Hazards of Time Travel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Wondering if, in time, this unreal place would begin to seem “real” to me. And whether it might ever give comfort.

  At first, books had seemed very strange to me.

  Objects made of paper and cardboard designed to be read. How wasteful and clumsy it seemed—an object you had to hold in your hand (for reading was dependent upon turning the pages of a book). You could carry only five or six books easily, while on any eBook, you could access thousands of books. But then I realized that if there was a power outage you could continue to “read”—as the book you held in your hand would not vanish but continue to exist. The curiosity of the book was that, as you held it, and “read” it, you felt an intimate connection with it as with a living thing, which you did not feel with an eBook; as soon as you were finished with the eBook, you stored it, or deleted it; you felt no sentiment or particular ownership. You could not see it on a shelf or a table, you could not admire its design. In effect, it had been Deleted.

  Badly I wanted to ask Ira Wolfman what he thought about these matters. Was there ever to be comfort, happiness in this place?

  “OH, DR. WOLFMAN! Yes. He is”—lowering her voice so that no one could hear except me—“a special case.”

  Under the pretext of inquiring about part-time employment in the psychology department I filled out an application form for one of the department secretaries, a friendly young married woman named Bethany. I marveled to Bethany that it must be wonderful to work in a department with such distinguished professors as A. J. Axel and his assistant Wolfman; I asked her about Dr. Wolfman, who was my quiz instructor, and Bethany told me that Dr. Wolfman was generally considered to be the most promising of the younger faculty, who’d published papers with Dr. Axel and gave talks at conferences.

  In a confiding tone, as if she didn’t think it was curious that I should be asking about Wolfman so much, and Axel so little, she told me that Wolfman had been at Wainscotia, in the psychology department, for five or six years; that he lived alone, and was said to “work all the time”; he was invited to staff parties but rarely came. “I know for a fact that Dr. Axel invites him to dinner at his home sometimes, and Dr. Wolfman accepts—he wouldn’t dare turn Dr. Axel down!” Bethany paused, lowering her voice. “He isn’t engaged. He’s never with anyone except other people in the department. He’s always alone.”

  It might have been clear to Bethany that I was in love with my psychology instructor. Such emotions are hard to disguise in a seventeen-year-old. I’d seen the young woman glance at my (ringless) left hand with a look of sisterly solicitude.

  And so I dared ask about Ira Wolfman’s background: where did his family live? Had she—or anyone—ever seen them? And Bethany said solemnly, “That’s just it! Ira Wolfman is so sad. He was an orphan, I’ve been told—he never knew his mother—and the saddest thing, the wonderful people who adopted him were both killed in a car crash, also. He’s from somewhere far away in the East—maybe New York City. But he doesn’t have any home, he says. He’s just—here.”

  Suddenly

  And that night, a powerful dream-memory.

  After I’d learned that Ira Wolfman was an orphan-in-Exile like me.

  For there sometimes came, in Zone 9, at unpredictable times, sudden memory-surges like heat lightning that illuminates the night sky for a split second—then vanishes, in silence.

  And that night there came a sudden memory of a long-ago time when I’d been a child of three or four and my parents were walking with me outdoors in lightly falling snow. And Mommy was gripping one of my mittened hands, and Daddy was gripping the other hand, and there came snowflakes to tickle my face, and make me laugh. And there was a gust of wind, and Daddy cried Whoa! and stooped to shelter me. And Mommy adjusted a wool cap on my head. Hold still, honey! Let Mommy fix this strap.

  And I stood very still, and lifted my head, and—

  (WHAT CAME NEXT? Nothing!)

  (The memory ended abruptly, like a switch turned off.)

  (And there was no way to return. No way back. Waking in my bed on the third floor of Acrady Cottage, in a darkened room with three other girls sleeping nearby, snoring faintly or murmuring in their sleep. And I bit my lower lip to keep from crying. Telling myself that I had lost my parents but only temporarily. And in the meantime I have found Ira Wolfman my soul-mate.)

  The Denial

  “My name isn’t ‘Mary Ellen Enright.’ My name is—”

  “No. Don’t tell me.”

  Wolfman pressed his fingers against his ears. This was a gesture that reminded me of my father—a gesture that was both playful and serious simultaneously.

  “You don’t want me to tell you?”

  “No. I don’t want you to tell me.”

  We were in Wolfman’s office. At last, after an exchange in class, he’d asked me to see him.

  (This was not unusual. Wolfman often invited students to speak with him following class, when they had questions. But he’d avoided inviting me.)

  I thought—He will acknowledge me now.

  I was very excited, and apprehensive. For The Instructions were clear: the Exiled Individual is forbidden to identify herself.

  Violations will insure that the EI will be immediately Deleted.

  After Professor Axel’s lectures this week Wolfman had taken up the subject of “schedules of reinforcement” in behavioral psychology—how acts (of human beings as of monkeys, rats, and pigeons) can be formulated along lines of behavioral responses to stimuli. On the blackboard Wolfman had drawn graphs. He’d scrawled equations. For it was not enough to demonstrate that the living being was a kind of automaton, when it came to “operant conditioning,” but the terms of conditioning could be reduced to formulae.

  Why does the (hungry) rat press the lever that will bring him food pellets? Not because the rat is “hungry”—(“hunger” is an internal state, thus not measurable)—but because its response to stimuli has been sufficiently “reinforced.”

  Why does the (addicted) gambler continue to press the slot machine levers that sometimes, though not frequently, bring him rewards in the form of coins? Not because the gambler is “happy” when he wins—(“happiness” is an internal state, thus not measurable)—but because his response to stimuli has been sufficiently “reinforced.”

  Why does any individual—animal, human—behave as he does, over a period of time? Not because he has chosen to behave in these particular ways, but because his response to stimuli has been sufficiently “reinforced.”

  There was something wrong with this logic. My heart beat hard in opposition to it, though I could not have articulated my objection.

  In our quiz section were undergraduates who had to be, like most of the residents of Acrady Cottage, Christians. Yet not one of them raised his or her hand to object to this mechanical, soulless view of consciousness. Instead, they took notes.

  At last I said, trembling, whether with nerves or with indignation, “Dr. Wolfman? Do you think that human beings are machines, without ‘free will’?”

  Wolfman turned to me, politely. His slate-colored eyes were narrowed and wary. “It’s a behavioral postulate that mental states can’t be examined, so the scientific approach is to examine what is ‘objective’—behavior. B. F. Skinner doesn’t believe that there is no ‘mind’—as his detractors claim—but that, given the principles of behaviorism, what is ‘mind’ is irrelevant to our understanding of behavior.”

  This seemed to me an oblique answer to a direct question.

  “But—what about ‘free will’? Don’t human beings have ‘freedom’ in their choices for themselves?”

  Wolfman said, with a shrug, “‘Free will’ is just a term. It’s just speech. A habit of speech. It has no specific referent, thus no specific meaning. And it is not amenable to scientific proof or disproof.”

  I wanted to cry My parents taught me there is free will. There is a soul, within.

  Wolfman continued, dryly: “‘Free will’ is a delusion, for most of us. It’s a pleasa
nt delusion, like the anticipation of Heaven which, though it never arrives, is comforting to contemplate. More realistically, ‘free will’ is like suggesting to a paraplegic that he has the choice of getting up and running in an Olympic competition—what’s stopping him?”

  This was not right. This was not the same thing at all. But I could not explain. I felt a thrill of sheer dislike of Wolfman, in that instant—the man was not my friend in Exile, but my enemy.

  I could hear my parents’ voices, objecting—but I could not hear their words clearly.

  Trust the inner, not the outer. Trust the soul, not the State.

  I was trembling now with emotion. I felt my eyes sting with tears. Ira Wolfman was my only hope—yet, with these harsh words, he was pushing me from him.

  Around me, my classmates were yawning, and taking notes.

  Seeing the look in my face, Wolfman relented.

  “All right, Miss Enright. Come see me after class.”

  AND SO: I told him.

  As I’d so long rehearsed. As I’d excited and frightened myself, imagining.

  I told him that Enright, Mary Ellen wasn’t my name.

  And he stopped me from telling him my true name.

  “But—why?”

  “‘Why’? You know perfectly ‘why,’ Miss Enright.”

  His pained expression. His narrowed eyes, that would not confront me.

  “I—I think—I want to tell you, Dr. Wolfman. Please.”

  “To what purpose?”

  Wolfman’s face flushed with heat. He kept glancing behind me, at the opened door to the corridor.

  His question was cruel, unanswerable. To what purpose?—so that I would be less lonely, and less desperate.

  And because I love you.

  If Wolfman was in Exile, like me, he’d made a substantial place for himself in Zone 9. Maybe he’d been exiled as a young man, a student—in the intervening years, he’d accommodated himself to his new life, and had acquired a degree of conspicuous success in a competitive academic world. He had an appointment at Wainscotia State University. He was a trusted assistant of the revered A. J. Axel, formerly of Harvard. His office was small and had to be shared with another assistant professor, but it was an office in distinguished old Greene Hall with its high ceilings, elaborate moldings, interior carved staircases, hardwood floors.

  Wolfman’s desk was near the room’s single window. In a bookcase beside the desk were many books, both hardcover and paperback; predominant were the names Darwin, Pavlov, Watson, Thorndike, Skinner. On the other side of the desk on the wall was a mesmerizing art poster, at which I’d been glancing, which I would one day recognize as a reproduction of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night.

  (A strange art-choice for a behavioral psychologist, such beauty and such mystery!)

  Half-pleading now Wolfman said, “Look. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, Miss Enright. And for your own good, I think you might just leave my office now, and forget about this conversation. Do you understand? For your own good.”

  The pleading was in Wolfman’s eyes. The words were terse, unfriendly.

  Wolfman was a young man, not yet thirty. He was much younger than my father. Yet I saw something of my father in his face—the faint, furrowed lines in his forehead, the anxious eyes that tried to deceive with levity, sardonic humor. And the smile that came and went, fleeting.

  “‘For my own good’—that’s why I’m here, Dr. Wolfman. I need to—know—from you . . . Who you are, and if—if you are—anyone like myself.”

  “No. I am not ‘anyone like yourself.’”

  “But—”

  “No.”

  And I wondered then: Was Wolfman my delusion? Had I imagined—everything? Out of my loneliness and sorrow, had I imagined a savior in Ira Wolfman?

  Yet, I was convinced that he knew me, deeply. He recognized me. Though he would not acknowledge it, as perhaps, in similar circumstances, to protect me, my father would not have wished to acknowledge the bond between us.

  Wolfman wiped at his warm face with a tissue. His hands were strong and protective-looking, his fingertips stubby. His nails were cut short and rounded and reasonably clean.

  No ring on the third finger of his left hand. But I knew that already.

  Wolfman took up a ballpoint pen and scribbled something on the palm of his left hand. He held up the palm to me, as he touched the forefinger of his right hand to his lips:

  GO AWAY PLEASE

  Then, he shut his hand into a fist.

  I understood. He did not want to speak to me, even to order me away. He had reason to believe that we were being overheard—we were under surveillance.

  In a level voice, the voice of a reasonable university instructor confronted with a problematic student, Wolfman was saying, “Thank you for dropping by, Miss Enright. Be assured that your work in Psychology 101 is exemplary and that your ideas, though irreconcilable with Skinnerian behaviorism, will not endanger your grade—provided you continue to excel on our exams and know all the right answers to our questions. But we won’t need any more personal conferences this semester, I think. And don’t speak to anyone about this conversation—of course.”

  My legs were leaden. My head was heavy, and my heart.

  I was shaky on my feet, but would leave Wolfman now.

  “Who would I tell, Dr. Wolfman? You’re the only person in Zone Nine to whom I could speak.”

  At the mention of Zone 9, Wolfman’s face went rigid.

  At the door I said, in a lowered voice, defiant, reckless—“And my name, which is not ‘Mary Ellen Enright,’ is, in fact, ‘Adriane Strohl.’”

  NOW, HE KNOWS. He knows with certainty. And I know him, with certainty.

  And what will happen to me, to us, now?

  The Wall

  There followed then a feverish time. The Asian flu that had been sweeping Wainscotia struck me at last. Days passed into nights, nights into days. I missed Wolfman’s Friday morning class. I began to miss other classes. For I was too ill to get out of bed. I was often despondent. Only waiting until my roommates were gone from the room and then kneeling in a corner pressing my forehead against the wall was a solace of a kind.

  Push push push—but the wall was unyielding.

  My roommates whispered to themselves. They believed that their strange, sad roommate from out-of-state was praying.

  They were pitying. They were concerned. They were beginning to be impatient.

  For they believed that I was still homesick, and that I was kneeling in prayer to their Christian God, after so many weeks.

  Wolfman would regret that he’d sent me from him! I wanted to believe this.

  Miss Steadman tried to encounter me, in the front of the house. But I went invisible, and slipped past her.

  On my bare knees on the floorboards. Pushing against the wall.

  If I tried hard enough, the censor-barrier could be penetrated—flash-memories came through like the blinks of an eye.

  Pushing a door open, hesitantly. My old, lost home!

  It was our shingle board house on Mercer Street, Pennsboro.

  Seeing my parents in the kitchen, at the table. Mom’s bench containing geraniums by a window—stunted plants that didn’t bloom much through the winter but, when they did bloom, yielded beautiful bright-red flowers.

  It had been one of my duties as a child to keep Mom’s plants watered. And to pinch off brown, desiccated leaves.

  As Mom said sadly A leaf that has turned brown will never be green again.

  So vivid was this memory, it seemed to me to be happening now.

  As I knelt pressing my forehead against the wall to ease the tiny snarl in my brain, now.

  Daddy was whistling. Brightly Daddy was whistling an old favored tune—“Battle Hymn of the Republic.” (Daddy had explained to me: this was a famous abolitionist/antislavery hymn of the 1850s, of the old U.S.A.) So many times I’d heard Daddy whistling this tune, it came back to me now, as if I’d heard it only
yesterday.

  Yet, there was something strange about the tune. It was recognizable immediately—and yet, not quite right.

  Daddy was whistling brightly, loudly. In a way to annoy (?) my mother as, preparing coffee, he annoyed my mother by brushing too close to her at the stove.

  Mom murmured something to Daddy that I couldn’t hear. Daddy laughed, mirthlessly.

  (What was wrong with Daddy? His face was hidden from me, like half a moon cloaked in shadow. He was dressed in his hospital-attendant uniform, his slave-uniform as he’d called it, an orderly’s white pullover and coat, white work-trousers and white rubber-soled sneakers.)

  Mom was setting bowls down on the table—cereal bowls.

  Dad’s bowl was at one end of the little rectangular Formica-topped table, Roddy’s and my bowls to either side of his, and Mom’s bowl nearest the stove.

  Oh!—My mouth watered: I could smell the oatmeal Mom was preparing which was our favorite breakfast.

  Steel-cut oatmeal cooked with raisins, brown sugar, and milk.

  Mom had made this breakfast since I’d been a little girl. I hadn’t realized how I had missed it.

  There was Roddy in the doorway. Short-cut hair, nondescript clothes of a low-level “intern.” His face lean and sullen and the eye sockets shadowy like a death’s-head.

  It was my childish wish that my brother might not be there, in this memory. If this was my memory.

  There was something cruel that Roddy had done to me—I couldn’t remember what it was. When news had come of my Patriot Democracy Scholarship he’d stared at me for a moment without any reaction—then, a clumsy forced smile.