Hazards of Time Travel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  I would wonder if he’d followed me to the museum. If he’d made inquiries about “Mary Ellen Enright” of the Class of 1963, College of Liberal Arts.

  I loved Wolfman so much, I needed to believe that Wolfman might love me.

  After his initial ebullience in the bomb shelter Wolfman was quieter now, and looking rueful. I saw his fingers fumble for a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket—but fortunately he thought better of lighting up a cigarette in this airless space.

  I thought how strange it was, Ira Wolfman smoked. As if he’d been born in Zone 9, and not teletransported to it.

  The shelter filled me with a sense of dread. I could not believe that we were so safe in it as Wolfman seemed to believe. For why wouldn’t Surveillance have followed us here?—I could not think other than that our Government of NAS-23 was capable of penetrating any barrier.

  The terrible thought came to me—Can you trust him? Wolfman?

  Wolfman said quietly, “Don’t be afraid, ‘Mary Ellen.’ You can trust me, I am your friend in Zone Nine.”

  I told Wolfman yes, I trusted him.

  And I love you.

  But you know that.

  Wolfman asked me my name, and I told him.

  Wolfman asked me where I was from, and I told him.

  Wolfman asked me to tell him what was in my heart.

  Wolfman opened his arms to me, and I came to him.

  And all that passed between us that night went unrecorded in the shelter beneath the Van Buren Museum of Natural Science.

  The Sacrifice

  It was a famous behaviorist experiment of 1920 conducted by John Watson.

  The eleven-month infant, Little Albert, had not been frightened of any animals until a gentle white rat was placed in his lap and a sudden loud noise of two steel bars struck together behind his head, several times in succession. Soon then, Little Albert began to cry at the very sight of the rat, as of a dog, or even a fur coat, and to exhibit symptoms of terror preceding the clanging of the steel bars.

  We were shown a film in the lecture hall. Old, grainy, jumpy but unmistakable—the infant was convulsed with terror as the steel bars were struck behind his head, and soon he learned to hate and fear the gentle white rat he’d previously seemed to like.

  One day I would ask Wolfman—Why hadn’t the experimenter de-conditioned the infant, after the experiments? Hadn’t anyone thought of this?

  Wolfman said he didn’t think so. Didn’t think that Watson or anyone else had thought of “de-conditioning” at the time.

  I asked Wolfman if Little Albert had grown up to be frightened of animals and fur coats and Wolfman said, No. The poor kid hadn’t grown up at all, he’d died at age six.

  Adoration

  We don’t have to see each other to be near each other. Remember, I am your friend.

  Waking in the dark, in the Wainscotia winter. A half-mile away the chapel bell thinly tolled the hour of 6:00 A.M.

  My final morning of exams! It was January 1960.

  Hurriedly I dressed in the dark as my roommates slept. It had been my exam-week schedule to wake early and work downstairs in the study room, then run through the snow to the dining hall for breakfast, and then to my first exam which might be scheduled as early as 8:00 A.M. Today was my Psychology 101 exam, at 9:00 A.M. in Greene Hall.

  I was nervous and excited. So badly I wanted to excel.

  I wanted Ira Wolfman to be impressed by me. I wanted him to be proud of me, even if in secret.

  Many times I’d studied the semester’s material: notes assiduously taken at Professor Axel’s lectures, and the textbook from which the lecture topics were taken, which A. J. Axel had helped edit. In my agitated sleep, I skimmed columns of (unreadable) print. I was underlining, taking notes. I woke with a headache, eager to be examined. I wondered if the microchip in my brain would affect my memory generally, or only just “censored” memories.

  Wolfman had told me that there was no microchip inserted in my brain! He was certain.

  They want EIs to think this. The effect is that we “censor” ourselves, through suggestion.

  (I had no idea what to believe, now. Though I wanted to believe that Ira Wolfman was correct.)

  My grades, as I went into the final exam for Psych 101, were A’s and A+’s. I had virtually memorized my lecture and textbook notes. Yet I feared a sudden reversal of fortune, that would disappoint and disillusion Ira Wolfman and he would no longer want to be my friend.

  Wolfman had informed his students that most of the questions on the final exam would be multiple choice, to be graded mechanically. There would be a few brief written answers, and a single essay of approximately 750 words. Wolfman had told us dryly that no new, original thoughts were expected on the exam, or welcomed:—“Each question has an obvious answer, and that’s the answer that’s correct. The other answers will be marked ‘wrong.’”

  Dr. Wolfman’s attitude toward the course he was helping to teach had become ever more ambiguous during the semester. Often he seemed to be speaking ironically, as if reciting words in which he didn’t believe. He seemed to be losing faith in behaviorism, which was the foundation of the Wainscotia psychology department and of the institute which A. J. Axel would be heading, to “cure” aberrant/perverse behavior. I wondered—did his colleagues notice? Did the other students notice? Or was I the only one?

  Or was I imagining, in my obsession with Ira Wolfman?

  From our State-monitored public high school I knew how to answer multiple-choice questions. At least 80 percent of our education was tested in this way; our teachers had taught us to take exams, essentially. Originality, subtlety, and skepticism were not valued.

  The more you knew of the material, the more complexity you saw in it, and so the more difficult it often was to provide a simple, crude answer. Yet, if you were a canny exam-taker, you understood that only one answer could be “correct”—this was the answer you’d been drilled in over the semester. It was understood that Professor Axel’s assistants drew up exams that followed his lectures and his textbook scrupulously; often, questions were really just restatements from either, which might be memorized. Only in essays could you hope to be original—but in essays you could also sabotage your own chances.

  Wolfman would be grading my exam, since I was in his quiz section. He’d coolly informed me that he graded all student work “blind”—he wouldn’t know whose work he was grading until he’d completed all the exams. And he never changed an exam grade—“I get it right the first time.”

  Since the museum I’d seen Ira Wolfman only a few, fleeting times outside class. He would not telephone me—of course. He’d warned me not to try to call him; or to write to him, or leave notes for him.

  He’d said When the semester is over. When you’re not my student any longer.

  That night in the museum we’d remained together until a quarter to twelve, which was my curfew at Acrady.

  Curfew! Only undergraduate girls at Wainscotia had curfews, not boys. It was an unexamined principle of male privilege, that no one seemed to have noticed; the precise hours of curfew, which varied from 11:00 P.M. weekdays to midnight on Fridays, 1:00 A.M. on Saturdays, and 10:00 P.M. on Sundays, had been devised by the dean of women.

  That night, Wolfman had held me, and comforted me, and encouraged me to talk—to tell him everything, anything.

  So long had I had no one to whom I could speak! Words had spilled from me, like tears. And tears spilled from me as well.

  I had not been close to any boy, still less any man, in my life. The only man who’d ever hugged me was my dad.

  There were many girls at Pennsboro High who were like me, in our discomfort with boys. My mother had said that this hadn’t always been the case, when she’d been in high school she’d had friends who were boys, and boy-friends whom she’d “dated”; but times had been different then, teenagers hadn’t been encouraged to spy upon each other, and inform upon each other, quite so much as they had been in the past twenty ye
ars.

  And the boys at our school hadn’t been sympathetic, mostly—like my brother Roderick they’d been opportunistic, untrustworthy, mean-spirited, mocking. Across a narrow abyss we’d seemed to be regarding each other—female, male. There were no “friendships” but rather “sex-contacts” that were crude and curt and likely to be ridiculed online in ugly words or photos posted by boys.

  Ira Wolfman was the first man I’d loved. The first man with whom I was in love. It would not discourage me that Wolfman didn’t reciprocate my feeling for him—so grateful was I that Wolfman simply existed.

  That night he hadn’t kissed me except on the forehead, and lightly on the cheek, as you might kiss a fretting child. He’d laughed saying he was way too old for me. He wasn’t the kind of guy who takes advantage.

  I’d wanted to beg Wolfman—Please! Take advantage.

  In The Instructions it was clearly stated: an EI is forbidden to procreate. But I had no thought of such a development—pregnancy. No more than any other Wainscotia “coed” did I imagine that such a quandary could happen to me; and I could take solace in the fact that Wolfman was indeed older than I was, a responsible adult.

  I did believe that Wolfman was my friend. I did believe—(maybe)—that Wolfman might love me, in time.

  I wasn’t so desperate now. I wasn’t so lonely now. If Wolfman was in my life, I would not ever be lonely again. I thought.

  YET STILL I COULDN’T keep from seeking out Wolfman, in public places. No one could ever suspect us, in public places!

  In the week following the museum, I attended a lecture given by a visiting professor of psychology from Purdue, which Ira Wolfman also attended, and at which he’d asked questions. Not a very interesting lecture—(on a behavioral topic involving a complicated schedule of “reinforcement” in primates)—but Wolfman’s questions were lively and provocative; and I thought But you must not call attention to yourself!—for older professors were present, one of them white-haired A. J. Axel, and they might not approve of the young psychologist’s manner.

  In the lecture hall I’d watched Wolfman covertly. And Wolfman was aware of my presence, I thought. But at the end of the lecture Wolfman remained at the front of the room, talking with colleagues, and I left without speaking to him.

  Just being in his presence suffused me with a sense of well-being, happiness. I thought—That you exist in this world, with me. That is enough for me, for now.

  In psychology it is known: a mentally ill person can have “insight” into her illness, yet the illness remains. As a physically ill person can understand the circumstances of her illness, yet the illness remains.

  In love with Wolfman, how pathetic is that? When Wolfman does not love you.

  The Searchers

  It was a mistake. Would be a mistake. Maybe.

  Attending a Friday evening Film Society screening of a “classic” western starring John Wayne called Red River. In the bomb shelter Wolfman had happened to mention that while he disliked the TV of Zone 9 he generally liked the movies; and so I’d gone to the Film Society showing with the hope of seeing him.

  I’d arrived late. Not knowing where the Film Society was, going to another (darkened, locked) classroom building. Steep steps in a hill. And now making my slow way into the darkened room in—at last!—the right building, in a first-floor alcove. Where chairs were set up. At first, I didn’t see Wolfman in the audience and hesitated, thinking I wouldn’t remain—then, I saw him sitting alone, in a side-aisle seat near the front of the room.

  (Had he seen me? I wasn’t sure.)

  (I did not sit near Wolfman. I felt that this restraint would commend me to him.)

  Since I’d begun studying what was called “twentieth-century psychology”—since I’d researched the history of behaviorism, predating B. F. Skinner—it had begun to seem to me that most human situations were analogous to psychological experiments. The usual experimental subject was a pigeon or a rat but sometimes human subjects were used. You saw, or in some way experienced, a “stimulus”—the way you reacted was the “response.” It was the case that, the more detailed and “objective” the description of the subject’s behavior, the less the experimenter was likely to know what was happening; for one could not infer an inner life, a subjective mode of being, from mere observation. Inevitably, living things were perceived (from the outside) as resembling clockwork mechanism. You wanted to protest—But I am me! I am unique and ungraspable.

  But now I was here at the Film Society, where my (unreciprocated, futile, sublime) love for Ira Wolfman had drawn me. Was that not predictable? Had not (probably) Ira Wolfman predicted it? In a new and unexpected variant of a “Skinner box” everywhere I went, in Zone 9, I brought this (invisible) box with me, for I was at its epicenter.

  Before Skinner, but not unlike Skinner, there were leading scientists who claimed that animals were essentially machines whose behavior could be explained in simple terms, and manipulated by conditioning; yet, there were scientists, if fewer in number, who argued for a kind of vitalism—a “non-material” essence that suffused living things. (These were likely to be scientists discredited by their colleagues, as in the case of a German named Hans Driesch.) In my life, in the obsessive nature of my thoughts, and in the circumstances of my Exile state, I saw myself as an experimental subject of some kind, for (of course) I was being observed, and “recorded”; but at the same time, in the emotion that Ira Wolfman aroused in me, and in my yearning for him, I saw myself as unique, secret, unpredictable.

  My yearning for Wolfman was leading me to places I would not otherwise have gone. As if, slowly, another being was evolving who was both Mary Ellen Enright and Adriane Strohl. For the behaviorists also believed that the self is created out of the environment, and out of accidents in the environment, rather than out of the rigidity of genetic determinism. We are what we are made to be—we must only not resist.

  Often I caught sight of myself in reflective surfaces, and was struck—stricken—by the person I’d become, in Zone 9. For an eighteen-year-old girl—(my eighteenth birthday had recently come and gone unremarked: I could not bring myself to tell Wolfman), I was not young. My skin was ashy, my eyes were stark and staring, my manner was vigilant, hyper-alert. I’d become one of those lab rats that has been frustrated or frightened or shocked (by electricity) so many times, it has lost its essential, original ratness and is something else now, almost a new species: a creature waiting to be defined by the next, possibly lethal stimulus.

  Yet, my love for Wolfman couldn’t have been inferred or deduced from my appearance. (I was sure!) This was my secret happiness.

  How unexpected, the movie!—the “western.”

  At first I couldn’t determine if The Searchers was intended as a sort of comedy, in its exaggerations, or meant to be serious—“heroic.” It was riveting and even enthralling—as a cartoon would be to a credulous child. The Technicolor was luridly bright, the actors awkward in their dialogue, the music accompanying every scene, from the credits onward, distracting as a clattering of drums. John Wayne was not an actor I’d ever seen before—conspicuously he seemed to be playing “John Wayne.” The camera was fixed upon him, often in close-up, at the center of every scene, and scenes were both melodramatic and slow-moving; you knew that something was about to happen by the “suspenseful” music, but it did not happen quickly. No one on-screen looked anything like an actual person in an actual situation—it was obvious that these were professional actors in costumes reciting lines of dialogue they’d more or less memorized.

  Indians were the enemy here. Menacing near-naked savages who behaved cruelly in scenes of deafening violence followed by scenes in which Indians were shot off galloping horses, to fall heavily into sagebrush. Scenes in which Indians were treated “comically” were almost worse. And—so much killing of buffalo, by the John Wayne “hero”!

  Yet, at the end of the film, many in the theater applauded. Even Wolfman!

  After the lights came up viewers stood
about discussing the film, which they seemed to take seriously. All, except me, were adults. Most appeared to be faculty members. There was much praise for John Wayne’s “performance”; there was praise for the “direction” and the “western landscape.” There was a pretentious sort of talk of the “myth of the American frontier.” Almost, I’d have thought that these people were joking, as Wolfman often joked, but evidently not.

  Myth. American frontier. Not a frontier to those who’d been living there.

  Patiently I waited for Wolfman to turn to me, or at least to glance in my direction. Patiently I waited for the people with whom he was speaking to drift away and go home. I was feeling a kind of righteous indignation for I had not liked the bombastic film and I didn’t think that anyone else should like it, either.

  Wolfman was friendly with these people, but they did not seem to be psychology colleagues. There was a couple, who appeared to be married; and there were two women who’d come alone to the film, but had sat together, near Wolfman. I felt dismay, that one of the women, whom Wolfman seemed to know well, was lingering in Wolfman’s presence, clearly waiting for him to leave, so that she could walk out of the student union with him. There was some fuss about putting on jackets, and furlined hats. The woman’s hair was dark, and parted in the center of her head, where her hair had begun to turn silver. Her eyes were large, heavy-lidded, staring—like my own. She was not a beautiful woman and she may have been older than Ira Wolfman but her face was sharp-boned and striking and you could see that she was edgy, and intelligent. I could taste jealousy like hot acid in my mouth. For a dizzying moment I thought—She is myself only older. They are Exiles together.

  But this was not likely. This could not be.

  Their laughter was grating, like knives and forks clattering together. I did not realize that what I felt was sexual jealousy, which strikes like a virulent illness those to whom it is previously unknown.

  They were even smoking cigarettes together! I hated them.