by Walter Tevis
There was a pause and then the machine said, in a genteel, quavering female voice, “Do I sound like your mother now, Benjamin?”
“That’s pretty good,” I said grimly.
“If you have a picture I’ll put it on the screen and animate it.”
“I’m not sure…” I said. But I was sure. I was faking it for the benefit of the machine. I did have my mother’s picture in my billfold; I’d carried it for over thirty years and never told a soul. I reached over to the table beside the bed, took my billfold, opened it, slipped out a polychrome holo card and squeezed it on. And there sat Mother with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, looking at the camera in a patronizing way. Her brow was furrowed half in irony and half anxiety. Her hair needed combing. I stared at her for a long time, unsure what I was feeling.
“Hold it toward the viewing lens, please.” It was the machine speaking but I almost jumped; it had come to seem very like Mother’s voice.
I held the picture toward the tiny lens at the bottom of the set, and a moment later the face reappeared on the screen. I leaned back in bed, my head propped slightly against the wall, and puffed my cigar. My palms were sweating and my mouth was dry. “Hello, Mother,” I said.
The face moved, quite naturally, talking. “Hello, Benny,” it said. It was uncanny. I felt frightened.
“Are you drunk, Mother?” I said.
“Hardly,” she said. “It’s ten in the morning.”
“Oh,” I said. Somehow the wind had all gone out of my sails. “What year is it?”
She looked down toward her watch. Mother always wore a watch, which may be why I’d never worn one until recently. Until leaving Isabel. “It’s June 8, 2024,” she said. “And I feel like hell.”
“I hate to see you drinking and smoking like that, Mother,” I said. “It makes me nervous.”
She looked at me and then puffed her cigarette. “You’re just a child, Benny,” she said. “You have no idea how badly I feel. And your father’s no help…”
Some of my anger was coming back. “Have you ever asked him for help?” I said.
“What good would that do? You have no conception of what it’s like to deal with that man…”
“Damn it, Mother!” I shouted. “You’ve never noticed, have you? You’ve never seen me trying to get him to talk to me…” And I broke off, startled to hear the quaver in my voice like that in the voice of the woman in front of me.
“He used to hold you on his lap when you were a baby. It was only after you got loud and had dirty fingernails all the time…”
“Mother,” I said, “you’re trying to blame me. Damn your soul.”
She laughed, a cruel little self-regarding laugh. “You were hyperactive, Benny. And loud. A real pain in the neck…”
I stared at her, telling myself, It’s only a machine, a computer in an analyst’s office on Third Avenue in New York. It isn’t even her voice. It doesn’t really sound like her. Yet I saw myself as a small boy, dirty-nailed and loud and squirming and I felt hatred toward the child I saw, toward what that mechanical voice had sketched for me so blithely. “Mother!” I said. “Stop it!”
She looked at me and then took a knowing sip from the glass in her hand.
“Mother.” I could hear the pain in my voice as though it were someone else’s. “I was only a little kid.”
She seemed not to hear me. “I never should have had a child.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” I said.
She laughed a little more easily this time and finished her drink. “You were a trial to me even before you were born, Benny. You almost tore out my liver with your feet.” She looked meditative. “That’s all you were when I was pregnant with you: elbows and feet.”
“Goddamn it!” I said, sitting upright in bed. The sheet fell away from me. I was naked there in front of her, exposed. “Goddamn it, you were supposed to be my mother.”
Somehow she had gotten another glass of what must have been gin and she took a long swallow from it. “To tell the truth, Benny, you were a mistake,” she said. “I had too much to drink at the wedding, and took the wrong Fergusson.”
“Orbach!” I shouted at the machine, “how can you know that? You’re not her.”
Mother’s picture remained on the screen, motionless now, and Orbach’s voice came on, mechanically synthesized. “It is inferable,” the voice said gravely, “from your memories and dreams. You are not being toyed with in therapy. You hear from your mother what you yourself believe to be true.”
I lay back in bed again and started to pull the sheet over my body, but did not. I puffed my cigar deeply for a moment, nursing myself as always, and said, “Bring her back and let her talk.”
“Benny,” she said, more brightly now, “you were sweet enough in your way, but you never knew what I was going through. You would slobber kisses on me when I was hung over, and try to crawl in bed with me in the mornings, and when you were two you kept hugging your father’s leg until I had to pull you away. You weren’t like other children, with good manners and an ability to entertain themselves. You wanted attention all the time, and I was having problems myself. Your father ignored me. The other faculty wives made me a pariah. Life was very difficult for me.”
I watched her with appalled fascination, remembering every phrase of it from one time or another. As she went on drinking and talking her face became more relaxed and pleasant. She looked younger and I saw, suddenly, that her breasts were still high under her pale-blue housedress and not the sagging old woman’s breasts of the night she had sat with the candles going. “I know I have drunk a bit too much to be the best of mothers,” she was saying, “but other mothers get some help from their husbands.”
Now you’re blaming him, I thought. You’ll blame anybody. Like me with Isabel. I writhed with this for a moment, lost in a confusion of myself and my chattering mother there on the screen. It wasn’t really Mother anyway, only a simulacrum. And neither am I, I thought. I am not my mother either, but only a likeness when it comes to love.
“I had the whole work of rearing you,” she said. “He did not lift one finger. Not one.”
“Mother,” I shouted from the bed. “You goddamned fraud. You could have loved me anyway. You could have let me love you…”
“Benjamin,” she said sternly, “you are getting an erection. Cover yourself.”
I looked down. It was true. I stared at myself for a long moment, bedazzled. I was shameless; I kept getting harder.
“Well,” she said in some kind of crazy voice that was half coy and half reproachful, “I’m glad to see that you’re normal. It’s more than I can say for your father in there.”
I stared at her on the screen. “Shut up!” I said. “Won’t you please just shut up?”
Her eyes began to glaze. “Benny,” she said, “you’ll never know what it’s been like for me all these years. God knows I’ve tried. I’ve tried to be a good wife and mother and nobody cares anything for me.”
“Mother,” I said, “I cared. I tried to love you and you pushed me away, just like Daddy. The two of you were a fucking team…”
“You don’t have to use that language,” she snapped. “You’ve forgotten how I nursed you, and fed you…”
“That’s not how it was, Mother,” I said. “You used to feed me Franco-American spaghetti out of a can. Half the time you didn’t trouble yourself to heat it.” I stared at her. “You were too drunk, Mother.”
She looked down at her lap a moment and then took another drink. Her voice had become low and her eyes seemed to look inward as they had that night on the couch, with the candles. “You can abuse me all you like, Benjamin, with your gutter language. But the truth is I’m your mother and I did my best for you.”
I sat up in bed, feeling something about to burst in my head. “It wasn’t your best and it wasn’t enough,” I said.
For a long moment we were both silent, staring at one another. I realized, with a shock, that she was much younge
r than I. Prettiness and weakness met in her face, already showing incipient ruin. My hatred for that face was insatiable; I wanted to crush it like a rotten grapefruit between my hands.
During all this my prick had remained erect. Mother looked at me awhile in a kind of crazy, muted contemplation. Then she said, “I used to wash your thing for you, Benny, when you were little, and cute. You always enjoyed it.”
“Mother,” I said, “I was not a toy. God did not give you something to fool around with when you had me.”
She smiled a faint, smug smile. “Why is your penis so hard, Benny?”
“Why do you think?” I found myself shouting. “And you aren’t worth it. You’re nothing.”
I was sitting straight up in bed. I reached forward abruptly and slammed the telephone’s “off” switch with the heel of my hand. Her face, with its smug, flirtatious smile, vanished into the electronic limbo it had been generated from.
I finished my cigar slowly and got Orbach’s machine on the phone again. This time the screen was blank. “I hope you are better, Benjamin,” the machine said in Orbach’s normal voice.
“I don’t know. I’m not as angry.”
“And things are clearer?”
“Things are,” I said. “I had an erection while I was looking at her.”
“Congratulations!” the machine said. “Would you like to talk with your father?”
I reached for another cigar and held it for a while in my hand. Then I shook my head. “My father’s dead,” I said.
“Yes,” the machine said, “he is dead.”
“Then I’ve done enough,” I said.
***
In an hour the fever was down and my head was clear. It was getting dark outside, and the rain had stopped. I looked at my watch. Eight o’clock. I would be going out to Lao-tzu in the morning and I needed to do some research first. And I was hungry.
I phoned room service for a hamburger and a glass of ginger ale. Then I called the one local taxi and reserved him for eight in the morning. I hung up, pushed the “Library” button on the viddiphone and began tracking down what was available on Lao-tzu. There was a good deal, much of it in the Shanghai People’s Library.
I found two histories of the company, going back to its origins on a Nanking back street in the nineteenth century, and books about the founder. There were annual reports and stock prospectuses in English and Chinese, and a lot of miscellaneous works on the drug business in China. I put it all on “Hold.”
On a hunch I checked U. S. Political Science and struck it rich there too: a holo movie called L’Ouverture Baynes—Man of the Times, and a book from the University of Kentucky Press, Kentucky Political Campaigns in the 2050s. I had texts of these printed out.
My hamburger arrived on a pewter plate with grapes and cheese cubes and Roquefort dressing and piles of evil-looking lettuce: clearly a Renaissance Pope Sandwich. I signed the bill and turned on the TV, switching it to play the material I had on “Hold” on the viddiphone. I threw away the lettuce and began eating, as an introduction to the Chinese ethical drug business came on. There was a panoramic shot of Chang An in Peking and crowds of healthy, prosperous Chinese. “Welcome to China!” a saccharine voice proclaimed. I sighed, had a drink of ginger ale, and called room service again for a pot of coffee. It was going to take a lot of caffeine to get through all this.
About the time my pitcher of coffee arrived, Howard called to say he’d gotten the report on endolin. There was no way to analyze it completely and no way whatever to synthesize it. I was delighted. I thanked him for his help and told him I had to get busy. Then I instructed the viddiphone to select out for me all the information on analgesics and to read it aloud, in English. I poured a cup of coffee and settled back in my chair.
***
At Lao-tzu in the morning Pear Blossom’s secretary told me icily that she was in conference. I told him I’d wait, plumped myself into an armchair and opened my Kentucky Politics printout, brought along for just this purpose. I lit a cigar. It must have been thirty years since anybody had made me wait in an outer office, cooling my heels like a porno-videosphere salesman, but I managed it all right. Pear Blossom came in a little over an hour later dressed in a gorgeous lavender shift and high heels. She saw me sitting there and looked away coolly, about to hurry into her office. Nice legs.
I played my ace in the hole immediately: I spoke to her in Chinese, using the Tradition-Revival forms. “Gracious flower of the arching pear tree,” I said, freezing her in her tracks. “I address you unworthily and my outlander’s tongue is lame with its mockery of yours.” In fact, I was speaking Chinese beautifully and Pear Blossom, judging from her face, knew it. “…yet even my poor discourse might add treasure to the bursting storehouse of the exalted Lao-tzu.”
“I’ll give you ten minutes,” Pear Blossom said.
I followed her into her office, a packet of endolin in my hand.
***
It took them four days to make the first offer. It was absurdly low, as I explained to Pear Blossom and her boss. By that time they had figured out who I was and had come to take me seriously. They also knew, of course, what endolin could do. They wanted it. Oh yes. It tingled my capitalist balls to sense that.
They doubled the offer the next day, and I told them again what I wanted. Three hundred million for the fifty pounds I had and for a 40 percent option on imports.
They walked out on that, as I thought they might.
The following day we met in a bigger room, with gray silk wall hangings. There was a new person among them, a very old woman in a blue robe, just arrived by plane from Peking. Pear Blossom introduced her to me as Mourning Dove Soong and I knew immediately who she was.
I spoke to her in Chinese. “I am filled with pride to address the distinguished chairperson of the world’s most formidable drug company.”
She nodded without smiling. “You ask too much for your endolin. A headache is a headache. Aspirin is a fine drug.”
This was just what I wanted. My heart felt light. It is exhilarating to see research pay off.
“I agree heartily,” I said. “I often buy aspirin from Bayer—a fine company—or Norwich, though that firm tediously outsells Lao-tzu throughout Europe, Scandinavia, and the Gold Coast. Upjohn also purveys a fine U.S.P. aspirin, to be found in twice as many American stores as the Lao-tzu product, unquestionably worthy though the latter is. One might weep at the thought.”
Mourning Dove was looking at me thoughtfully, holding a glass of plum wine. Pear Blossom and her boss were on the sofa. I sat in an armchair.
“One must also regard,” I said, “those merciful aids to the arthritic which are made with an analgesic as a component. Tao, the illustrious nine-way arthritis remedy, has sadly lost millions of dollars to Anacin alone over the past seven quarters. The new plant in Rio de Janeiro for the manufacturing of Tao will be forced to close, at embarrassing cost, if this tendency is not reversed. Worker riots are spoken of publicly. One wonders what the addition of endolin, in trace amounts, might do to this unhappy competition with Anacin. Then we must consider light anesthesia for minor surgery, and the hospital market…”
Mourning Dove was lighting a cigarette, much as Humphrey Bogart might have. “We’ll buy it,” she said.
I could have hugged her. “Splendid!” I said, in English. “Let’s sign the papers here tomorrow.”
Mourning Dove nodded, and sipped her wine. “I understand you have no present citizenship, Mr. Belson,” she said.
“All too true.” I said in English, still feeling some of the Chinese way of speaking in my head. “I have no nationality whatever at present.” I hesitated. “Perhaps you and I are sharing a thought.” My research had told me Mourning Dove was not only Chairperson of Lao-tzu International; she also sat on the Committee for the Enlargement of the People. The Immigration Bureau.
“Perhaps. Would you like to be Chinese?”
“Mourning Dove, you are marvelous!” I said. “You and I understan
d each other very well.”
“Yes,” she said unsmiling, in her soft, gravelly voice. “I’m certain it will help with your plans, to be free of legal encumbrances. Our embassies protect the People, Mr. Belson.”
“Oh, don’t I know it,” I said, exuberant. I had planned to go for this but hadn’t been sure it would work. As a Chinese I could have lawyers; I could use the whole string of multinational and world courts to go after the Isabel.
“Yes,” Mourning Dove said. “It will make our contract safe from red tape. And from publicity.”
“I’m right with you, Mourning Dove,” I said. “Do I need to pass any tests? I’ve read Confucius and the sayings of Chairman Mao. I have a pair of Qin horses by my croquet court in Atlanta, and my sweetheart, Isabel Crawford, is a Maoist.” I was high and feeling a bit silly. And I was really liking Mourning Dove, in whose eyes I had begun to detect amusement.
“None of that will be necessary,” Pear Blossom said coolly. “It’s a matter of form with the Committee for Enlargement, in Peking. The People’s Republic does not require performances from prospective citizens.”
Mourning Dove ignored her and smiled faintly at me. “Many of the Qin horses are exquisite,” she said. “I am pleased with your judgment.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for coming all the way from China.”
***
The forms were sent to Columbus by Transpacific Xerox, and by the next afternoon I was Chinese. I signed three papers in the presence of witnesses, made a ceremonial bow, and promised to be orderly in the arrangement of my household. Why not? I could have signed my name in script, but my professor of Chinese had shown me the calligraphic way and I did it like that, using a brush:
I became a compatriot of Confucius and Mao with a few strokes. A small world, if you know the right people. Chinese Belson.
I remained undeceived, however, aware that my being Chinese made the endolin contract safer for them. The papers were ready right after the naturalization papers. I signed them briskly. I was now not only a Chinese, but a rich Chinese.
***
After I left Lao-tzu with a plastic card that identified me as a Chinese national, my taxi took me to The People’s Bank of Shanghai, Columbus Branch, where I set up some accounts. I’d taken a check for ten million from Lao-tzu, for good faith and to tide me over until the transfer of funds was finished. The only possible snag was in Lao-tzu’s getting the endolin from the Isabel. I wouldn’t have any more cash from them until that was brought off. Since the People’s Republic maintained a big staff in Washington, and since even L’Ouverture couldn’t buck the State Department where Chinese relations were concerned, I hoped they’d have it within a week. I’d told Pear Blossom how to find it in the Isabel’s cabin. Pear Blossom was clearly the sort of person who got hold of what was rightfully hers.