by Paul Auster
TWO BLOWS TO THE HEAD
1
1957. You are ten years old, no longer a small boy, but not yet a big boy, a person best described as a medium boy, a boy at the summit of his late-middle childhood, still walled off from the world in the year of Sputnik 1 and 2, but less so than you were the year before, with some vague understanding that the Suez Crisis has ended, that Eisenhower has sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, in order to stop the riots and help desegregate the schools, that Hurricane Audrey has killed more than five hundred people in Texas and Louisiana, that a book about the end of the world called On the Beach has been published, but you know nothing about the publication of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame or Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and even less than nothing about the death of Joseph McCarthy or the expulsion of Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters union from the AFL-CIO. It is a Saturday afternoon in May, and you and a friend of yours from school, Mark F., a new comrade who is also your Little League teammate, are driven to the movies by one of your parents and dropped off to watch the feature by yourselves. The title of the film you see that afternoon is The Incredible Shrinking Man, and in much the same way that The War of the Worlds affected you four years earlier, this film turns you inside out and drastically alters the way you think about the universe. The shock when you were six can best be called a theological shock—a sudden realization of the limits of God’s power, and the daunting conundrum that entailed, for how could the power of the all-powerful one in any way be limited?—but the shock of Shrinking Man is a philosophical shock, a metaphysical shock, and such is the power of that somber little black-and-white film that it leaves you in a state of gasping exaltation, feeling as if you have been given a new brain.1
From the ominous music that plays during the opening credits, you understand that you are about to be taken on a dark and menacing ride, but once the action begins, your fears are assuaged somewhat by the presence of a voice-over narrator, the shrinking man himself, who addresses the audience in the first person, which means that no matter what terrible adventures might be in store for him, he will manage to come through them alive, for how could a man tell his own story if he were dead? The strange, almost unbelievable story of Robert Scott Carey began on an ordinary summer day. I know that story better than anyone else—because I am Robert Scott Carey.
Lying side by side in their bathing suits, Carey and his wife, Louise, are sunning themselves on the deck of a cabin cruiser. The boat drifts languidly over the waters of the Pacific, the sky is clear, and all is well. They are both young and attractive, they are in love, and when they aren’t kissing, they talk to each other with the playful, teasing banter of lifelong soul mates. Louise goes below deck to fetch some beer for them, and that is when it happens, when a dense cloud or mist suddenly appears on the horizon and begins rushing toward the boat, a large, all-enveloping mist that scuds along the surface of the ocean with a strange, clamoring sibilance, so loud that Carey, who is drowsing on the deck with his eyes closed, sits up, then stands up to watch the cloud speed forward and engulf the boat. He raises his arms in an instinctive gesture of defense, doing what he can to protect himself from the vaporous assault, which is nothing, but then the fast-moving cloud is already past him, and within seconds the sky is clear again. As Louise emerges from the cabin, she sees the cloud floating off into the distance. What was that? she asks. I don’t know, he replies, some kind of … mist. Louise turns to him and notices that his torso is covered with flecks of phosphorescent dust, quasi-metallic particles glinting in the light, unnatural, disturbing, inexplicable, but the glow begins to fade, and the scene ends with the two of them rubbing off the flecks with towels.
Six months go by. One morning, as Louise is setting the table for breakfast, Carey calls down to her from their upstairs bedroom, asking if the right pants have been sent back from the cleaners. Cut to the bedroom: Carey is standing in front of a full-length mirror, pulling the waist of his pants out from his body. There are two or three inches of slack, meaning that the pants are too large for him, and a bit later, when he puts on his shirt, his monogrammed white business shirt, that proves to be too large for him as well. The metamorphosis has begun, but it is still early days at this point, and neither Carey nor Louise has the smallest notion of what lies ahead. That morning, in fact, the ever-cheerful, wisecracking Louise suggests that Carey is simply losing weight and that she finds it very becoming.
But Carey is alarmed. Without telling his wife, he goes to a doctor for a checkup, and it is in Dr. Bramson’s office that he learns he is now five feet, eleven inches tall and weighs one hundred seventy-four pounds. Above average on both counts, but as Carey explains to Bramson he has always been six-one and has mysteriously dropped almost ten pounds. The doctor calmly brushes aside these numbers, telling Carey that he has probably lost the weight because of stress and overwork, and as for the missing two inches, he doubts they are really missing. He asks Carey how many times he has been measured. Only three, it turns out, once for the draft board, once in the navy, and once for a life insurance physical. Errors could have been made during all three of them, Bramson says, errors often happen, and results can vary depending on when the exam is held (people are tallest in the morning, he remarks, then they shrink a little over the course of the day as gravity compresses the spinal disks, the bone joints, and so forth), and on top of that one must not overlook the problem of standing too erectly, which can make a person seem taller than he actually is, and so, when all is said and done, a difference of two inches is nothing to worry about. You’ve likely lost some weight due to insufficient diet, Bramson says, but (with a dismissive laugh) people don’t get shorter, Mr. Carey. They just don’t get shorter.
Another week goes by. Standing on the bathroom scale one evening, Carey discovers that he has lost four more pounds. Even more unsettling, when he and Louise embrace a few moments later, she is standing eye to eye with him, an irrefutable sign of his slow diminishment, since in the past she had always stood on her toes when they kissed, stretching up in order to bring her lips against his. I’m getting smaller, Lou, he says—every day. She knows that now, accepts that now, but at the same time she is incredulous—as anyone would be, as you yourself are, sitting in the darkened theater watching the film, for the thing that is happening to Scott Carey cannot possibly happen. A knot of dread begins to form in your stomach. You can already sense where the story is going, and it is almost too much for you to bear. You pray for a miracle and hope you are wrong, hope that some scientific mastermind will step in and figure out a way to arrest the shrinking of the shrinking man, for by now Scott Carey is no longer just a character in a film, Scott Carey is you.
He returns to Dr. Bramson’s office, goes back several times over the next week, and Bramson, who is no longer smiling and confident, no longer the reassuring skeptic who scoffed at Carey after the first exam, is now studying two sets of X-rays, one taken at the beginning of the week and the other at the end, identical shots of Carey’s thoracic region that detail his spinal and rib structure, and as Bramson puts the first plate on top of the second, it is apparent that although the pictures are essentially the same, one skeletal system is smaller than the other. This is the medical proof, the final test that abolishes all doubt about the nature of Carey’s condition, and Bramson is both shaken and bewildered, suddenly in over his head, and therefore grim, almost angry, as he walks over to Carey and Louise and tells them what he has found. It is wholly unprecedented, he says, there is no way to account for it, but Carey is indeed getting smaller.
On Bramson’s advice, Carey goes to the California Medical Research Institute, a West Coast stand-in for a place like the Mayo Clinic, where he spends the next three weeks in the hands of various specialists, undergoing an intensive battery of tests. These probings and inspections are presented in a brief montage, and as one image quickly gives way to another, Carey’s voice returns to explain what is happening: I drank a barium solution and stood behind a fluoroscope screen. They gave m
e radioactive iodine … and an examination with a Geiger counter. I had electrodes fastened to my head. Water-restriction tests. Protein-bond tests. Eye tests. Blood cultures. X-rays and more X-rays. Tests. Endless tests. And then the final examination, a paper chromatography test …
Dr. Silver, the man in charge of the case, tells Carey and Louise that in addition to a gradual loss of nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus, the chromatography test has revealed a rearrangement of the molecular structure of the cells in Carey’s body. Carey asks if he is talking about cancer, but Silver says no, it’s more like an anti-cancer, a chemical process that is causing all of Carey’s organs to diminish proportionately. Then Silver asks two decisive questions. First, has he ever been exposed to any kind of germ spray, in particular an insecticide, a great deal of insecticide? Carey searches his memory and finally recalls that, yes, one morning several months ago, on his way to work, he took a shortcut through a back alley, and while he was walking there a truck turned in, spraying trees. Silver nods. They were fairly certain of that, he says, but that alone wouldn’t have been enough, it was only the beginning, and something must have happened to that insecticide after it entered Carey’s system, something that turned a mildly virulent germ spray into a deadly force. Then comes the second question: has he been exposed to any type of radioactivity in the past six months? Of course not, Carey says, he doesn’t come in contact with anything like that, he works in a— Before he can finish the sentence, Louise interrupts him. Scott, she says, Scott, that day we were on the boat. That mist …
All is clear now. The cause of the horror has been discovered, the effect has been rigorously documented, and as the Careys settle into their car to begin the drive home, Louise fends off her husband’s grim, downcast remarks with a steady, almost cheerful optimism, saying she is certain the doctors will find a way to help him, that it won’t be long before Dr. Silver finds an antitoxin to reverse what is happening. They can look, Carey says, but they don’t have to find. And then: I can’t go on like this—dropping weight, shrinking … And that leaves the question: how long have I got? To which Louise responds, speaking in a firm and passionate voice: Don’t say that, Scott—ever again. He looks away from her and pushes on with his argument: I want you to start thinking about us. Our marriage. Some pretty awful things might happen. There’s a limit to your obligation. Shaken by his words, almost on the point of tears, Louise throws her arms around her husband and kisses him on the mouth. I love you, she says. Don’t you know that? As long as you have this wedding ring on, I’ll always be with you.
Cut to a close-up of the ring on the fourth finger of Carey’s left hand. An instant later, the ring slips off his finger and falls to the floor.
Until now, you have watched the film with utmost attention, you have already decided that it is the best film you have seen, perhaps the best film you will ever see, and if you don’t fully understand the scientific or pseudo-scientific language spoken by Dr. Silver, you feel that words such as chromatography, phosphorus, radioactive iodine, and molecular structure have given an air of plausibility to Carey’s unfortunate condition. Much as you have been engaged so far, however, impressed as you have been by the opening sequences of the film, you are not prepared for the shock of what comes next, for it is only now, as the second part of the film begins, with its simple yet altogether ingenious visual effects, that the story of the incredible shrinking man rises to a new level of brilliance and burns itself into your heart forever.
The action shifts to the Careys’ living room, to their sparely furnished modern suburban house, so denuded of personal objects and intimate touches as to qualify as a generic house, a place without character or comfort, a standard American box dwelling from the 1950s, bland and blank, chilly, even as the California sunlight pours through the windows. There is no indication as to how much time has elapsed since the ring fell off Carey’s finger, but the next scene begins with a new character standing in the middle of the frame. This is Charlie, Scott’s older brother and employer, and as Louise sits on the sofa listening to him, he addresses someone who is sitting in an armchair, but because the back of the chair is turned toward the camera, and because the head of the person sitting in the chair cannot be seen, it is impossible to know who that person is. Charlie is talking about a lost account, about business troubles and money troubles, and then he says: I just can’t afford to send you your paychecks anymore—meaning the person in the chair. It is quickly becoming clear that the unseen person is Scott, but still the camera holds on Charlie, who now reports that journalists have been showing up at the plant and asking questions, no doubt because someone at the medical center leaked word about the case, and according to a man who works for the American Press Syndicate, Charlie says, there’s a good chance that Scott could be paid to write his story. Since the story is bound to break anyway, why not get paid to present it to the public himself? Louise is disgusted by the crassness of the proposal, but Charlie is a practical man, and he tells Scott to think about it. That is when the camera finally turns around to reveal Carey—but only his face, in a tight close-up. He looks haggard and anguished, there are dark circles under his eyes, but it is still the same face, he is still the same person as before. Slowly, however, the camera dollies back, and what you now see jolts you from the crown of your head to the tips of the toes in your socks, a surge of high-voltage current that runs through your body with such speed and such force that you feel you have been electrocuted. There is Carey sitting in the chair, the same Carey who suddenly and appallingly is no bigger than you are, the size of a medium boy, barely five feet tall, dressed in the clothes of a ten-year-old and wearing sneakers on his feet, a diminutive Scott Carey sitting in what appears to be the largest armchair in the world. All right, he says to his brother, I’ll think about it.
You are old enough to understand that Grant Williams, the actor who plays the shrinking man, has not grown smaller, that the effect has been created by a clever production designer who has built an enormous chair, a chair that could easily accommodate a twelve-foot giant, but the impact you feel is nevertheless wondrous and uncanny. There is nothing complicated about it, it is a simple matter of juggling scale, and yet the sensation of surprise and dislocation overwhelms you, thrills you, disturbs you, as if everything you have ever assumed about the physical world has been thrown abruptly into question.
Bit by bit, as you adjust to Carey’s diminished size, gradually feeling the oddness of it turn into something familiar, the action moves ahead. The story has indeed broken, and overnight Carey has become a national figure, the subject of magazine articles and television news reports, his house surrounded by journalists, gawkers, and camera crews, a once normal man transformed into a freak, a phenomenon, hounded so persistently that he can no longer go outside. His sole activity is writing, writing a book about his experiences, a journal that charts the progress of his condition, and you are amazed to see him in his little boy’s body working with a gigantic pencil, amazed by the immensity of the telephone receiver he holds in his hand, each visual trick continues to surprise you and move you, but what touches you even more is the portrait of Carey’s mental state, the tough, unsentimental depiction of a man on the verge of an emotional crack-up, for Carey cannot come to terms with what is happening to him, he will not accept it, and again and again he gives in to his rage, a madman crying out in bitterness, howling forth his contempt for the world, at times even turning on Louise, steadfast Louise, as patient and loving as ever, who still lives with the hope that the doctors will save him. Meanwhile, Carey continues to shrink. On October seventeenth, he is down to thirty-six and a half inches and weighs fifty-two pounds. He is in despair. Then, a sudden, miraculous turn. The medical center calls to tell him that the antitoxin is ready.
Tense, uncertain days as Dr. Silver injects Carey with the potential remedy, warning that there is just a fifty-fifty chance of success, but after a week of torment and waiting, Carey’s measurements continue to hold at thirty-six and a h
alf inches and fifty-two pounds. An overjoyed Louise says, It’s over, Scott. You’re going to be all right … but when Carey asks Silver how long it will take for him to get back to normal, the doctor frowns, hesitates, and finally tells him that stopping the degenerative process of his disease is one thing, but reversing the process is quite another. Carey’s growth capacity is as limited as any adult’s, he says, and in order to help him any further, a whole new set of scientific problems will have to be overcome—meaning that Carey will most likely continue to be three feet tall for the rest of his life. They will go on working, the doctor says, they will push their knowledge as far as they can, and maybe, just maybe, the day will come when they have the answer, but at this point nothing is sure.
The news is both good and not good, then, and although you are disappointed that nothing more can be done for Carey, saddened that he will have to go on in this diminished state, another part of you is vastly relieved, for the shrinking of his body has been arrested, and you will not have to face the horror of watching him melt away into nothing. No one wants to be a midget, of course, but better that, you tell yourself, than to vanish into thin air.
Back home, Carey continues to brood. The worst might be over, but he is still struggling to come to terms with his condition, still angry, still unable to find the courage to act as a husband to Louise, and because he has withdrawn from her in his shame, he knows he is making her suffer, which only augments his own suffering. Louise, he says, so strong, so brave—what was I doing to her? I loathed myself as I never loathed any living creature! Unable to stand it anymore, he rushes out of the house one night, a grown man in his child’s body, still wearing his ridiculous, infantilizing sneakers, a lost and pathetic figure walking down the darkened streets of his neighborhood, not going anywhere in particular, just going for the sake of going. By and by, he comes upon a carnival, the noise and confusion of a honky-tonk fun fair. The noise draws him in, and once he enters the grounds, it isn’t long before he stops in front of the freak show. Yes, sir, folks, the barker is shouting, it’s the big sideshow! See the Bearded Lady, the Snake Woman, the Alligator Boy! See all the freaks of nature! Carey recoils in disgust, sweating and miserable, unable to watch anymore, and then slinks off to a nearby café, where he goes up to the counter and orders a cup of coffee. You note how tiny he looks in that setting, you register the grotesquely large size of the cup and saucer as he carries them over to a booth, you see his isolation in the midst of others, the unremitting pain of being who he is. Just moments after Carey sits down, however, someone approaches the booth, a pretty young woman, very pretty, in fact, who also happens to be carrying a cup of coffee—and is also tiny, also a midget. She asks if she can join him.