soldier's eyes faltered. \"Abort the mission!\"\n\n\"I hoped I might persuade you.\"\n\n\"Another would merely follow--!\"\n\n\"And them.\"\n\n\"But--duty!\"\n\n\"To whom is duty?\"\n\nA head appeared in the round mouth of the tunnel. Learned, the\njournalist, grinned like an imp. \"Nasty crawl,\" he yelled. \"Hope\nthey've got that thing well insulated. Otherwise--I'm unsexed--or\nhotter than radium myself!\" He saw the stranger, and halfway down on\nthe ladder stood still. His eyes, ordinarily shrewd and compassionate,\nshowed first a little amazement--and then twinkled. \"A ringer! You\nwould pull one like that, colonel! The American press wants to know who\nhe is!\" Learned chuckled and dropped to the metal floor. Strode the two\nsteps forward. Gave his name. Held out his hand. Explained himself.\n\"You're a physicist, I take it?\"\n\n\"My name is Chris.\" The dark eyes were luminous and kind.\n\n\"Chris who?\"\n\nThe colonel took the journalist's arm in a hand like steel and\nwhispered.\n\nLearned, also, grew pale. He stared first at the colonel and then,\nuneasily, he eyed the stranger. Twice, the gleam of sardonic doubt\nshone. And twice, with all his will and concentration, he endeavored to\nmake some satirical reply: to say, skeptically, that this would be the\ngreatest interview in two millenniums.\n\nOr to ask how things were in the Blue Up Yonder.\n\nHe failed. He--too--abruptly knew. The resources of his training\nabandoned him--left but the residue of naked personality. His tongue\ncircled his lips. He gave the stranger another uncertain glance, a\nhopeful glance--and suddenly, on the impulse, took out his cigarettes\nand offered them.\n\nChris shook his head. \"Thanks, Learned.\"\n\n\"Do you mind--\"\n\n\"Of course not.\"\n\nNow the journalist and the colonel shakily fumbled with cigarettes and\nthe wavering flame of a match.\n\nChris had turned. He was looking expectantly toward the narrow door\nthat led to the radar room and from it, presently, Sopho came. \"Thought\nI'd run a counter through the tunnel,\" he began. \"Check things.\" He saw\nChris. \"Hello! Didn't realize I hadn't met the ship's full complement.\"\n\nThe colonel and the reporter watched.\n\n\"My name is Chris, doctor.\"\n\n\"Can't place you. The Chicago Group, perhaps. I didn't meet them all.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Army, then? White House? OSS? I'm a physicist. Sopho's the name.\"\n\n\"This man,\" said Learned, in a hoarse, uneven voice his ears had never\nheard before, \"comes from--another place.\" He told the physicist.\n\nDr. Sopho's right thumb and forefinger touched his small beard. Across\nthe back of his hand--tanned to leather by his long residence in the\ndesert--skin pimpled and the reddish hairs rose. The tiny phenomenon\npassed--passed like the eddy of air that dimples still water and\ndisappears. His great head with the thin nose and the straight,\nexaggerate brow bent forward attentively. He was searching the stranger\nfor obvious signs of madness. It became apparent that he found none.\n\n\"Incredible,\" he murmured.\n\n\"You do not believe me?\"\n\nThe scientist shook his head. \"My dear fellow--I do not even believe\n_in_ you. So--naturally--\" He turned with abruptness to the colonel.\n\"How did he get aboard? His papers?\" He now saw the colonel's frantic,\nimploring eyes. \"Great God, man--you don't accept--?\"\n\n\"It's the truth,\" Colonel Calm responded.\n\nSopho looked quickly at Learned--who glanced away.\n\nThe scientist seemed, for the first time, alarmed. Not alarmed at the\nstatement made by the man but at its effect upon two persons whom he\nhad considered impervious to wild suggestion. Obviously, it was up\nto him to break the lunatic's spell. Some fabulous stowaway--and the\njournalist and the soldier--drawn overfine by the magnitude of this\nmission--had become prey to imagination.\n\nOne humors the mad--at any rate, to begin with. \"I see,\" said Sopho.\n\nHe now faced the stranger--who stood in their midst. \"Tell me. Just why\ndid you decide to accompany this particular raid?\"\n\nChris, still smiling, repeated his words about his promise--and after\nthat, the promise.\n\n\"End of the world, eh?\" Sopho chuckled. \"You sure?\"\n\n\"Your world--perhaps.\"\n\n\"You want us to give it up? The mission?\" Sopho pointed at the bomb\nbay. \"That?\"\n\nChris looked steadily at him. \"If I remember rightly, doctor, you began\nthe preparation of--that--\" he, also, pointed--\"not to use against men,\nbut to have on hand if your other enemy employed such instruments. He\ndid not. He lies defeated.\"\n\nSopho nodded. \"Right. Now we are using it to shorten the war. Save\nlives.\"\n\n\"_Save_ lives?\"\n\n\"By shortening the war, man! Simple arithmetic--!\"\n\n\"What about--the next war? And the next? The wars beyond that?\"\n\n\"This weapon should--and in my opinion will--put an end to war.\"\n\nSlowly, Chris shook his head. \"Strange reasoning. A _weapon_ will put\nan end to war.\"\n\n\"An absolute weapon, man! The world will never again risk going to war.\nNever again dare take the risk!\"\n\n\"It will fear too much, you think?\"\n\n\"Precisely.\"\n\n\"But isn't it fear, doctor, that has always caused men to wage war?\nFear in this form today--tomorrow in that form--?\"\n\n\"Can you think of a better means of ending wars--foolish wastes!--than\nan absolute weapon? We have changed the whole picture of war!\"\n\n\"But not changed men!\"\n\nThere ensued a moment without talk.\n\nChris presently said, \"This weapon. Where it falls, the genes\nof men will be broken. Perhaps their children--perhaps their\ngrandchildren--will carry the heritage. Headless bodies. Eyeless\nfaces. There--teeth everywhere. And yonder--no voice. Generation after\ngeneration, for a thousand years--this great invention will go on\nwaging your present war, doctor, against the unborn.\"\n\nThe colonel grabbed the scientist's arm. \"Is that true?\"\n\nSopho shrugged. \"In a certain per cent of cases, where radiation\nis extreme but not fatal--naturally, the reproductive capacity\nwill display unpredictable, permanent damage. Recessive damage.\nWhen, however, two persons mate who exhibit matching gene\ndeterioriation--then--as this man says--\"\n\nThe colonel's hand dropped. \"I didn't know,\" he murmured. \"Not\ncertainly. I didn't even know that you men were sure.\"\n\nLearned spoke. \"War against the generations! Good--!\" He checked\nhimself.\n\nChris said, \"Have you that right?\"\n\nSopho replied angrily, \"That's a right implicit in any war! If you kill\na soldier--you destroy _all_ his potential progeny--not simply endanger\na few of them. The same fact applies to civilians.\"\n\n\"You do not,\" Chris answered, \"corrupt the children of the survivors\nfor centuries to come. No.\" He meditated a moment. \"If the salt of the\nearth shall lose its savor, wherewith shall ye resavor it?\"\n\nSopho said, \"If changing man's environment will not change the evil of\nwar--\"\n\n\"Evil?\" Chris repeated questioningly. \"But does not man always believe\nhis wars are just? Whatever cause--whichever side?\"\n\nSopho ignored the inquiry. \"--how do we change man?\"\n\n\"Love one another,\" Chris said.\n\nA slow smile came upon the physicist's face. \"We should have loved the\nNazis? And love the Jap who lies ahead?\"\n\n\"Of course.\" Chris nodded soberly. \"If you had loved them, you would\nnever have let them sink into the pit of their despair--arm--turn upon\nyourselves. Had you loved them, you would have assisted them--before\nyou were compelled to restrain them by such violence.\"\n\n\"The rights of nations--\" Sopho began.\n\n\"--exist in the minds of men. You did not love them. You loved\nyourselves. You saw torment born in them all, and saw it grow, and\nfeared it--and stood, like any Pharisee, reciting your virtues but not\nlifting a finger to assist them.\"\n\n\"He's right.\" Learned shook his head ruefully. \"How right he is!\"\n\n\"Love!\" Sopho said the word scornfully. \"Little you know of Nature.\nLittle of love you'll see there!\"\n\n\"It's strange,\" Chris answered, \"that I see in Nature nothing _else_\nbut love. Pain--yes. Sorrow--yes. Tragedy--yes. To every individual.\nYet--in the sum of Nature--only love.\"\n\nSopho's eyebrows arched skeptically. \"Do you really believe that the\nprimitive phrases of a man who possibly existed--some two thousand\nyears ago--could fix the attention of a modern scientist?\"\n\n\"Evidently they do not.\" Chris bent and peered through the round,\nbowed window of the ship as if he could orient himself even among\nthe traceless clouds. He looked at them again. \"I talked in very\nsimple words, doctor, to very simple people. The extreme simplicity\nof the formulations should--I thought--make the concepts increasingly\nunderstandable, as men pursued truth. I advised them, remember,\nto know the truth. I meant all of truth. I warned them that an\nexcessive fascination with worldly goods--to the exclusion of inner\ngoodness--would undo all peace of mind--\"\n\nSopho chuckled. \"Surely--we've pursued truth? What we carry today\nrepresents a great accumulation of truth! And I'll also agree that most\nmen who merely amass worldly goods--the rich--aren't greatly interested\nin science. In truth. In anything but money. Still--\"\n\nChris had raised his hand. \"This ship--the bomb it carries--all the\nequipment and paraphernalia of the universities which lie behind\nit--the projects undertaken and achieved there--what are they, too,\ndoctor--if not worldly goods?\"\n\n\"Then you would have us put science aside? Stop seeking such truth--?\"\n\n\"Seek truth in two ways, doctor. Within--and without.\" He drew a\nbreath, frowned and spoke again. \"Love--in man--takes various forms.\nLove of self. Love of woman. Love of other men. Love of cosmos. Each is\nan altruism so designed that, through love, man shall preserve himself\nin dignity, procreate, and preserve all others even at the cost of his\nown life. Greater love hath no man than this last. Not one of these\naltruisms can be peacefully maintained unless the others also are\ngiven their proportionate due. The conscience of a man rises from the\nrelatedness of these loves and is his power to interpret how valuable,\nrelatively, each one is--not to him alone, but to all men, as each man\nis beholden to all. To reason only in the mind is to express the love\nof worldly goods, alone. Have you ever reasoned in your heart, doctor?\"\n\n\"Irrational emotions! Reason has no place there!\"\n\n\"But it has. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. You scientists\nrefuse to study how your hearts think. Repent, I said. Confess, the\nchurches say--and worldliness encompasses them! Join, they say. But I\nsay, when you have yielded up your vanity you will contain the immortal\nlove. My time is short, gentlemen. I thought to remind you.\"\n\n\"I remember--!\" the colonel's lips pronounced the inaudible words.\n\nLearned looked at the floor. \"How do you tell them--now?\"\n\nSopho said disgustedly, \"Metaphysics!\"\n\n\"Light was the symbol I tried to give them,\" Chris went on gently. \"The\nCross was the symbol they adopted. The pain of self-sacrifice was\nobvious to them. The subjective reward--incomprehensible. Thus they\nchanged it all. I told them of many mansions. They chose this mansion\nor that--and scoured each other off the earth, to set one heaven in\nplace of the heaven of those they defeated. Holy wars! Is such a thing\nconceivable to God as a holy war? Alas. The words--the images--the\neffort is still uncomprehended. I said Light. I said Truth. I said\nFreedom. I meant enlightenment. Yet nearly every church that uses my\nname is a wall against light and a rampart against enlightenment,\nusing fear, not love, to chain the generations in terror and pain and\nignorance.\" He pointed again. \"And now--this is called civilization,\nand in my name, also! Enlightenment! Knowledge!\" He fell silent; but at\nlast, smiled a little. \"A few knew. A few will always know. Francis of\nAssisi--he guessed. Thomas \u00e0 Kempis. Most who knew were church heretics\nin their day--as I was in mine. And what I say is still heresy.\"\n\nHe became silent again. He looked from face to face. \"Colonel. You are\na soldier. You are ready by your profession to die for other men. It is\na noble readiness. Will you turn back?\"\n\nThe colonel retreated a step and leaned against the riveted bulkhead.\nSweat once more broke upon his countenance, poured down; he crossed\nhimself again and Chris sadly shook his head.\n\nFinally the colonel could speak. \"You ask me to be disloyal.\"\n\n\"I ask you--only to decide in your own self--what loyalty is.\"\n\n\"I cannot turn, then.\"\n\n\"Learned?\"\n\nThe journalist's eyes were steady--and tragic. \"Nothing would be\ngained. Others would merely follow in place of us.\"\n\n\"I but asked you to decide for yourself--not for them.\"\n\nThe journalist flushed. \"In my profession we do not even agree to stand\nready to die for other men. I am here not to determine, but merely to\nreport.\"\n\n\"Sopho?\"\n\nThe physicist's eyes blazed suddenly. \"Yes,\" he said. \"I'll go back! I\nwas never certain. I am always ready to re-study a problem!\"\n\nChris put his arm around the old man. \"_You!_\"\n\nBut the scientist pulled away. \"On one condition.\"\n\n\"And that?\"\n\n\"Prove yourself!\"\n\n\"But, doctor, it is you who must provide the testimony--!\"\n\n\"Empirical evidence is my condition. Something measurable. Suspend, for\none moment, one natural principle--\"\n\nRuefuly, Chris laughed. \"To simple men--fishermen, farmers, tax\ncollectors--the power of any genuine conviction seemed miraculous\nbecause of its accomplishments. I healed the neurotics of my day. By\nsuggestion, I added to the innocent gaiety of many a gathering. But\neven that poor, positive procedure is inverted now; many churches find\ntheir miracles in the hysterics of their own sick--bleeding, stigmata,\nfits!\" He sighed. \"Surely you, doctor, a miracle-maker in reality--are\nnot na\u00efve enough to ask that the very heart of truth be magically\nviolated so you may _accept_ truth? The evidence is--_within you_. I\nnever said more. Find it there, man!\"\n\n\"I thought so,\" the doctor replied in a cold voice.\n\nChris spoke persuasively. \"_You_ could work a miracle of transformation\nwithin _yourself_. But--even if I should suspend the very forces upon\nwhich that possibility depends--you would exert the last resource of\nyour ingenuity to find out by what mechanical trick I achieved your\nillusion, as you'd call it! Prove, doctor, that you would not!\"\n\n\"Let's see the experiment.\" Sopho's eyes were hard.\n\nThe stranger thought a moment and presently chuckled to himself. \"The\nunsolved riddle of the _cause_--the _source_--the nature--of the energy\nin your atoms, doctor! Would you like to understand that next step in\nyour science?\"\n\n\"Impossible!\"\n\nChris looked ardently at the old man.\n\nA moment later, the scientist's eyes shut. An expression of immense\nconcentration came upon his features. Perspiration welled and trickled\non his countenance--as on the colonel's. Suddenly his eyes opened\nagain. He grabbed the colonel's arm. \"Great God, man! I've cracked the\ntoughest problem in physics! The thing just came to me this moment!\nWhy! With this equation--we'll be able to make bombs that will assure\nAmerican domination for a century! I'll win my second Nobel Prize!\nEvery nuclear physicist's head will swim with envy! The financial\npossibilities--billions!--trillions! I'll just get it on paper--!\"\nHe broke off. \"Wasn't there--somebody else--standing here?\" he said\nperplexedly. \"Never mind! Lend me a pencil, Learned!\"\n\n\"Somebody else?\" The colonel shook his head. \"Nobody but the three of\nus. And the gunners. Jesus, I wish this mission was ended! I've been\nhaving a terrible struggle in my conscience about it!\"\n\nLearned said, \"Have you? Me--too. I kind of hate humanity today. I kept\nwishing--something would break down, and stop the whole thing. I get a\nchoked-up feeling when I think of those people.\"\n\nThe scientist was crouching, now--gazing at the streaming gray\ndesolation beyond the windows. \"Funny,\" he said to the gunner at his\nside. \"A minute ago--I was sure I'd got a new insight into a very\ncomplex problem. Now--I can't even remember my approach.\"\n\nThe gunner, who held palaver of the brass and all VIPs to be but one\nmore nuisance of war, said, \"Yeah?\"\n\nThe B-29 flew on toward its as yet unspecified destination.\n\nThe City of Horror and Shame.\n\nBack at the base, the brass was laying plans for a second run--to the\nCity of Naked Sorrow.\n\n\n9\n\nA scorcher.\n\nIt was my father's phrase and came back to me as familiarly, when I\nopened my eyes, as the heard reveille of my childhood. The sun glared\non the dark window-blinds, penetrating them at myriad pinpoints. I\nremembered summer mornings in Massachusetts, Ohio, North Dakota,\nJersey, and on the cool, bright shores of Lake George.\n\n\"Rise and shine, everybody! It's a scorcher!\"\n\nThe buoyant baritone of a man of God, excited by his life, frustrated\nin every excitement by his Faith; a man in there, as we used to say,\ntrying.\n\nThe room was a fumarole--its atmosphere spent by my breathing and\nstained with the carbonic reek of yesterday's cigarettes. Nothing came\nthrough the windows; they were open to the eye--but invisibly walled by\nthe heat. A stratum of smoke and dust lay across a sunbeam; the light\npierced it, struck the corner of a mirror, broke, and rebounded to the\nceiling in a prismatic dazzle: red, green, blue, yellow, purple.\n\nThe little awl had ceased pecking my throat. I swallowed--without\nunnatural sensation--reached for the phone, ordered coffee, and sat up\nnaked on the bed's edge, leaving a damp plaster cast of myself in the\nsheet. I took a short shower and picked up the Sunday papers cautiously.\n\nKarl didn't speak.\n\nSaving his strength for the exhaustion of the day.\n\nTen-fifteen.\n\nThe coffee set my nerves dancing like a swarm of gnats, without\nbringing relief from the deadness, the ache, the recollection of sleep\nin every cell--fatiguing sleep--and the yearn for youth's restful\nslumber.\n\nI dialed Paul's Brooklyn number on the private line.\n\nThe phone rattled in his heat-trap and not even a ghost took it up to\nlisten.\n\nLint on the divan--lint and threads--and I began to pick compulsively.\n\nNothing much in the papers.\n\nThe airlift.\n\n(How could we, the American people, take pride in our freight\nflights when we had permitted ourselves to be euchered into the\nextravagance--only to meet force again in sillier forms? The effort\nwas without dignity, without principle, without understanding, without\nsense.)\n\nThe pennant race.\n\n(I remembered Babe Ruth.)\n\nA call girl had been arrested, after the cops had tapped her telephone\nand listened. I viewed her attractive face in the tabloids and read the\nelaborate report of her dialogue with her clients.\n\n(Since when had freedom stooped to tap the phones of prostitutes?\nWhat excellence of police was this, in a world community where hardly\nan honest man or woman remained, where half a billion people slowly\nstarved, where thieves and cheats were commoner than spots of oil or\nhorse-dung in streets? And how the cops enwhored Lady Liberty when they\ninvaded the life of that busy lass! Truly dirty deeds bought their own\nbig privacies: corporations burned their books and politicians lost\ntheir records. Mere tarts, however, had their phones tapped and their\nwords recorded. What a splendid free nation I had come to live in! With\nwhat marvels of detective science!)\n\nWell--not for long.\n\nMy weary effort would soon peter out.\n\nMaybe then I could go and watch Kipling splash on his big-league canvas\nwith brushes of comet's hair.\n\nI pondered for a while over those hairy comets.\n\nWell. All of us had short arms. We all reached too far.\n\nI dialed Dave.\n\nVeto said he was asleep and would call me when he woke.\n\nWhen will Monday come?\n\nNever?\n\nWhy be impatient? Isn't it better to not-know?\n\nNot for Joe! No, no, no.\n\nFinally, I got my chassis, frame, machine, chemical factory, over to\nthe bridge table and, though my pilot was still missing, I began to fly\nbetter on my iron mike.\n\n(Isn't it great to be up-to-date?)\n\nAt noon, the phone screamed.\n\n\"Hi, boy!\"\n\n\"Hey. Thanks.\"\n\n(I should have used those roses in my _crise_. They were there. I\nwasn't.)\n\nDave took a fraction of a second to decide not to say what he had been\nabout to say. Perhaps that he was afraid I'd think him foolish.\n\nI looked at the flowers and the pilot was sitting amongst them.\n\n\"Any news of our Paul?\" he asked.\n\n\"My agent lost the trail around midnight.\"\n\n\"I've got bulletins up to three A.M.--last time he called. He'd been to\nMadam Blaine's--and she'd given him the runaround.\"\n\n\"Marcia's there,\" I said.\n\n\"I know. I called after that and Hattie put her on. Rough gal.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"In a bad mood. Wanted me to come up.\"\n\n\"I went there and caught her act, personally.\"\n\nDave said, \"I honest-to-God didn't think there was any need of putting\na tail on the lad. Maybe I should have. Now what?\"\n\n\"Now we wait till he gets hungry, sleepy, or runs out of dough.\"\n\n\"I'll keep you posted from my end. I'll send Charlie over to Paul's\napartment again. Do a couple of other things. And stop by later.\"\n\n\"If he checks with me, I'll let you know.\"\n\n\"Good. I've got a meeting with my moguls right after lunch. They\nare trying to dream up a cycle. Yesterday--they ran through the\nFrankenstein possibilities and then got in your territory--animal\nhorror. You should have been there! You would have yorked parade\nfloats.\"\n\n\"You might suggest phallic worship. Remember? They could put it in the\npast. You know, Mu, Atlantis, Lemuria, Ancient Rome. I doubt if the\ncensors would gather what it was. Think it was educational. How about a\ndocumentary of Pompeii?\"\n\n\"I'll enter it on my agenda.\" Dave whistled down the scale. \"Some\nweather! I took in my human head. It had stopped shrinking. I was\nafraid it might explode.\"\n\n\"You better pack a little dry ice in your own hat!\"\n\n\"How you feeling?\"\n\n\"About like Utah.\"\n\nHe considered that. \"Jesus,\" he said. \"Take it easy! Be over by and by.\"\n\nI got dressed and went downstairs.\n\nThere were people--maybe two dozen--in the Knight's Bar, for lunch,\nresuscitation, or the pelt of the dog that bit them.\n\nNot Yvonne, though. A bit early.\n\nThe city was shockingly quiet. When the traffic lights changed,\nsometimes, nothing else did. You could hear one car pass on the street.\nEven the buses seemed enfeebled: their special arrangements for\ntraumatizing man roared, ground, and hammered only at long intervals.\n\nThe Musak was trying hymns, or an unreasonable facsimile thereof.\n\nWith twenty-one cold shrimps, a couple of ounces of mayonnaise, some\nlettuce, and a few gills of iced coffee inside me, I felt better.\n\nWhen I got out on the sixteenth soaking pit I discovered Yvonne\nknocking on my door--my hall door, for a wonder. After a little\nbickering, I went back to the cold restaurant with her. Not too much\nbickering.\n\nIt was the New Yvonne. Anybody could see that. She was dressed up in\ndark-blue linen and she ordered crustaceans, too, on my recommendation.\nThen she began to talk.\n\n\"I'm going back to Pasadena on the afternoon plane,\" she said. \"I've\nbeen talking to Rol about half the morning. I talked away a fortune.\nBut it was worth it. I told him--everything.\"\n\n\"Everything?\"\n\nShe nodded. Her gray eyes were gentle, inaccessible, fixed on a\nplane-landing a couple of thousand miles away, and night in the\nlamplit, lower hills of California, where the eucalyptus trees grow.\nShe repeated the opening gambit on Long Distance:\n\nIt's me, Rol. I want to come back.... I know you want me to.... But I\ndon't know if you will when.... Look! Think of why I went.... Don't\napologize! Don't _be_ like that! Because--Rol--me, too!\n\nHe didn't believe her.\n\nThen he thought it was--masochistic experiment.\n\nDon't you see, darling, that's why I was so extra frantic? So weirdly\nangry? I had to find that out.\n\n\"Then he was jealous!\" Yvonne laughed softly--happily. \"I think that\nwas good for him.\"\n\n\"No doubt.\"\n\n\"In the end--all he could say was, 'Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!'\"\n\n\"And you feel like hurrying?\"\n\nShe spoke reproachfully. \"Wouldn't you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I want to have eighteen kids,\" she said. \"And I want them all to grow\nup florists and nurserymen and horticulturists. I understand me. Us.\nHe had to spend all his time in the greenhouses because I spoiled the\nwhole rest of his world. I'll get him out oftener, now. Not too much.\nEnough.\"\n\nI looked at her--the clear amethyst irises, the gilded cascade of her\nhair, the expectation of her body. \"You sure will.\"\n\n\"I'm so--full--so--complete. So--_ready_.\"\n\n\"There are other girls like Gwen,\" I said. \"Some.\"\n\n\"I'll be busy. Don't you think? The children, for one thing. And my\nlibido will be preoccupied, I imagine. Don't you? And suppose I had a\nsmall emotional accident some foggy afternoon at Malibu?\"\n\n\"Rol would raise hell.\"\n\nHer dimples showed. \"I would try to make certain he never found out\nabout it. My privacy. And I am quoting you, Dr. Wylie! Oh, I could hug\nyou right here and now! And anyway--it isn't so much something you\ndo. It's something to know is unlocked, that's all. When you can--you\nprobably never do; when you can't--you hardly do anything but yearn;\nand never know for what. You know that--don't you? That's why Gwen--?\"\n\nI picked up her hand and looked at the big, square diamond.\n\n\"Pin none of your flowers on me, cooky. It was a dangerous\nprescription. I tried to weasel out of the charge that I'd compounded\nit. But I did. Mr. Wylie's toxic monologue.\"\n\n\"Mr. Wylie's elixir for the self-righteous.\"\n\n\"America,\" I said, \"is the wrong climate for taking a capsule of that\nso-called sin and expecting a cure. In some other country--or age--\"\n\n\"Don't orate today. I couldn't listen.\" She ate a shrimp. \"I wish I\nknew more about you.\"\n\n\"Me, too.\" I went on, \"Be good to Rol. Remember--these high tides run\nout. And remember--they always come in again.\"\n\n\"You going?\" She said it almost without interest. She didn't need\ncompany any more.\n\nI nodded. \"The last installment is passing through the chopper. Here's\nanother item, cooky. People who live in greenhouses mustn't cast the\nfirst stone.\"\n\nFor a moment, her gaze faltered.\n\nI watched delicate changes of her color; she had beautiful skin. I\nwatched the old stain reappear in her eyes. Her chin thrust out a\nlittle and shook a little and was firm. Her eyes turned amethyst again.\n\"I'll remember,\" she said.\n\nI thought she would, maybe.\n\n\"Do me a favor?\" She was opening her handbag. \"I haven't told dad I was\nflying back. I don't want to go through all the argument. Will you call\nhim--after five-thirty?\"\n\n\"If I don't forget.\"\n\nShe closed the bag. \"I bet you would! So thanks anyhow. I can wire\nhim--from La Guardia.\"\n\n\"Safer.\"\n\nShe said, \"Good-bye, Phil.\"\n\nI kissed her.\n\n\n10\n\nIt didn't seem possible to work.\n\nFor half an hour I fussed around--trying to feel cooler--looking at my\nthroat in the living room mirror and then the mirror on the medicine\nchest in the bathroom--hunting for a sunless spot in the forest-green\nsitting room--shunting the bridge table about.\n\nI condensed the opening of Part Six in my mind, then tapped out the\nresult on the portable. I thought Durfree would like it. Editors are\nfond--overfond of brevity. I took a shower and tried to write wet, but\nit ran down me, and my tail itched on the turkish towel. Finally, I got\ncutting again.\n\nPaul showed up around four--when I had about ten pages--an hour--left\nto go.\n\nHe looked like an adolescent registering despair in an amateur play.\n\n\"Nothing,\" he said, and he sat down listlessly in an over-stuffed easy\nchair that was covered with chintz in full leaf. He didn't bother even\nto loosen his tie.\n\nI looked at him and compassion melted out of me.\n\n\"Eaten?\"\n\nHe nodded. \"Had to. Have to keep going.\"\n\nI said, \"Nuts.\"\n\nIt was time, I thought, for Dr. Wylie to reverse the field. We had been\nrunning with sympathy too long.\n\nTears filled his eyes. \"I hate to make such a spectacle of myself!\"\n\n\"How _right_ you are!\"\n\n\"Phil--I'm caving in! I can't think of another thing to do. My guts are\nfull of ground glass. All I see--is Marcia--in my mind. I can't go on\nthis way--\"\n\n\"Want to quit--going on that way?\"\n\n\"How can I?\" It sounded as if he didn't want to quit.\n\nI said, \"Listen, Paul, if you care to go to the cleaner, the dentist\nand down a gantlet all at once--you can quit.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Want a look at the real score? Or do you prefer to carry the torch of\nyour slap-happy illusions forever?\"\n\nHe stared. \"You know something you've kept from me!\"\n\n\"Certainly. I know a lot I couldn't tell you if I tried.\"\n\n\"For Christ's sake--!\"\n\n\"All right. And remember, you asked. You went up to Hattie's last\nnight--\"\n\n\"That fat she-fiend--!\"\n\n\"--and they said Marcia wasn't there. But she was.\"\n\nHe leaped to his feet. \"I'll grab a cab--\"\n\nI got to my feet, too--not by leaping, and stood in front of him.\n\"You'll grab no cab, Paul. Sit down--or shall I sit you down?\"\n\n\"Go on--\" he said. \"Tell me, then.\"\n\n\"Marcia is up at Hattie's--working.\"\n\nHe looked at me dementedly and snatched the phone.\n\n\"You won't get them to put her on,\" I said. \"She doesn't want to talk\nto you.\"\n\n\"I'm calling the cops,\" he answered. \"I'll bust that joint wide open\nand get her out, if it's the last thing--!\"\n\nI hung up his telephone by reaching out with my foot. \"Listen, Paulo.\nListen good, once. You've made a lot of mistakes. Some, you admit.\nSome, you haven't caught on to--in spite of the infallible, scientific\nmind. And others--you haven't the empirical data to guess.\"\n\n\"For the love of God, say what you're going to say!\"\n\n\"Marcia is a whore. Was, is, and always will be. Sit still. I am\ngiving you the advantage of a certain amount of background. And I am\nnot the kind of guy who says that a girl who sells her body always\nsells her soul. You know it! The trouble with you isn't Marcia--it's\nneurotic stubbornness. Trying with all your might to make a cheesy\nsetup turn beautiful. Chopping yourself down at the knees. Then--when\nyou're on your knees--chopping off the stump where your manhood ought\nto be. And so on up--through the guts and the heart. All that's left\nis a crazed beezer. I had a long talk with your Marcia yesterday. If\nyou'll try to stay in one piece, I'll tell you about it, in a sec.\nBut--meanwhile--somebody ought to brief you on the fact that there may\nbe only one kind of love in the folklore of the U.S.A.--but there are\nfive thousand kinds in people. Marcia had a kind for you that didn't\nmatch your sentiments for her. Look at it that way.\"\n\nThen I told him about my s\u00e9ance with his lambent, incorrigible girl\nfriend.\n\nHe did listen.\n\nI have to say that.\n\nHe listened like a man in the hands of the Gestapo trying to see if,\nperhaps, keeping quiet and not moving a muscle will help the pain.\n\nWhen I wound it up, my compassion was coming back:\n\n\"I'm sick of it, Paul! Dave's sweating over you when he already has\nplenty to keep him busy. We've chased around for you the whole damned\nweekend--both of us with other things to do, and troubles of our own.\nWhy? We think a lot of you. Because you're having the rough end of the\nrough time, we are, too. You were shot from worrying about the state of\nthe world. A damned good-looking babe moved in on you and made it twice\nas rough. And you don't understand yourself. But the time has come to\nshut the book, Paul. The chapter's finished. There's no epilogue. It\nisn't one of my stories, boy. No happy ending. You couldn't get her\nback if you were the chief of police. You _could_ get her back if you\nwere Midas--and that way you wouldn't want her. She got a big throb out\nof you. She was as honest as she's able to be--for a time. Her mother\ninstinct kept her going awhile. But she was soon laying the boys in the\nback room even though she was doing your cooking, nights. She offered\nme a deal--and if that doesn't cure you, son--\" I racked the brain for\na conclusion--\"well, go on up and buy a hunk.\"\n\nHe didn't say anything.\n\nI suppose he sat for five minutes.\n\nHis face was just--sweaty, like everybody's--and gray, and apparently\nrelaxed.\n\nWhen he walked over to the window, I thought I'd won, and my nerves\ngave an inch or two--so I could go on living a little while longer,\nmyself.\n\nBut he leaned way down, lifted his long, slatty leg, stepped out on the\nterrace, and hopped up on the parapet. Sixteen stories of straight wall.\n\nI went after the God-damned fool.\n\nHe turned around and sat there.\n\n\"Don't come any nearer,\" he said. His voice was like bad brakes.\n\nSo I leaned against the sill.\n\nHe saw, quicker than I, that his ankles were in range of a dive. He\npulled them up, pivoted, and stretched out on the top of the wall. It\nwas cement--about a foot wide. And baking hot. He rocked and wriggled\nfor a minute, took off his coat, folded it, and stuffed it under\nhimself. While doing that, he almost lost his balance. He caught a\nfingerhold on the inside edge of the concrete, which stuck out over the\nbricks a half or three-quarters of an inch.\n\n\"Paul,\" I said, \"for God's sake, come in.\"\n\n\"I like it here.\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\n\"I want to think.\"\n\n\"Help yourself.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't understand.\"\n\nI went back through the window and into my apartment. I was quivering\nlike a broken spring and my mind wasn't tracking. I shoved into the\nbathroom and poured a glass of water. Equal parts of fright and\nfury--as intense as I'd ever felt--slopped the water. I drank what was\nleft. Then I went back to the window.\n\n\"Listen,\" I said. \"I can't stop you, if you want to knock yourself off.\nBut this is my apartment. Jump from somewhere else, will you?\"\n\n\"I haven't decided.\"\n\n\"Well, then, come on in and make up your mind. I'm high-shy. I don't\nlike to stand on that terrace. And seeing a guy--even you--silhouetted\nagainst my skyline makes me sick at the stomach.\"\n\n\"It's the only thing I ever heard of that makes you sick! New\nexperience for you. You like new experiences. Try to get a kick out of\nit.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I said. \"Jump, then, you yellow sissy.\"\n\nHe nearly did. He swung around so his legs dangled in the air--all\nthose stories above the sidewalk. His fingers on the concrete rim\nturned white and his muscles vibrated.\n\n\"Paul!\" I moaned at the fool.\n\nHe pulled back. \"I'm not afraid,\" he said--as if to himself and in a\nsurprised tone. \"It's just that--I haven't quite decided.\"\n\n\"Please, cooky!\" I put all the begging I have into it.\n\nHe shrugged. \"Maybe--later.\"\n\nHe let go and fished in his pockets.\n\n\"Wait,\" I said.\n\nI climbed out again with the cigarettes. Possibly--\n\n\"Toss 'em!\"\n\nI threw one--he reached--and it sailed out of sight, the sun catching\nit at the top of its arc. I tossed another. He got that one.\n\n\"Better go back inside,\" he said.\n\nHe lighted up and commenced to smoke.\n\nI went in.\n\nBy then I was beginning to think a little. If I had a rope, I might\nget it over him. Only I didn't have a rope. And I might fail on the\nfirst try--in which case there probably would not be a second chance.\nIf I could distract him for a bit, I still might grab him. Only, if\nthere was any slip-up about that--he'd dive the sixteen floors. Well,\nthen--what did you try to remind them of? How bright they were? How\nyoung? Or did you keep taunting them until they either went, or gave\nup? It looked as if that last wasn't right for Paul.\n\nMy phone rang.\n\n\"Mr. Wylie? This is Mr. Harrison--at the desk.\" He sounded upset. He's\na nice guy--the assistant manager.\n\nI said, \"Yes.\"\n\nHis sigh seemed relieved. \"Would you mind looking out your window? A\nwoman has just come into the lobby who says there's a man in shirt\nsleeves sitting on the parapet.\"\n\n\"There is,\" I said. \"It's my nephew, Paul Wilson.\"\n\nMr. Harrison laughed uneasily. \"Pretty dangerous--\"\n\nI glanced at Paul. He was staring straight down again. \"He's on the\nverge of jumping.\"\n\n\"Jumping!\"\n\n\"And I can't get near enough to grab him. Whatever you do in a case\nlike this--for God's sake start doing it quick! Only--if anybody tries\nto snatch him and he knows it--he'll probably go.\"\n\n\"Oh-my-God!\"\n\n\"It's a mess. I'm sorry. And I need help. Intelligent help--quick.\"\n\n\"Do what I can.\"\n\nI went back to the window.\n\n\"Who was that?\" Paul asked. \"Another whore?\"\n\n\"The management,\" I said. \"You're attracting attention.\"\n\nHe grinned acidly. \"I know. Quite a few people already.\"\n\n\"Showing off?\"\n\n\"Not giving a damn.\"\n\nI sat down in a chair. I needed to sit down. Presently I called out to\nhim, \"If I get Marcia on the phone, will you talk to her?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Because things are past that.\" He looked up Madison Avenue toward\nnothing. \"Way, way past that.\"\n\nI smoked a couple of cigarettes.\n\nNothing happened. The sun went down a few more inches. I suppose the\ntop of the parapet got cooler. Big, square shadows began to ride up the\nbuildings across the street.\n\n\"Paul, come on in! Let's talk. You're in no condition to be doing\nwhat you imagine is thinking--and you know it! Anybody can put a\nperiod after his life, any time. What you need is a vacation. A decent\none--with jack to spend--maybe at the seashore or up at Lake George.\nI'll give it to you. I'll persuade Brink you need the time off--\"\n\nHe laughed--laughed like somebody masticating gravel. \"All the dough in\nthe world couldn't buy me off this perch.\"\n\n\"Nobody's trying to buy you. I'm trying to--\"\n\n\"Oh, shut up. I want to think.\"\n\nThere was a light knock on my door, at that point. I opened it. A cop\nstood out there and a fireman behind him and Mr. Harrison behind them.\nThe cop had a tough, smart face and he whispered. \"Will he jump if we\ncome in?\"\n\n\"Search me.\"\n\n\"You okay?\"\n\n\"More or less.\"\n\n\"Can you keep him talking? We're rigging a net in the apartment below\nthere. We've got a couple of experts on the way, besides. Leave this\ndoor ajar--so they can get to your bedroom.\"\n\nI nodded.\n\nThey slipped away.\n\nPaul asked, when I came back, \"Who was it?\"\n\n\"The maid.\"\n\nHe accepted that.\n\n\"Cigarette?\"\n\n\"Thanks.\"\n\nI got outside and sat on my windowsill, about ten feet from him.\n\n\"I remember,\" I said, \"the first time it happened to me.\"\n\n\"What happened?\"\n\n\"The first time I was really in love. Her name was Ruth. She was a\nlittle gal. Light-brown hair and the kind of eyes that look up at you.\nLittle breasts and shy, inquisitive hands. I--\"\n\n\"Save it for the magazines.\"\n\n\"I was crazy about her. But I had to go to college and I couldn't\nafford to see her often. Couldn't afford to take her to the proms. A\nChristmas vacation came around and we threw a party at the house of\na friend whose folks had gone south. We all got tight. I missed her\nwhen I was dancing--and started looking. I found her upstairs--in a\nbedroom--with a guy in my class. After that--\"\n\n\"--you knew they were just like trolley cars.\"\n\n\"When I was working on the _New Yorker_--I fell again. A gal from\nHolyoke--\"\n\n\"Horse manure to Holyoke.\"\n\n\"Paul. What are we supposed to think--to do--when we spend all the\nenergy and time and dough to make a brilliant adult out of a promising\nkid? By 'we'--I mean at least a hundred men and women. The kid turns\nout to be super-good. Everybody chips in to make sure he has every\npossible opportunity. He is tops in his class. He gets an inside hot\nspot on the most important project in his nation. Every single person\nwho ever knew him--loves him--and is button-popping proud of him. But\none day he has his feelings hurt badly--and there's not one thing we\ncan do for him. We try. But it's no dice. So he climbs out of a window\nand slams about a billion dollars' worth of brains and the time and\nenergy, and hope of other people, to smithereens, on the curb. We bury\nwhat's left of him. And then we sit around asking each other what the\nuse is. Our best wasn't good enough for him or for us. We keep asking\nourselves what the hell he did expect of life--and of us--that he\ndidn't get.\"\n\nPaul at least listened--which was a clue: he'd listen to a piece about\nhimself.\n\nBut he said coldly, \"Your values are pretty sleazy, Phil. Only a day\nor two ago, you were telling me that we physicists had sinned. That\nwe deserved to be punished. That all we'd done was evil. Now--because\nyou're in a corner--physics is suddenly the most important thing in the\nnation. May I repeat--horse manure!\"\n\n\"Sins of omission,\" I said. \"You guys think of yourselves as\nhonest--and you are, in one way. About science, you don't cheat\nor lie, ever. It's the solitary triumph of our age. And look at\nthe results. Progress in objectivity accelerates by a factor of\nhundreds--thousands--in a couple of centuries. I'm for that. But\nthat--alone--isn't enough. You birds look at your objective integrity\nas if it were all there is to virtue. It's not. Listen, Paulo. There\nare two functions of virtue: one is to find new truths; the other is to\ndispel old lies; the whole man practices both, equally.\"\n\n\"Grant that--but don't we educate people as fast as we can?\"\n\nI shook my head. \"Look at you. The scientific description of your\nsituation on this bloody shelf is known to tens of thousands. But not\nto you. You're the victim of old lies. You're about to toss yourself\ninto the late afternoon because you were so busy learning new truths\nin physics that you never bothered to dispel the old lies in your\npsychology. You're a damned anachronism! A burnt offering to Woman.\nYou're a puppet of a lot of myths and legends and poor child training.\nYou might as well be a pagan male virgin--offered up to some fat,\nfemale goddess by your tribe. A man that isn't a man. A scientist from\nthe neck up--and a howling heathen from the waist down. Unaware of the\nfact. A pretty picture!\"\n\n\"I suppose,\" he said with the utmost bitterness, \"that I would be\nsitting in your apartment chortling happily--if I had ideals like\nyours. The scientific integrity of a whore-master.\"\n\n\"My ideals,\" I said, \"at least keep a mediocre author plugging to the\nend. Yours, apparently won't save one of the world's top mathematicians\nfrom one lousy pair of legs.\"\n\n\"That's all you feel about a woman!\"\n\n\"That's all _you_ feel! Fate took away your candy and now you won't\nplay. It was public candy, anyhow--and only good for all the boys. You\nwouldn't face that. But if you want to love women realistically, that's\njust what you'll have to face, among a lot of other things. Love lies\na long way beyond Marcia's behavior.\" I tried to grin at him. \"I'm\nsupposed to be a psychologist, myself. There should be a way by which\nI could persuade what's left of your senses to stop playing Prometheus\nand get off your rock.\"\n\n\"Outsmart me?\"\n\n\"Shouldn't I be able? If my dope's any good?\"\n\n\"It isn't any good, though. Just a flashy bunch of extrapolation and\nphony biology. You're no real philosopher, Phil.\"\n\n\"Maybe not. Still--it isn't my product. It's Jung's. He's something of\na brain.\"\n\n\"Horse manure.\"\n\n\"There is plenty of it down there in the street,\" I said. \"If you want\nto add yourself--by a method that will make you indistinguishable from\nthe rest of it--\"\n\nHe doubled up his fist and smacked the concrete. \"Can't you see I'm\ntormented--?\"\n\nI shook my head a few times. \"Yeah. Everybody can--for blocks.\"\n\nHe began to sob. I inched up from the sill and braced myself. All it\nwould take was about one tear-blinded second--\n\nHe must have heard something on the floor below because he stopped\ngasping, suddenly, and leaned way out. Then he began hitching along the\nwall. He hitched right past me--his eyes on mine the whole way--and I\nhave never seen any eyes exactly like that, before. They knew what was\ngoing on behind them--and didn't know. They weren't maniacal--but they\nwere not sane, either.\n\nWhen he was well beyond my reach, he looked down again and then\nhitched some more. He passed the corner of my apartment and came to\nthe end of the parapet. A flat brick wall, rising for fifteen feet,\nmade a backstop for him. He was in a corner. And there weren't any\nwindows below him--because that was how the architect had designed the\nbuilding. The net idea was out. And so, I thought, was the idea of some\nsort of expert jump at him from an unexpected angle. Unless the roof\noffered possibilities. I'd never been up there.\n\nI walked down the terrace.\n\n\"That's near enough,\" Paul said.\n\nI leaned on the hot parapet and looked down. About a thousand people\nhad gathered in Madison Avenue--though it had been almost empty an hour\nbefore. In spite of the heat wave, in spite of the desertedness of the\nwhole city, there they were--like bugs spilled out of a tin can. Cops\namong them--hollering and waving traffic through.\n\nEvery insect was white on top where the neck had craned the face up\ntoward us.\n\nI let myself absorb the vertical drop until I was weak.\n\nVertigo gets to me fast. My psychiatrist said he thought it was a\nsymbol--in my case--for striving. I spent too much effort trying to get\nto some summit where skill, not effort, alone could take anybody. And\nthe struggle was reflected as a physical horror of high places. There\nmust have been something in it, because after assimilating the idea,\nI was at least able to live in high rooms without feeling queasy. But\nthere may be even more in it--since I still get sick, hanging around\nthe edge of sixteen-story walls.\n\nPaul also was looking down at all the people and the people constantly\narriving.\n\n\"I'm going in,\" I said.\n\nHe hardly paid any attention.\n\nSuch clothes as I had on were soaked clear through again. I was\nthinking about changing when the door knocked and the cop stood there\nwith some other men--in and out of uniforms.\n\n\"He's moved.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"We can't get at him good, there. A net won't be possible. We've got\nsome guys looking over the picture on the roof. But it's risky. Twice,\nthat squad has gotten a line around somebody--and had them get loose\nand go. One bird threw the rope off before they could pull it tight.\nAnd a woman cut it while she was hanging over the street. Can we come\nin?\"\n\nI opened the door. They looked at me. \"My name's Black,\" one said.\n\"Captain--your precinct.\" He introduced the rest the way an undertaker\npresents pallbearers to each other. They all went over near the windows\nand knelt and peeked furtively at Paul.\n\n\"Should I stay out there?\" I asked.\n\nThe tough, bright-looking cop gave me the once-over. \"High-shy?\"\n\n\"Some.\"\n\n\"Do you think he's likely to go?\"\n\n\"Christ knows! I'm not an expert in this sort of thing.\"\n\n\"Still--you do know him. Mr. Harrison, here, says he works on the atom\nbomb.\"\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\nBlack swore. \"Make dandy headlines. Police allow suicide of scientist.\"\n\nThe younger cop said, \"What sort of kid is he? Determined? Gutty? He\nlooks that way.\"\n\n\"Yeah. And a little spoiled.\"\n\nThe cop whistled without making any sound. \"Girl?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Where's she?\"\n\n\"Hattie Blaine's,\" I replied, after thinking it over.\n\nHe looked out the window and shook his head. \"Jesus!\"\n\nI sketched in a little. The men listened.\n\nBlack said, \"I could send a cruise car up for her--and get her back\nhere--\"\n\nI shook my head. \"I suspect--he'd bail out for sure, then. His life\nplan was based on the idea that what she had been--would be rubbed out.\nForgotten. If you understand. But she went back to work.\"\n\n\"The higher they are the harder they fall!\" Black was grimly amused at\nthe accuracy of the clich\u00e9.\n\nAnd the younger cop said, \"It isn't possible to be smart all ways at\nonce, is it?\"\n\n\"What do we do?\" I asked.\n\nHe looked at me some more. \"Take a shower and put on dry clothes, Mr.\nWylie. We'll figure for a while. These things can last hours.\"\n\nI did that.\n\nThey didn't figure much.\n\n\"The best we can do,\" Black informed me, \"is to get set up there on the\nroof. The angle's bad--but we have two good men. If he shows signs of\ndefinitely going, we'll take a chance and try to rope him.\"\n\nThey'd been out on the narrow terrace, talking to him. The young cop\nwas fascinated. \"He told us that he was working out a personal problem\nagainst a background germane to the problem and equivalent to the other\nstresses of his life. Something like that. What the hell does 'germane'\nmean?\"\n\n\"Appropriate,\" I said. It was near enough.\n\n\"When those double-domes go nuts--they still keep talking in their\ndouble-dome lingo.\"\n\n\"The nut,\" I said, \"never realizes he's nutty. He thinks you are.\nThat's why there're so many of them.\"\n\nThe cop nodded. \"I'd say--the majority of people, sometimes.\" He\nshrugged. \"I guess when you get into the atom-bomb class of brains, you\nget pretty chinchy everywhere else.\"\n\nI shook my head. \"The fact is otherwise. The brighter they are--the\nless likely they are to pull one like this. Only--they still do,\noccasionally.\"\n\nCaptain Black absently tossed his smoking cigar butt into the\nartificial fireplace and stepped over the windowsill. We could hear\nhim, down the terrace, talking to Paul--but not the words.\n\n\"He got a family we could send for? Anything like that?\" the young cop\nasked.\n\nI shook my head. \"His mother died--not by what's called suicide, but by\nthe psychological means that amounted to the same thing. He's a case of\na dame-starved kid growing up with too much emphasis on dames and too\nlittle knowledge about what they're really like.\"\n\nThe cop gazed at me with a different speculation. \"Tough for you.\"\n\n\"I can stand it. I like him. It makes me angry. And it's--embarrassing.\"\n\n\"I'll say.\"\n\nTime passed.\n\n\"They ought to have a gadget!\" I talked to pass more time. \"Something\nthat they could shoot at a man on such a spot. A light, large net\ndischarged by a Very pistol--maybe--that went too fast to duck and\ntangled you all up.\"\n\nThe cop wiggled his chin affirmatively. \"The number of good, practical\nideas buried in Headquarters runs to thousands.\"\n\nCaptain Black came in. \"No dice.\"\n\nThen Dave Berne arrived.\n\nHis eyes were the same faithful blue, but unnaturally vivid. He patted\nmy back and shook hands with Black, whom he knew. He stood in the room\na moment, peeling off a light-weight jacket and looking at the yellow\nroses. Then he went over and leaned out the window.\n\n\"Hi, Paul!\"\n\n\"Et tu?\" Paul called back.\n\nDave chuckled. \"You've got quite a crowd down there. Had trouble\npushing through!\" He pulled his head back and said to us, \"What gives?\"\n\nWe told him such plans as existed.\n\nDave listened and smelled the flowers and moved his eyes to whoever was\ntalking. Finally we'd finished and he grinned. \"Well,\" he said, sighing\na little, \"let's go and get the damned fool in.\"\n\nHe went and I went after him and the others stayed, peering into the\nfading light.\n\nDave whispered to me to hang back a little and I did and he moved on\nalong the parapet till he came to a point just out of range. Paul was\nwatching him with a wary, scornful expression. Dave leaned over the\nparapet and looked down--and Paul took a look, too.\n\n\"Funny,\" Dave said. \"All those yokels. I suppose most of 'em will go\nalong home pretty soon. Suppertime. And soon be too dark to see the\nfun, anyhow. But some of 'em would hang around all night--even though\nthe street is a God-damned stove-top. Waiting. Waiting and hoping.\nHoping. Imagine it! Hoping to see a human being come sixteen stories in\nslow somersaults. Hoping to see him hit and spatter. Hoping his feet\nwill burst and his shoes will fly off--the way they do, sometimes.\nHoping they'll be a Christ-to-be-Jesus big puddle of blood to tell the\nfamily about--and blood spattered up to the second story. And a dent\nin the sidewalk. What the hell is wrong with a bunch of yahoos that'll\nstand around for hours on account of a hope like that?\"\n\n\"Very graphic,\" Paul said.\n\nDave took a long look, then, at the surrounding roofs--the vertical\nrows of windows, some now electrically lighted, and some flared with\nthe last copper rays of a sun that was going down in Jersey behind\nthe Orange Mountains where I used to make field maps when I was a Boy\nScout. He took still another look at the blue-powder sky, drew one deep\nbreath, and hopped lightly up astride the parapet.\n\nPaul was startled.\n\nSo was I.\n\nAnd so were the cops. They yelled, \"Hey!\"\n\nDave made a \"cease-fire\" gesture behind his back. He inched along the\nparapet toward Paul, a ways. \"You're going inside in a bit, son,\" he\nsaid quietly.\n\n\"I haven't decided. And don't rush me.\"\n\n\"But you will. Look, Paul. You know me--pretty well. And you know a\ngood deal about me. From Phil. So listen. I'm a no-account yid bastard\nwho never got--and will never get--a fair shot at using the ability he\nthinks he has. All I can do is outsmart other corporation lawyers--and\nget paid big dough for it.\"\n\nPaul said sneeringly, \"If you want to start a self-pity contest--\"\n\n\"Nope. I was thinking about something else. Pride. Real pride. Things\nto be proud of. One's you. You weren't born behind any eight-ball.\nYou've got ten times the brains of Phil, here, and me put together.\nYou're in there fighting. And you're a guy--one of the guys who run\nabout three in a hundred--who can look at a yid like me and not see\nthat two thousand year old, imaginary eight-ball. I appreciate that.\nI'm proud some people can be like that.\"\n\n\"Don't be childish.\"\n\n\"I'm not. I'm just pointing out that--potentially--you're valuable. I\nhave no value. You--and the guys like you--can probably figure out the\nstuff we need to go on fighting for freedom. You can probably lick the\nnew tyranny, and maybe even without carving holes in the country and\npaying out the best young blood. And then we'll have a chance to go on\nwith the liberty scrap. That's what you can do. It means a lot to guys\nlike me--who never had a chance to draw one free-and-equal breath in\nhis life. Not you as a person. You as ideas. So all right. That's that.\nMaybe you hate your job. Maybe it's a wrong thing. Maybe all the world\nhas left, for now, is a choice among wrong ways. Personally--if that's\nso--I take our choice. America's. I'm no Stephen Decatur--but that's\nhow my feelings go.\"\n\n\"If you don't mind,\" Paul said, \"I'd just as soon be spared the\npatriotic harangue.\"\n\n\"Sure. I'm through. And you're coming in, soon, now.\" Dave let go of\nthe ledge, pulled back his shirt sleeve, and peered at his wrist watch.\n\"You're coming in--or I'm bailing out. In five minutes, Paul, my son,\nif you don't get off--I take off.\"\n\nI was listening to Dave's voice and a terrible fear possessed me. But\nPaul heard only the shouting of agony within himself. \"Wiseguy,\" he\nsaid.\n\nDave smiled a slow, gentle smile. \"Wiseguy? Maybe so. But how long this\nwiseguy lives--is up to you, now.\"\n\n\"Do you think I believe you? Do you think I'm so stupid?\"\n\n\"I mean it.\" Dave looked up from his watch and his eyes fixed on Paul.\n\"I'm not kidding, son.\"\n\nI could see the color change in Paul's cheeks. He'd been pale. He\nbecame ghostly. He locked eyes with Dave Berne.\n\nThe slightest stir moved the hot, early-evening air.\n\nPeople sat at windows and on roofs; people stood in penthouse gardens\nwith highballs and binoculars, enjoying the sensation, making a new\nritual of it. A flashbulb blazed up and died in the instant, on a\nsetback, across and down the street, where some news cameraman with a\ntelephoto lens was getting a shot for his tabloid.\n\n\"I have,\" Dave said quietly, \"about two hundred seconds left.\"\n\n\"What a cheap thing to do!\" Paul spoke harshly.\n\nDave smiled even more and he nodded. \"It's all I have--my life.\nCheap--I said so.\"\n\nPaul stood up.\n\nIt was horrifying. He'd been sitting that long while. His arms were\ncramped. His legs must have been asleep. He tottered to his feet,\nrocked on the near-motionless air, careened his arms, stamped, glanced\ndown with a round and dreadful focus of his eyes, caught his balance,\nand looked triumphantly at Dave.\n\n\"You're kind of forcing my hand,\" he said.\n\nDave stood up, too, then--very quickly, and without tottering. Stood\nup--and looked at his watch. \"I mean, too, of course, Paul, that if you\ngo--I'll also go. I'll try for you--and standing, like this--we'll go\ntogether. You see--you have no choice but to go in, or take me along.\nAnd there's only about a minute left.\"\n\nI went closer. \"Dave, for the love of God!\" My voice was a cackle.\n\"If this thing has to be gone through with--I'm the guy. After all,\nDave--I've only got a little bit left anyhow! Get down, for Christ's\nsake--and let me get up--\"\n\nDave hardly glanced at me. \"Be quiet, Phil. Stay where you are.\" He\nturned again to look at Paul.\n\nAnd there they stood, swaying slightly, their eyes, their wills\nfastened together in conflict over the simple stake of life and of\ndeath. They defied each other--against the pale-blue heat of the\nevening sky. A murmur came up from the street, a muddled sob, as the\nwatchers noted the change of position, the new precariousness, and\nsensed the imminence of climax. The sound boiled and grew and beat the\nbricks all the way up from the infested thoroughfare.\n\n\"Half a minute,\" Dave said, above the susurration.\n\nI couldn't move.\n\nPaul couldn't tear away his eyes from Dave: each instant stood alone\nand almost still.\n\n\"Ten seconds,\" Dave said. And he turned around--facing nothing--to jump.\n\nA great cry escaped Paul.\n\nHe toppled on the terrace--and passed out.\n\nDave about-faced and stepped down lightly.\n\n\n11\n\nIt was twenty-one o'clock, which is to say, nine that evening.\n\nDave had eaten dinner with me and gone off to another meeting of his\nmaestros. To look, he said, for the silver lining of the silver screen.\n\nNot even mentioning Paul.\n\nNot seeming to be affected....\n\nPaul was in a hospital.\n\nA private hospital. The cops had wanted to send him to Bellevue for\nobservation. But Dave had persuaded them and arranged to have my nephew\ntaken on a stretcher down the service elevator and transported by\nambulance to a safe place.\n\nI'd called Ricky and told her about it. Told her again that I'd be back\nin Buffalo by the following evening, in all likelihood.\n\nAnd I'd called Karen, my daughter, and warned her of what she would\nsee and read when the morning papers reached her country doorstep in\nConnecticut.\n\nNine o'clock.\n\nThe next day would be Monday.\n\nI waited.\n\nDr. Adams was late. The charred cigarettes piled up.\n\nAt last, he phoned from the lobby.\n\nCome up.\n\nOne of those psychiatrists about whom interviewers write:\n\n... nothing of the abnormal about him; he would be mistaken anywhere\nfor a successful businessman....\n\nBecause Dr. Adams took considerable pains to look exactly like a\nsuccessful American businessman who would be mistaken anywhere.\n\ndark, chalk-striped suit, polished brown brogues, foulard tie,\nfifty-one years old, seventy-one inches high, a hundred and seventy-one\npounds, heavy horn-rims in his breast pocket with the Parker 51,\nsmoothly brushed iron-gray hair, smoothly brushed iron-gray eyebrows,\nsmoothly unbrushed iron-gray eyes, the outdoor complexion that is\nimperative for indoor men of distinction, and the prize already awarded\nfor filling in the last line of the limerick:\n\nHealthy, wealthy and wise.\n\nYou couldn't help liking him if you tried, and believe me, I tried.\nI tried because Adams (Hargrave H.P.) was the head of the private\nhospital where Dave had sent Paul and I wouldn't have one of those\ntop-notch third-rate psychiatrists fooling with my nephew.\n\nHe said he'd always wanted to meet me and I said I'd never heard of him\nand he laughed because he was amused, not because he laughed when he\ndidn't know what else to do, like an American businessman.\n\nHe sat down in one of my chairs and refused a drink and said, \"Tell me\nall you think I ought to know about Paul.\"\n\nThree hours and several hundred questions later he left.\n\nPaul was going to be all right.\n\nNot soon--but someday when he'd learned the masochisms, sadisms,\ncastration complexes, repressed homosexual feelings, mistaken anima\nidentification, archetypal possessions, and other data not shown by the\nmeters in his laboratory.\n\nHargrave H.P. Adams had plenty of what it would take. I wouldn't have\nminded asking him some of my own questions. He had come up with a few\nsuggestions and formulations unknown to me....\n\nThat brought the evening up past midnight.\n\nI felt wretched.\n\nYou are apt to, when you think they're going to stand you against the\nstone wall the next morning.\n\nThere were, of course, Tom's pills.\n\nI rolled them out in my hand and just looking at them gave me a fuzzy\ntaste in my mouth so I rolled them back.\n\nIt was one to think yourself out of.\n\nI went into the living room and climbed through the window and peered\ndown into the glittering slot of Madison Avenue until, all of a sudden,\nI began to shake. I almost threw up before I could scramble back into\nthe apartment.\n\nI sat down and stared at the sky.\n\nYou could still see a few stars in the haze. The night was as close as\na pressure cooker.\n\nMy nausea left slowly; my shakes subsided.\n\nIn states of this sort I usually try, if possible, to make a list of\nThings to Do.\n\nThings to Do on Sunday Night in the Big City, after the witching hour.\n\n One can walk the streets.\n Go to the Park.\n Read.\n Eat.\n (But not sleep.)\n One can take a sightseeing bus to Chinatown.\n The taxi dance halls are open.\n The all-night movies.\n Any of numerous friends--\n or my brother--\n would sit up and talk till morning.\n I could\n by simply lifting the telephone and dialing a number\n fill my apartment with assorted pretty girls.\n Or just Gwen.\n Why not?\n The image appeared\n the woman-lines, the dry-martini taste of a woman's\n libido\n Gwen's cuprous hair;\n and it was not Gwen at all\n but an image in myself.\n Who she was, I had no idea.\n But I knew\n I'd had enough of the Gwens in this world\n to last until\n my next reincarnation\n or, possibly,\n the second coming of Christ\n in Anno Double-Domini.\n (Tomorrow, I thought, begins\n another reincarnation)\n It was enough of a list.\n\nI had now collected sufficient Things to Do so as to go on sitting\nin my chair, which was all I desired to do: I had somewhat collected\nmyself.\n\nThe sky belched light.\n\nI leaned forward, looked, and half of the hazy stars were erased, gone,\ndone for, hidden behind an invisible tumble of nimbus.\n\nMy nerves let themselves down another degree.\n\nI went around the room, emptying an ashtray the night maid had\noverlooked, fixing myself a glass of hot, powdered coffee.\n\nAnd back to my chair.\n\nNow, across the parapet, across the well-learned silhouette of\nbuildings opposite, the undersides of clouds were heated up. Their\ncontours showed in brief, stammering flashes of lavender, as if they\nwere gigantic lamps which some celestial electrician was trying to\nconnect with a frayed cord.\n\nAt my side, the exhausted curtain came to momentary life--then perished\nagain in the swelter of the room.\n\nGwen was an image. Whoever she was, I saw what I saw, looking from\nwithin to what lay within. Another item for Forbisher-Laroche: Why\nvisit the fille de joie? Because she is more I than She.\n\nYvonne, then?\n\nI gave the matter my consideration--and half an eye to the approaching\nweather.\n\n \"Blow, blow, thou bitter wind\n Thou art not so unkind\n In this man's latitude.\"\n Hark ye, Sir Bughouse:\n You don't know anything.\n\nAll you know about Yvonne is what you read in the newspaper\nadvertisements.\n\nShe is a collection of costly, streamlined surfaces.\n\nAn accumulation from high-class department store counters.\n\nAnd a statistic from a book that has not yet been published owing,\ndoubtless, to pressures from the Neo-Christian-Centrist-Totalitarian\nRenaissance.\n\nDid you think she was a woman?\n\nShe was a dream.\n\nAn arrangement of electrons, a mess of mesons, in your cranium, Sir\nSpatterwit.\n\nThere must be blah-diddie-blah-blah (statistics, pal) happy homosexual\nhours for housewives and houris\n\n ergo\n we, Wylie, have witnessed Onesuch.\n What a premise! What a casual conclusion.\n O Lydian ease!\n O languorous Lesbos!\n (O legislators!\n You left out the ladies!\n\nAnd our legally innocent Yvonne has homed to Pasadena's passes, also\n\nHealthy, wealthy and wise.)\n\nMust it not be assumed that blah people are happy and blah people\nare given to such excursions, wherefore blah per centum of the\nexcursionists are happy?\n\n Certainly.\n But Yvonne?\n What is she?\n\nSir Psychologist, Lord Hack, Keeper of the Happy Ending, can you not\nalso hypothesize a hundred different valid denouements?\n\nCertainly.\n\nWhen the poor, unknown child returns, what Weltschmerz may not seize\nhold upon her? What nostalgia? What fantasy or recollections?\nWhat esoteric envies? What odd curiosities? What cooling after the\nconfidences? What illogical new distastes? What unexpected spousely\npiques? What dither? What clandestine or common experiment with all\nwhat unsweet ensuite?\n\nNever congratulate the Fates, emir;\n\nit makes them self-conscious ... undependable.\n\nA point to remember should you ever set down a hundred hours of\npseudo-autobiography:\n\n_Lessons in Light Lycanthropy_: seven essays by Philip Gordon\nPrismaggot.\n\nNow came thunder, like sounds in the intestines of distant elephant\nherds; now, my curtain rose as eerily as a medium's table and flopped\nback to lank alignment with the wall.\n\nI saw the point:\n\nIn the quest for the woman-in-skirts, some of us fail to notice that\nthe woman-within may be partly and helplessly a perverse wench,\nattesting by default to all the oversights of her masculine lord: us.\n\nIt was a remarkable discovery and explained occasional tendencies of\nnumbers of my gentlemen companions.\n\nGiven another five years, caliph, and you could resolve this\nsituation--this exotic act of the inner She who rules whatever crannies\nher master shuns in conscious male conceit.\n\nIf you happen to be the kind of person who, out of mere idleness, or\nfrom scientific motive, or in our poor common cause, is willing to\ntrephine his own soul for a better look, you will find such dances\ngoing on there, such images and integers of the complicated flesh.\n\nIf you announce the results, however, you are liable to go to Hecate.\nHecate County, I mean.\n\nUnless you do so, that is, in plain wrapper and with a Ph.D. Cf.:\n\n\"The inner natures of all men and women partake of the natures of the\nopposite sex--a psychological phenomenon in some forms openly expressed\nby modern society (O moms, O Mummers!), but in other forms suppressed\nwith the full force of public opinion. What public opinion suppresses,\nthe individual endeavors to conceal both from himself and from society.\nNevertheless, were the individual _not_ equipped with the psychological\nelements of the opposite sex, comprehension and sympathy between the\ntwo would be impossible. And this 'feminine' quality of a man--for\nexample--may even project on real women, in inverted form, those\nuniversal, adolescent feelings toward his own sex which the conscious\nadult man repudiates. Hence, as Cadwallader, Pratt and Razzle say, in\ntheir lucid monograph--\"\n\nBut if you express the results in terms of palpable feelings and\nacts--rather than in this lack-life lingo of pedagogy--the very gents\nand gals who share the same sensations will rise as one (owing to\nthe general habit of suppression) and breathe down your neck with a\nblowtorch.\n\nWhen you see them coming you will know what troubles them that they do\nnot know.\n\nIt is, always, their responses to your perceptions.\n\nThemselves--not you.\n\nYvonne, to put it in the terse form, like Gwen,\n\nwas also in a sense a shimmering fragment of a dislocated inner me.\n\nIf you are distressed by her,\n\nthe time has come to bore a hole in the thick skull of your own soul\nand see the remarkable tittup going on there.\n\nLightning struck a graph on the sky.\n\nI sat learning about myself.\n\nIf, indeed, the Final Report was due, I might as well review my\nmaterial. At God's Great Judgment Seat, witnesses who did not bother\nto notice what was really happening inside themselves--and, of course,\nprejudiced or dishonest witnesses--will undoubtedly go to the Hotter\nHecate.\n\nI thought about Paul for a while and decided it was time for Paul to\nthink about himself.\n\nI thought of Socker Melton and perceived there was no reason, any more,\nfor a single soul to go to any church, save instinct--\n\nwhich the churches denied thrice whenever they opened their\nsanctimonious mouths three times.\n\nI thought lovingly of my country\n\nand lovingly of the whole world.\n\nI sent greetings to the Chinese and the Hindus and the Africans.\n\nI wished that I might live to see if the bombs fell\n\nand what the people did afterward.\n\nThen I appreciated that, following any resolution of such affairs--\n\nof bombs or none, airborne plagues or none--\n\nI would wish in this same fashion to live to see\n\nwhat they did\n\nwhen a billion starved\n\nwhen four or five billions, produced in the uncontrolled birthorgies of\nthe devout and the innocent, over-horded this little globe\n\nwhat they did when the metals ran thin--in a century or so\n\nwhen idiotic breeding decayed the human line to a rabble incapable of\nsustaining liberty or order or technology\n\nwhen the last water under the earth dried up\n\nwhen the sea thickened\n\nwhen the moon approached.\n\nIndeed, there is no limit to wishing one might assist at meeting\nchallenges old Toynbee may never have thought of--\n\ninevitabilities that only man can avoid and that, as yet, he does not\neven consider as Necessary Works. They are denied by _Time_ magazine.\n\nAortas of lightning and branched arteries of electric fire now\ndiagrammed the clouds. Across the roofs, thunder ricocheted; it rolled\nlike tumbrils in the avenues.\n\nA steady press of air flapped the curtains and I moved my chair a\nlittle to escape their nervous abrasion.\n\nThis fetid wind depressed me.\n\nMy thoughts settled in a muddy ooze and lived beneath the riffled\nsurface enviously, for that it seemed alive.\n\nAnd in this separation I saw more views.\n\nThe intellectual, I deplore--scholar, economist, sociologist, big\nliterary man. The sorry lot have spent half the twentieth century\nadmiring the engines of their minds and not bothering to feed knowledge\ninto them or raw materials; now, with the gauges falling, they have\nnothing to say excepting only to repeat their proud, intellectual\nadmission of obsolescence.\n\nThe critic, I deplore; he sits upon his flagpole with his radio, his\nsandwiches and his displayed latrine, handing down opinions of what is\nhappening under the earth, from which he sees an occasional man emerge\nwhom he invariably deduces to be a Troglodyte or a Morlock.\n\nThe philosopher of modern times is my favorite joke; he stands at\nthe head of the Faculty--without faculties of his own; he sums up\nthe wisdom of the mind without appreciating he no longer understands\nwhat his own mind is. Were he even as honest as the psychiatrist\nhe disdains, he would get his psyche analyzed before he undertook\nto forward the discussion of awareness. But what philosopher ever\nconsented to an effort at learning something of himself before\npontificating upon the All of everybody else? That still, small science\nof psychology, which he elbows behind his panoply of classic names, has\nturned him into a quack--an astrologer among astronomers and the barker\nfor a medicine show at a convention of true physicians.\n\nThe preacher--dressed in the anonymous odds and ends of all the\ninstincts of the animal kingdom and holding this shoddy surplice to be\na white and spotless raiment--the one, true robe for Ascension--is my\njester, for being mad and comical and also for speaking so much wisdom\nand for his good heart, when he has one.\n\nThis is what I believe about them--\n\nand they are what I am:\n\nIntellectual, critic, philosopher, and preacher.\n\nHoist by my own plutonium petard.\n\nFor all my data have, still, an inadequate access to my heart. It\nlaughs and weeps too often without consulting the encyclopedia in my\nhead or the new Book of Rules I have commenced there.\n\nI saw Excalibur and could not wrench it from the sea,\n\nTouched the Grail--and could not swallow,\n\nWandered the far mountains, came upon a new Decalogue, and could not\nlift the tablets to bring them down.\n\n Prophet, maybe.\n Pilgrim, perhaps.\n But only in\n the intellectual, critical, philosophical, evangelical\n senses....\n Happy?\n The ego was often happy--his big ego.\n At Peace?\n\nHe had tranquillity where other men did not and joy where they were\nonly confused; but, in their simple pleasures, it was he who felt\nconfusion, he who too frequently was but a spectator, he who failed\nwith his blood to pursue the truth his brain so lucidly, so uselessly\ndelineated.\n\nHuman nature, he decreed, need not be dishonest or dishonorable; let\nus throw off this old-church myth, this pew-filler, that men are by\ntheir very substance evil and undependable. Having said his say he\ndaily marched into the humanities and acted with a good deal less than\nintegrity complete. Like a very ass.\n\n Still he believed it.\n The truth shall make ye free.\n Still he cried out that men are born for freedom.\n And he died, a prophet without particular honor in the\n home town of himself.\n He shouted:\n Forever learn the new\n Down with everything as is\n Seek God beyond his Holy Names\n Behold yourself\n (Intellectual, critic, philosopher, preacher)\n The while, he beheld but morsels of himself, and--like\n other men--admired them as if they were the fabric of reality\n and not the gingerly scissored swatches of one awareness.\n Well, go away now, Wylie.\n It is the time, as you so intellectually predicted, for an\n improved you or a better somebody to take over the problem.\n Good night, sweet hypocrite.\n Dauntless disappointment.\n Oaf.\n Of course, I argued with myself against self-condemnation.\n I am a contemporary man, I insisted.\n\nToo conditioned by father and mother, school, church, America, the\ncommon law, and this and that, and you, and you, to expect in a single\nlifetime (not too long, either) that I could, by whatever authenticity\nof effort, penetrate thousands, thousands, thousands of years of the\nunpenetrated stuff in my superego and discover the true whole of me\nbeyond: the conveniently overlooked, the misrepresented, the tabooed,\nthe forgotten, the unfrocked, the submerged structure of humanity\nitself.\n\n And I argued:\n Even if I did this, it would be nothing.\n What I said was reason, they would say was sacrilege.\n What I said was love, they would call obscene.\n What I said was truth, they would call nonsense.\n My hope would bring them but despair.\n My laughter would wring their panicky tears.\n My God would also be their Devil.\n And some of my ideals would seem un-American.\n They would call my route to understanding a blind\n labyrinth.\n Their scientists would find me emotional.\n Their priests--cold, analytical, and heartless.\n\nEvery instinct of my society would belabor me whenever I pointed out\nits valid opposite. And when I said, These are but local, temporal\ncontradictions--seen together, they can be transcended, understood,\ncontained by a man who rises above them to look down upon them, or by a\nman who shoulders them, why!!! All who live by the exploitation of one\nside of any paradox, all the mighty engineers and all the honored men\nof God, would jump at me.\n\nAnd they would finally corner me somewhere, breaking my own rules.\n\nThe storm was upon the city, now. The oncoming cold front had won the\nbattle of the isobars. Lightning hissed and hit some nearby edifice,\naccompanied by a blast of thunder. The hammer of Thor, the flashbulbs\nof Zeus flooded the metropolis with pale, stroboscopic light. Buildings\nquivered under the cannonade. Inside them the millions cowered and\ncrossed themselves or stood admiring at their windows, each, according\nto his nature, responding to the grandeur of liberation.\n\nThe first drops splashed upon my parapet. My curtain stretched like\na flag. Papers blew. I shut the window and ran about in the pleasant\nexcitement of the arriving storm, making fast my small interior. The\nworld beyond churned in ecstasies of rain, din, and colored light that\nshowed no more than light's existence. My lamps glowed for a moment a\nsinister red, and came up again.\n\nI sat there after finishing my little errands, preoccupied with the\nloud allegory in the street.\n\nThe psyche has its climate.\n\nEvery burning drought serves by its precise degree to lift the waters\nof the earth for rains--and floods, too. Every deluge brings fertile\nsubstance to the spirit's plains and exposes the rich minerals on\nits crags. In the cold, the plants rest; in summer, they make ready\nthe ice-resistant seeds. The trick is not--as men believe--to become\nbut a willful rain-maker--endeavoring by rites, fasts, dances, or\nsleets of solid carbon dioxide to alter the immutable for some hour's\nadvantage. This is failure; whatever such methods steal here must be\nrepaid elsewhere. The great accomplishment of man is to understand\nthe relationships of climate, appreciate them all, adapt his soul to\nevery temporal vicissitude--in the knowledge that whoever is free from\npride in this one good or prejudice against that special evil cannot be\nengulfed, or eroded, or burned alive, or frozen into the sparse tundra\nof intellect, of asceticism.\n\nHe--and he alone--conveys the mutations of consciousness who tends his\ngreen valley undismayed by knowing it is the valley of winter shadow.\nAnd could he own all the reasoning power of man--could his soul present\nwithin him all that women know but cannot say--he would be as God.\n\nAfter a time the storm somewhat diminished. The city hissed like the\nembers of a great fire that resists hose and bucket.\n\nNow, I was invaded by that projection of self-pity which Catholics\nthink is love and Protestants believe is duty. I saw Ricky and Karen\nand my family, all my fond, patient friends--in sorrow. Great tears\nglistened inside me and their tiny counterparts ran on my cheeks.\n\nNo, I cried. Spare me not for myself--I am reconciled; but for them.\n\nI investigated such intricate delicacies in Ricky as I have not\nattempted to describe here and I saw how sorrow would run through\nthem all; I watched the infinite loyalty of a daughter turned by the\nslab of a tomb; I saw my family lifting up the load of their one more\nbereavement and my friends kicking stones, not selfishly, but for the\nworld they hoped I might someday somehow bring my jot of meaning to.\n\nI paced the muggy flat and cursed.\n\nAnd more.\n\nI shall not tell you for you already know the sentiments whereby love,\nand duty, too, are transferred. Only at long, long last I realized how\nmuch I, who own nothing but my inner self, had imagined I owned them.\n\nIt was an injury I'd done them.\n\nAnd so one more illusion set aside its mask, at least for that while,\nthat now.\n\nHow many there were!\n\nHow often I saw them on other countenances; how rarely I lifted them\nfrom my own.\n\nFinally, I fell asleep.\n\nAn old, old man--sitting in a chair.\n\n\n\n\nPART FIVE\n\n _Coda_\n\n\nRain teemed in the stone-gray morning.\n\nMy little Big Day.\n\nA tepid stew was strained from the colander of heaven and dripped in\nlachrymose gray juice that steamed on every brick and tile and slate\nand on the asphalt acreage of the street.\n\nI sent for my drab breakfast. You are familiar with its one element. A\ncup and a cup and a cup.\n\nI set myself to my last installment. For a while, the inked deletions\nwavered and ran off the track. I went to the window and watched the\nrain smoke on my parapet--looked up at the insipid sky--found no\none there--and finally turned to the roses which drooped a little\nin the corner of the room--drooped but glowed--and perfumed every\nglaucous shadow of the morning with fond recollection. The lines came\nstraighter, after that.\n\nBy and by I called Hugo about my ticket.\n\n\"Closed in,\" he said. \"They're landing a few planes still--but they've\ndelayed departures. Later, it's supposed to clear--and it'll be cooler.\nThis is the front of a high coming in from Canada.\"\n\nClosed in.\n\n\"Shall I try the evening flight?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" I said.\n\nI gave the number of the sanitarium.\n\n\"Oh, yes, Mr. Wylie, Mr. Wilson had a comfortable night. He's talking\nto Dr. Adams, now. I couldn't interrupt. He seems quite cheerful--said\nif you phoned to tell you he'd call back when he finished his\nconsultation.\"\n\nI turned over the last page--read, cut one more paragraph, marked the\nlines on my long tally sheet, counted them, and felt, suddenly, the\nnegative pressure of completion--the vacuum's strain, the sense of\ndeprivation. Work can be addictive--one more self-enchantment of the\ncortex--another of the infinite autohypnoses. And when the addict's\ndone with it, what comfort is there for his unemployment?\n\nI stacked the many pages, scribbled a note to Harold, and phoned to\nhis office that the manuscript would be ready for his messenger at the\ndesk. A few merry hours and a little excitement for the profligate, dun\ndays of my fellow citizens, God bless and pity them--a vicarious trip\nbeyond the confines of mass production--a description of the flavor of\na few of the trees they had cut down.\n\nBill came for it and carried it to the lobby.\n\nNow, my clothes.\n\nMy costume.\n\nEverything was finished\n\nwith the possible exception of me.\n\nRain fell all around the marquee--in a wet, funereal fringe.\n\nThe doorman stood in the street beneath his great umbrella, whistling.\nTwo old ladies waited impatiently, jostling each other and batting\nannoyedly at their pocketbooks. They seemed to expect the whistle to\nconjure up a yellow taxi from the fourth dimension and because it took\nAl five minutes to hail an empty, the elder of the two put back her\ndime in her purse and snapped it with the righteous authoritative sound\nof a Norn's shears.\n\n\"Let's go to Gimbel's first,\" she said.\n\nBut the other wanted to start in Lord and Taylor's.\n\nThey whisked away debating this.\n\nAnd I went soon--through the leaden atmosphere, on the black and\nslippery pavement.\n\nThe people were there in the office ahead of me.\n\nMr. So-and-so. Mrs. So-and-so. Miss So-and-so.\n\nThe nurse was there, too.\n\nIt was where we had come in. Where we all do. Where we leave.\n\nI sat, batting the drops from my trouser cuffs, smelling the damp\nfeathers of the anxious poultry.\n\nI found my magazine.\n\nAt last\n\n\"Mr. Wylie.\"\n\nIt was still a different doctor--a plump little man wearing glasses\nwhich took the radiance of his floor lamps as a shield so I could not\nsee his eyes. His neutral hair was cut as short and even as fur.\n\n\"I'm glad to make your acquaintance,\" he said. \"Have a cigarette. I've\nread your books.\"\n\nI took his cigarette. Inauspicious token.\n\nThe condemned man smoked a hearty breakfast.\n\n\"Not all of us physicians deserve such a keel-hauling.\" He laughed at\nthe way I'd rubbed the nose of his trade in its sins and pomposities.\nThis was to show me his nose was immaculate.\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nHe lighted his own and smoked the way doctors often do--like schoolkids\nwith Cubebs.\n\n\"Personally, I think it's a shame a man with ability like yours for\nputting words together should get mixed up in this Jungian stuff.\"\n\nThe place had been done by a decorator--a decorator who saw a surgeon's\nwaiting room as something soothing in ivories and sepia and faint gold.\nAnd putting words together is just a trick, too; it doesn't involve\nknowledge or sense--just lucky knack.\n\nI cut a smile in my face for him. \"Talk it over, sometime,\" I said.\n\nHe smirked interest in himself. \"I'm a sort of cross between a Freudian\nand a semanticist, Wylie. What do you think of semantics?\"\n\n\"The poets understood it before Korzybski.\"\n\n\"Very good! Very! Still--\"\n\n\"--a means. A useful insight.\" I felt a bead of sweat roll from my\narmpit down my corrugated ribs. \"The basic assumption is mistaken,\nthough. It omits instinct. No cortical rearrangement will accomplish\nmuch, even with semantics, until it admits instinct--\"\n\n\"I always wondered whether you understood the subject. Guess you do.\nBut I still don't see Jung's slant.\"\n\nHow cleverly the thumb and finger de-wing the caught fly! And how\nthe fly beats its legs in satisfactory protest! If I had injured his\ncomposure in some book or other, some essay, he would avenge it now. I\nstared at the flaring spectacles of this penny-ante sadist and swore\nto myself that he could sweat me--and all his full waiting room--till\nGabriel put his brass horn to his lips before I'd twitch my foot.\nAnd in this outlandish, familiar crisis of our everyday relations, I\nbrought forth with the energies of wrath another formulation.\n\nI blew smoke at the fat little hamster. \"You can put it this way. Jung\nsees the source of the superego as unconscious, too--just as Freud\nsees the id. To Jung--both are continuums of instinct. That's all.\nAny culture--even the culture of you physical scientists, which is\nmostly yet to come--rises from instinct, not from the frontal lobes.\nIf you think of superego as subconscious in source and merely the\nopposite of id, you can understand Toynbee--and Toynbee's error about a\nchurchly salvation for this day and age. You might actually understand\nJesus--and what Christianity was intended to be to people. You can\nunderstand a great deal that even most psychologists don't know about.\"\n\n\"Interesting,\" he said, and he gave up. There were papers on his\ndesk. \"Like to mull it over with you someday.\" He discarded two or\nthree sheets. \"I've got a report on you here somewhere.\" He found\nit, finally. \"Negative.\" He glanced at me and chuckled. \"Cobb, my\nassociate, was fooled. Told me he was all but sure of carcinoma. The\nthing--\" he read to himself--\"is a rather rare lymphatic growth. But\ntwo or three mild doses of X-ray will obliterate it. You'll never be\nable to see the site. Cobb will give you the first treatment straight\noff. Only take a few minutes. Just hold your mouth open--and shed your\ntroubles.\" He chuckled again. \"Mighty glad to meet you, Wylie. Maybe,\nsomeday, you'd come up to Westchester and talk to a little group I'm a\nmember of--\"\n\nI said I would, breaking my rule. And that was that.\n\nIt happens to millions. The frightful diagnosis, the aching interlude,\nthe laboratory check, reprieve. Till next time. It is one of the\nyou-knows.\n\nHalf an hour later I went down to the level of the street. The lobby\nof this particular medical building was a poorly lighted, sparsely\nfurnished marble sepulcher and along it lay a track of corrugated\nrubber matting upon which were the coming and going footprints of us\nall. I sat on a stone bench.\n\nWeakness was for a while my only sensation.\n\nMy thoughts ran feebly.\n\nThey had given it back to me.\n\nI was getting used to the process.\n\nI should exult--\n\ndeliver myself of some noble message, immediately.\n\nI have nothing to offer you but the Four Biles: blood and sweat and\ntears and W.C.\n\nA doorman appeared from behind a fern that had been handed down from\nPharaoh.\n\n\"Something funny, Mac?\"\n\n\"Not very. It's just that I've lost my mind.\"\n\n\"People have lost everything else in this damned hall!\"\n\nHe went away.\n\nOut in back, I suppose he had a boat to ferry people across the Styx.\n\nSoon I stumbled to the skirling thoroughfare and waved at cabs until\none stopped.\n\nOr maybe it was a hearse.\n\nOr maybe it was a singsong boat plying in the rain alongside the\ndoorman's draped dinghy.\n\nCertainly it was occupied by a multitude of people, many of them dead\nand many of them trollops.\n\nWant Immortal Life?\n\nWant me?\n\nMy reaction would come--next week--next month--never.\n\nI'd already had it.\n\nSince Thursday, I had been consumed by my reaction.\n\nThis was robust information.\n\nMy heart resumed its job.\n\nThe infinite, posterior brain relaxed.\n\nThe small, frontal analogue took sensible direction.\n\nOur house in Florida would go on building now--for us. The\nflower-filled patio and the white roof with bunting vines abloom--the\ncypress bedroom up among the branches of live oaks, melaleucas, orchid\ntrees, and sweet frangipanis--the workroom with books all around, a\nraised fireplace and a rail to put my feet on while someday, perhaps, I\nmarked the typed pages of the long-projected Explanation. I could write\nit. I could devote all my time to it: twenty-four thousand dollars were\ngoing--not into my estate--but my account.\n\nI spun the Astolat's revolving door.\n\nRicky stood there--bright omen and good harbinger! Prayer answered\nand that best conduct I am capable of, rewarded. She wore a violet\nsuit to match the strangest tint of her bejeweled gaze. She wore a hat\nwith a violet feather to joust adversity and make the place for joy.\nRaindust glittered in her dark curls and the silver in her curls. She\nwas smiling as she signed the register. How much she smiles!\n\nShe saw me.\n\n\"Darling!\"\n\nWe kissed casually. We always do. Perhaps we are a little\nself-conscious in public and this may be because we are not, when we\nare alone with each other.\n\nI thought she was there in response to the mute messages of the\nweekend. To go back with me if I wanted to go back--to stay if I wanted\nto stay. Possibly to shop for a day. But suddenly I could sense the\nwrongness of that.\n\n\"I decided I better fly down to see the doctor,\" Ricky said. \"You won't\nmind waiting over another day?\"\n\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\nYou would have to know Ricky to know all that made up her expression,\nthen. In her eyes was the way she felt about herself, about me; her\nmouth spoke of courage. \"I'm afraid the undulant fever's back.\"\n\n\"No. Please God, no!\"\n\n\"I think I ought to be checked. The past few days, I've been running a\ntemperature. And the old megrims have begun.\"\n\nShe smiled again.\n\nIt was one of her masterpieces.\n\nWe were together.\n\nWe had our lives....\n\nI patted her. The wings of my spirit began to beat against her pitiable\nprospect--the racking weeks ahead, the shots and blood tests, clinical\nexaminations, probings and slides and stains, reports, hospitalizations\nwhile the doctors observed, sweats, chills, toxic horrors, frets,\npains, and bravery summoned every morning from the deep well of her to\nlast another day.\n\nThe elevator rose.\n\n\"Hell,\" I said, the best I could say, \"we'll get you on the vaccine\ntoday. You phone Dr. Frank immediately. And then lie down. I'll unpack\nyou. In a few weeks, you'll be right as rain.\"\n\nI fumbled my key into the lock and automatically took from the doorclip\nmy accumulation of morning mail and messages. She asked about Paul and\nI told her the tale.\n\nAfterwards, she went to the phone, dialed, and watched me with loving,\napologetic eyes--as if it were her fault she was infected.\n\nWhile she described to the specialist the symptoms of this new\nmalevolence I went through the mail, stopped at a letter from my\nlawyer, ripped it open.\n\nEnclosed in it was a note from my accountant. The Bureau of Internal\nRevenue, he wrote, wanted, on the following Thursday, to go over with\nme the records pertaining to my income tax declarations for 1945 and\n1946. Records in filing cabinets in storage in Miami Beach. Records on\nhigh closet shelves in Rushford. Records stored here in the cellar of\nthe Astolat. In suitcases, boxes, portfolios and old trunks. Records\nthey would not be able to check over next Thursday--because it would\ntake a week and cost hundreds of dollars to get them together. They'd\nbe willing to wait the week and they did not care about the cost to me;\ntheir interest would be to see if perhaps, after interminable scrutiny\nof the dollars and cents of forgotten years, they could find any reason\nto add a few more hundreds, or a thousand, to the taxes already paid.\n\nWere I a businessman, enamored of columns of figures, such a prospect\nmight scarcely have scarred the surface of my attention. I am not.\nThe order was another garnishee of tranquillity--from then until I\nhad assembled the records, held the conferences, and paid up, if any\nmisjudgment were claimed or any disagreement ensued. I felt chained\nto a tormented system I could forever deplore but never alter. The\nwasteful exigency closed around me like a jail.\n\nRicky hung up. I put the letter into my pocket. She would be harassed\nby it--because I was. Let it wait till some happier time.\n\n\"Dr. Frank wants me to come right down,\" she said.\n\n\"Before lunch?\"\n\n\"I'm not hungry, anyway, dear.\"\n\n\"I'll go with you.\"\n\n\"You stay here and eat!\"\n\n\"You need somebody along--\"\n\n\"Nonsense! I'm used to it. I won't hear of your going!\"\n\nAnd so we argued a little and she had her way. She went out alone in\nthe rain with her misery.\n\nThere was a message saying that Harold had called.\n\nI phoned back.\n\nHis usually calm voice was raised with emotion. \"I got word the serial\nwas done and Bob Durfree called before I sent for it. I've got some\nbad news for you, Phil. They've been dissatisfied with Durfree's\neditorial policy for quite a while. Over the weekend, the Board met and\nthey've hired a new editor. Serials are out, from now on. I reminded\nthe new editor that the characters in your story belong to them--and\nyou can't sell it anywhere else. He said he was sorry; said he wanted\nshort stories about Cynthia, as usual. But no serials. You know, they\nnever consider a request as a commitment. I'm as sore as I can be! I\nrealize you were counting on the money for your new house. But--can't\nyou change the characters and do it over and let me try it on somebody\nelse? It's a mighty good story!\"\n\nHarold is not just my literary representative. He is my friend. I\ndidn't want him to guess how I really felt.\n\nI told him I'd decide later whether to write the serial over or to\nchuck it. I hung up. Went to the desk. The carbon copy of my summer's\nwork was sitting there, mute and blurry in its box. I took it out and\nfingered it and wondered how long it would be before I'd get to that\nsober book which would try to tell what certain men had learned of\nhuman instinct and how different it was from what most of the rest of\nmankind believed.\n\nQuite a while, I thought.\n\nThere were other things to do first. A wife to heal, a kid to send to\nschool, a house to finish, taxes to pay, trips to make, furniture to\nbuy.\n\nMaybe a war to fight at some frustrated desk.\n\nBut then\n\nthe future didn't belong to me, anyway.\n\nIt doesn't belong to you.\n\nIt belongs to our children and their children; to God--whom I call\ninstinct--whom you may never call or call upon--or whom you may\nprayerfully confuse with your own good opinion of yourself.\n\nLook and see.\n\nI went down to the Knight's Bar alone.\n\nI was hungry.\n\n(This is one of the marvels of Nature.)\n\nJay brought a menu.\n\n\"Terrible, about your nephew,\" he said.\n\n\"It's all right, now. He'll pull out of it.\"\n\n\"That kind of thinking, I guess, is more than men can stand.\"\n\n\"It's the thinking they don't do that they can't stand.\"\n\nJay smiled a little. \"Then they aren't any different from the rest of\nus.\"\n\n\"They aren't. Only--they don't know it.\" Jay glanced down at the menu.\n\"Sole,\" I said, \"and parsley potatoes Tartar sauce and a baked apple.\"\n\nMy mind flared and guttered over the anticlimaxes of the day. Soon, it\ncommenced to take its ribald revenge.\n\nI sent a message to the neurologists:\n\nGentlemen:\n\nYours of the twentieth century received and lack of contents noted.\nItem. You have cut out hunks of the anterior brains of monkeys and\nfound, after the surgery, they were able to live in the jungle just\nas well as before. Item. You have hacked out hunks of the posterior\ncerebral tissue of cats with the result that they lost their instincts:\nthey no longer tended to their kittens, fed them, or defended them.\nItem. Your colleagues in medicine are getting similar results with\nhuman prefrontal lobotomies. And yet--you still deny that man and\nhis works repeat the great pattern of his instincts! You deny that\nhis reason, his image of himself which he alone deems reasonable, is\nbut another reflection of this same pattern in another dimension. In\nclosing, nuts.\n\nI sent a message of truth to the theologists:\n\nDear Fellow Compulsives:\n\nTo insist you know God when you do not know logic or science is\nhideous. Those who say they know God and yet reject truth, however\nselectively, are playing at _being_ God. And those men who play they\nare God, perforce use men as toys. When will you end this dreadful\ngame? Sincerely.\n\nA time will come, I thought, when man's chief passion will be to\nobserve and to learn dispassionately--his passions.\n\nBut you won't be there, Mac.\n\nFor this reason, I sent a telepathic message to the School for Advanced\nStudy at Princeton, New Jersey, where--at long last--the professors are\nassembled to try to find out something to teach:\n\nPersons:\n\nCease trying to rectify the Bhagavad-Gita by means of the Uncertainty\nPrinciple. Try algebra--since you are so much simpler than you think.\nQuery: When will you exchange truths evenly with the Believers? So long.\n\nAs I say, I nonwired this missive. I got no answer.\n\nThe oscilloscope of my mind rippled sadly. Its little line ran\nstraight, then finally shot up with further inquiry:\n\nWho sees that day is the augury of coming night? And who--looking at\nthe darkened sky--sees it to be the daylight of a trillion suns? Who\nfurther sees the great initial in the stars themselves--the F for\nFreedom that I dreamed of in a dream? Whose brain will abide it all?\nWho will continue our Quest?\n\nAnd next, I felt my solitude.\n\nIf any man is more alone than I in this society I would know it, for I\nwould have met him in the spaces I inhabit.\n\nTrue, I've seen a few in my distances. And Ricky goes there with me\nsometimes--as she must.\n\nIn another sense, indeed, the whole company of my contemporaries is\nwith me and I am alone only in knowing it.\n\nFor the dignity and purpose we dreamed of in the youth of this century\nhas gone. We do our work. We mind our manners. But our young hope has\nbeen dimmed by the predictabilities. Hence we all know how temporary\nwe are, how brief our routines, how probably it is futile to quarry or\nto breed, to build or to wish, to sell or to instruct, to make these\ncivilized exertions.\n\nCamus' plague is on us; it has been here a long while. We call it\nmaterialism.\n\nProgress that excludes Man.\n\nWe have no peace of mind.\n\nAnd here is the question of it that the theologists and the scientists\nhave not yet hit upon:\n\nSo long as one man suffers unjustly from his fellows, be he yellow or\nblack or white, there shall be no peace of mind for anybody.\n\nAnd here is the demonstration:\n\nWhatever Man does that he should not, and knows he should not, and\nwhatever man does not, that he knows he should, becomes the substance\nof the fear of every man, lest it happen to him in his turn.\n\nIntegrity of man to man is not a paltering \"ideal\"; it is man's most\nessential ingredient, for it measures his potential for continuum in\nthe sufficient space and patient time of God.\n\nWhoever thinks to have peace of mind, these days, is therefore the\nfigment of his own imagination; whoever wants it for himself without\nthought to others is a criminal.\n\nOnly the man-concerned ever knows that fragmented trifle of\ntranquillity permitted by our noxious times and customs. The rest are\ndead already in their souls--of science, of religion, of egoistic lust,\nof a deliberate return to childishness, of every fatal evidence of our\nplague.\n\nNow a man--the Englishman--opened a newspaper noisily at his table\nacross from me.\n\nThis is what I read:\n\nSoon, fifteen million Americans would be organized (voluntarily, they\ncall it) for Civil Defense.\n\nA tenth of us regimented--willingly--for Civil Defense.\n\n(Yet everyone who knows, proclaims there is no defense!)\n\nThe men without imagination have spoken.\n\nWe shall be ready to police and put out fires, to evacuate and rope off\nradioactive areas, to deal with gas, bacterial clouds, falling fungi\nand shots caromed off the moon.\n\nIn the name of courage, fifteen million of us will be, if possible,\nmeticulously imbued with the latter-day alarms.\n\nWho says now that we are even a little sane?\n\nFor a moment, my mind was blacked out by despair.\n\nBut again and still its show went on.\n\nWe, who did not have knowledge enough of ourselves to fight, when\nthe time came, for liberty at its source--for freedom of knowledge\nitself--are day by day losing the rest of our freedom.\n\nIt is a working of the great law.\n\nAnd in what noble names the old tyrant takes us over!\n\nPerhaps, I thought, we may understand in time, or be lucky, and get\nback a brighter version of the lost principle of freedom. And if not,\nthe quicker we are slaves the better--for the necessity of freedom\nshall become plain that much the sooner.\n\nI could see the exultant marching of the fifteen million defenders of\nthe indefensible. The burial squads of the Atomic Age are forming. Soon\nit will be fashionable for women to knit Geiger counters. Two-minute\nspeakers, hastily instructed at the Y.M.C.A. will explain the need\nfor volunteers and tell us what must be done when it is too late to\ndo anything. Boy Scouts will learn to decontaminate the same, old,\ninnocent surfaces. And the prizes at ladies' bridge will have the shape\nof guided missiles.\n\nA great age to be alive in\n\nwhile it lasts.\n\nAnd that is how I began to laugh again.\n\nFor God is in His Heaven and all is well with Him.\n\nNow the sun thrust a raffish beam through the clouds and gave to\nthe room a curious, amber glow. All of us sitting there shared this\ndiscrete cube of light as fish share the water in an aquarium. And all\nof us, or nearly all, failed like the fish to penetrate the dimensions\nof our environs. Whichever way we looked we saw, not the great world\noutside, but only the image of ourselves. It was the nature of the\nplace, we said; we never noticed that it was our failure to look\nanywhere save at our side of the glass walls.\n\nThis extra light also disclosed a fresh secret of the Knight's Bar. I\nhad thought that the mural horsemen were on their way to Elaine's tower\nin Astolat. It seems not. Over the weekend the artist had fixed to the\nwall his final composition, a painting of the Grail, silk-muffled and\ncentered in a rosy halo. It occupied a circular place directly over the\nbar.\n\nHow apt!\n\nThe very effort of questing leads most but to a deeper unconsciousness.\n\nThis is the moral of Faith--so far.\n\nAnd the moral of Research--so far.\n\nWhy is that so?\n\nBecause they go in conceited search of salvation for themselves, or in\nsearch of knowledge for what is pompously called its own sake.\n\nNow the Musak took up a suitable accompaniment for my mirth.\n\n Ja-da\n Ja-da\n Ja-da, ja-da, jing, jing, jing!\n Segue into silence, fade-out, and fast iron curtain.\n\n\n_The End_","title":"Opus 21: Descriptive Music for the Lower Kinsey Epoch of the Atomic Age, a Concerto for a One-man Band, Six Arias for Soap Operas, Fugues, Anthems & Barrelhouse","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":108804}