Genius

by Clare Nonhebel

CHAPTER 21

  Eldred thought Terry Smith had been a bit cool with him recently. He waited till Terry left his place behind the counter in the reference section of the library and followed him to the coffee machine. 'How are you, Terry?’ he asked politely.

  'Oh, nice to know you remember me,’ Terry responded.

  Eldred frowned. 'Is something wrong?’

  ‘Just that I thought you might have said thank you to me for arranging that interview with the local paper,’ Terry said.

  'Oh.’ Eldred tried to think of something tactful to say. 'I am grateful to you for arranging it,’ he said, 'but I was disappointed in the result.’

  'That's not my fault,’ said Terry.

  'No. But your purpose in kindly arranging for me to be interviewed,’ said Eldred carefully, 'was to publicize my farm waste recycling machine because Mr Austin was saying it wasn't mine. And the article didn't mention it.’

  Terry shrugged. 'The publicity won't do you any harm. No one's going to publicize my problems; I have to work them out all on my own. You can't complain.’

  Eldred looked up at him. 'What problems would you want publicized? And why would it help?’

  Terry pressed the button and watched coffee trickle into a plastic cup. 'Never mind,’ he said. 'What are you in here for today, Eldred? Looking for information on something?’

  Eldred hung his head. 'Don't say "never mind",’ he said softly. 'I do mind. You're my friend.’

  Terry hesitated, his cup halfway to his mouth. 'Do you mean that?’

  'Of course.’

  Terry stood looking at him intently. 'I could get off work now,’ he said. 'Say I'm getting the flu; everyone's going down with it. You could come back to my place and we'll have a talk.’

  'I can't,’ said Eldred. 'I said I'd be back in time for tea.’

  'You don't always do everything your parents tell you, do you?’ Terry said.

  'I have to at the moment,’ Eldred explained, 'or I won't be allowed to go to the nuclear power station.’

  'Oh, nuclear power is it now?’ said Terry bitterly.

  Eldred was troubled by him. He had never known Terry in this mood. 'What's wrong with you, Terry?’ he asked.

  'What's wrong with me?’ Terry said. 'Nothing's wrong with me. I have no life of my own, so how could anything go wrong with it? I'll be stuck in this place till I retire, my mother is too sick to recognize who I am any more, I don't know if I can rely on my friends to stand by me...’

  'Do you have to keep visiting your mother every evening?’ Eldred asked. 'If she doesn't know you?’

  'I don't know me either,’ said Terry. 'Maybe there's no one to know any more. I've become a nobody, an attachment to someone else's life, and now she doesn't need me. And what is there left to show of Terry Smith's life?’

  'You could make a fresh start,’ Eldred suggested. 'Go back to university?’

  'Too old and too lethargic,’ said Terry. 'What's the point? If I did finally get a degree, I'd probably only end up in the same kind of job anyway - or worse.’

  Eldred felt weighed down by Terry's sloth. 'What about outside interests?’ he said. 'Leisure, learning, social activities?’

  Terry started walking away from him. Eldred followed. 'Terry?’ he said. It sounded like a plea.

  'Who'd want to socialize with me?’ said Terry. 'Even I don't want to. You're better off not knowing me either, Eldred. Go on - nuclear power, bottom shelf over there. See you around.’

  Eldred watched Terry return to the counter and start leafing through a catalogue in response to someone's enquiry. He thought Terry seemed angry. He didn't know what to do to make him feel better. Eldred knelt down and began scanning a book on the history of nuclear energy, running his finger down the pages and stopping to read certain paragraphs, then moving on. He felt unbearably sad and lonely and didn't know why.

  After a while, for no reason he could identify, he abandoned the account of early nuclear fission experiments and went to the dictionary to look up the word 'anguish'. 'Severe misery or mental suffering,’ Eldred read. The word was derived from the Old French for 'choking', which in turn was derived from the Latin for 'tightness’or 'narrow'.

  From his position, hunched on the floor in front of the open dictionary, Eldred stared across at Terry. He saw that Terry's eyes, squinting at the screen of the microfilm reader, were narrowed and his face looked pinched. In his throat, his Adam's apple stood out starkly, moving visibly as he gulped. Narrowed vision, choking. 'Anguish,’ said Eldred softly.

  Satisfied with his diagnosis, he turned to the medical dictionary to find the remedy, but anguish was not listed as either a symptom or a disease, and Eldred didn't know where else to look.

  Over the tea table, watching his father's Adam's apple tackle the task of swallowing egg and chips, Eldred asked him, 'Do you ever suffer from anguish, Dad?’

  His father snorted. 'No time for hysterics,’ he said. 'I keep myself busy, my bowels regular and my conscience clear.’

  'You mean,’ said Eldred, 'that mental anguish is caused by leisure, constipation and guilt, then?’

  'I didn't say that at all,’ said Edgar. 'You're putting words into my mouth now.’

  'Don't annoy your father, Eldred,’ said Mildred automatically. 'Eat your tea.’

  Eldred sighed.

  Before going to bed that night, Eldred read four chapters of a library book on the history of the North American Indians, helped himself to a laxative tablet from the bathroom cabinet, and examined his conscience carefully for signs of guilt. The sense of anguish remained. His mother came in to put the light out and kiss him goodnight.

  'Pleasant dreams,’ she said.

  'Okay,’ Eldred said dutifully. He no longer told his parents when he had nightmares. Unpleasant dreams, according to psychologists, always came to an end just before the moment of crisis - before the world was destroyed or the dreamer was caught by the lion chasing him. In Eldred's dreams, he was chased, caught, savaged and consumed. He frequently dreamed he was dead or that he was the sole survivor of the obliterated planet. There were no limits to desolation in his dreams.

  Thinking of unlimited desolation led Eldred to think of the Unknown. There was something troubling his conscience after all. He had not remembered to thank the Most High for delivering his requested sign. He put this right now.

  'This may of course have been coincidence,’ he said aloud, 'but according to some theories there is no such thing, so I feel it's only right to thank you, Unknown Creator - if it was you - for listening to my request for a sign and arranging circumstances so that I'm allowed to visit the nuclear power station.

  'I don't want to abuse this relationship by using you as a kind of vending machine, so I won't make any more requests for signs now, but if you wish to give me a faith implant, I would like this, to increase my understanding of your methods. I'm signing off now. Eldred Jones. Thank you and goodnight.’

  He turned on his side, pulled his Intergalactic Trojans duvet cover over his head, and slept. Apart from three visits to the toilet, he had an undisturbed night. In the morning, the anguish seemed to have left him, at least for the time being. Eldred was relieved.