by Terry Carr
“The free sample?” The chef looked puzzled. “They gave them away? But in those troubled times, people gave nothing away except on special occasions—so I have always believed.”
“But a free sample would create demand.” Lora beamed, proud of her cogency. “One would use the sample and then want more of the product.”
“I understand. But what has this to do with me?”
“Don’t you see? What you’ve actually been doing is giving away samples and creating demand. When you look at it that way, it really doesn’t seem so bad, does it?”
Antoine’s face brightened a bit.
“So what we’ll do is continue to give away free samples. You can dupe a disk once in a while, when your compulsion grows too strong, but we’ll be open about it. Of course, you must also point out that even finer dishes are available in this house. People will be green with envy at the thought of what we eat here—why, you’ll have more appreciation than you’ll know what to do with!” And she, Lora thought, would increase her own reputation as a hostess even more. Everyone would clamor for invitations to dinner. Antoine would have his fame without sacrificing his position or principles. Her sensitive soul warmed at the notion of making him happy. “Will you stay?”
“Why, madame!” The chef was actually smiling. “Of course I will stay. You are brilliant.”
“I am, if I do say so myself.” Lora patted her hair. “You know, Antoine, those of us with some cultivation have been neglecting our responsibilities. We think that because people can have almost anything, we needn’t create demand. That’s a mistake. We should seek to lead people to finer things, encourage such folk to want them.” That idea, like free samples, was an old one called noblesse oblige, but an old enough idea could seem quite new. “Most of us have been satisfied only to accept the admiration of those like us. True appreciation is our rarity—we should try to increase this wealth, if I may put it that way. I suspect that a lot of others will start offering free samples soon.”
Antoine kissed his fingers. “You are an originator!”
“Oh, my,” Lora murmured, accepting that highest of compliments. “It was really your idea,” she added modestly. “I mean, you’ve provided the ingredients—I’ve only simmered the broth, so to speak. But you’ll have even more work to do now.”
“But I love my work.” He hurried to her side; bowing, he kissed her hand. “I shall be content.”
Lora hopped off the stool. “Enough. It’s almost time for supper. Something substantial, I hope. With all this thinking, I’ve worked up quite an appetite.”
“It will be delicious, I assure you. And exclusive.”
Let’s face it If we ever achieve time travel it’s going to present us with a lot of problems. Even if we ignore time paradoxes and the like, there will be countless subtle and unexpected problems that may hit us in the face.
But even granting that some of those problems might get even more strange than we could have predicted: humans are odd creatures even to themselves. Therefore, here’s a very peculiar story about time travel and some people of whom you’ve heard, more or less.
Barry Malzberg has been writing science fiction for more than twenty years; if I tried to list all of his novels and short stories, the list might be longer than this story. Malzberg has also published a book of sf criticism, The Engines of the Night, which you should read: not only does he say many sage and cogent things about the literature of the imagination but he also says them in a very entertaining way.
BARRY N. MALZBERG - JOHANN SEBASTIAN BRAHMS
The purpose of this test is not to measure your knowledge but your potential. A specific demonstration of knowledge is irrelevant and may even be counted against you. Answer the questions honestly. Allow your emotions to predominate. The Examiners will take into account factors beyond your apprehension. You have forty-five minutes. When the instructions are given to stop, stop immediately. Do not finish the sentence you are working upon; do not complete the question. This test is in only partial fulfillment of other requirements which at their pleasure the Examiners will take into account. Good luck.
1. Who is the most significant figure of the Western Creative Period? Explain and justify.
2. What can you bring to this figure beyond the accumulated researches?
3. Psychotronics leads to well-defined damages. Define some of them.
4. What is the primary factor (if any) lacking in the figure described in (1)?
1. The most significant figure of the Western Period was Johann Sebastian Brahms. In his symphonies, his concertos, and his German Mass for chorus and soloists he brought a kind of tenderness to the concept of death which had not been previously glimpsed. Johann Sebastian Brahms lived a difficult life. He was the target of scorn and envy. In his lifetime very few of his works were performed. One was the Symphony Number 1, about which someone said, “That sounds like the Beethoven Symphony theme,” and the witty Brahms replied, “Any donkey can tell that.” Brahms was also in love with Clara Schubert, the wife of another composer, and this so disturbed him that he sought counseling from the famous doctor Sigmund Freud, who helped him with his problems. After his death in 1897 the work of Johann Sebastian Brahms reached its true place in the audience and was performed for over three hundred years! He was very significant because of the originality of his themes (despite that nasty remark I have quoted) and the deepness of his passion.
2. I think I have a true and deep understanding of Brahms. Not only have I listened to his music but I have read about him and thought deeply about his suffering. In my opinion, the fact of his suffering is underrated as an inspiration for his music, like consider the German Mass. I can bring to him a feeling of understanding not available for many others and also a vivid appreciation of his music.
3. There are many well-defined damages to psychotronics. Among the most dangerous are time-slip and fugue; also depression and fundamental inaccuracy. Many critics of psychotronics think that it is dangerous and no good because change is impossible within the fabric of time. In 2216 Kellermann issued his famous theory that psychotronics was not an objective phenomena at all but an internal one and that everything that went on inside it was a waste of time. Also, it has been thought to create Premature Aging and Internal Organic Damage.
4. What is lacking in Brahms is very hard to say because I do not see too much lacking except for his unhappy romantic life which many people of his time had. He was a great composer. He composed symphonies and concertos and vocal works (like the German Mass) and also music for trios or quartets. Not all were at the highest level but none was less than very good. His problems were perhaps that he should have seen Doctor Freud more than that one time they walked around the lake and maybe he would have had more understanding. And of course he died when he was not too old but that was a characteristic of that time. Another problem with Johann Sebastian Brahms might have been
Freud feels disgust but consciously represses it, determined to remain professional. One must remain professional at all times; the litter of the subconscious is an ugly sight when strewn before him but the problem is particular to the individual, not generalized (Jung is a charlatan!), and in proper time all can be reassembled. It is this damned Germanic temperament itself that is to blame; this repressive hold when broken leaves for a while no structure at all. “That is perfectly all right,” he says to Brahms. “These feelings are very common and are shared by many men in your condition. What did you do after you had completed the act?” He takes out a handkerchief and wipes his brow, relights the cigar, tosses the match into the lake. A distressed swan he had not seen squawks in fury and scurries into deeper water, its eyes blinking. “You should feel at ease,” Freud says.
“I don’t remember,” says Johann Sebastian Brahms. He is sweating too; his forehead gleams with the exertion of pushing all his ugly childhood thoughts to the surface. “It was very dark in the room. I was very tired. Perhaps I kissed her once more. I made apologies. I wiped myself very t
horoughly, all parts, and then I disposed of the towel. It must have been storming. The rain hit the windows. I felt the heavens themselves were admonishing me. She was very silent. At some time I must have left.”
Freud sighs. “Can you be more specific?”
“No,” says Brahms. “I want to be, Doctor, but I cannot. It is all a blur to me. These thoughts, these memories, they pound at my brain and give me no peace but I cannot sort them out.” He stumbles over a dangling cuff, stops, looks at Freud intently. “This was a very bad idea,” he says. “Discussing all of this, bringing forth these bad recollections. I apologize for taking up your time but I do not think that I should longer proceed. Let us go back and say no more of this. The boat will sail soon.”
“No,” Freud says, “that is not proper at this time. We must follow through; you are becoming better, don’t you see? All these thoughts are coming to the surface where they can be discussed. That is the pathway to release and control.” It is not true, of course. He does not believe this at all. The way toward release and control is to contain the thoughts and sometimes to use their hidden energy but he is too far along in this discussion now to stop. Also, like most educated, troubled Viennese, Johann Sebastian Brahms fascinates him. The degree of concentrated energy, shaped toward explosion, is frightening. Freud puffs on his cigar for effect, takes it from his mouth. “Just do the best you can,” he says, “beginning with the time you left the room.”
Brahms sighs. After a long time, he proceeds. He tells of his uncontrollable lust for Clara Schubert, a lust which he has had for many years and which, at last, seized him on that crucial afternoon. He talks of his guilt, the difficulty of confronting the husband, Robert, in an unassuming fashion. Brahms and Freud walk. They walk the circumference of the lake, about a quarter of a mile, several times. The park is virtually abandoned at this time of day and they attract no attention. This is why Brahms had selected it; he had said that if it were to be known that he was seeking advice from Freud, there would be only one conclusion and that would be scandal. Freud’s researches into mental abnormality and distress are well known. Brahms discusses the difficult obligations of his work, the way in which he has become more and more to feel like a performer rather than a composer, the rage which has built within him. Freud listens, saying only enough from time to time to spur on the monologue. It is the theory of his researches that undirected monologue will lead to the truth but sometimes he is not so sure of this. Now, more than ever, as he ages and as his researches continue, he knows doubt. Perhaps it is this which has so infuriated Jung.
Brahms talks of his mother. She was a significant influence in his life, as was Beethoven. Sometimes he feels that he confuses the two of them. Like so many of his patients, Brahms seems to feel it necessary to probe ever more deeply into his history and his motives. Almost alone in such situations Freud sometimes wants to call a halt to this. “Sometimes a cigar is simply a cigar,” he wants to say. But there is essentially nothing to be done about this. His reputation has preceded him. That is why Johann Sebastian Brahms sought his counsel. He listens to the composer talk of his stern parent, her uncompromising necessities, her demands, the great sense of obligation which she imposed upon him at all times. Confused swans mutter in counterpoint as they stroll the lake. Their pace has picked up too as they make their fifteenth, now their sixteenth circuit of the stagnant waters, little pieces of shrubbery dangling like familiars. “I tell you,” Brahms says, “there is no end to it. There is no end to these humiliations, Doctor. Even Clara cannot take them from me.”
Of course, Freud wants to say. Of course your Clara cannot take them from you; she is part of those humiliations, a situation which you have created to replace the stern, admonishing parent, now dead, never dead. But how can he say this to Brahms? How can he possibly point this out, and if he did, what difference would it make? Pain exists like water; it will fill all circumstances. He wheels the cigar in his grasp, casts an arc against the sky. “But of course,” he says; “you must proceed,”
Brahms proceeds. Open, careless of himself, he has much to say. As if he had never opened himself he goes on and on, a symphony of strife and contradiction. Oh my, Freud thinks. Oh my, oh my. He feels the century itself clamping upon him like a vaginal orifice; soon enough, in only half a decade, it will expel him into the awesome and incomprehensible twentieth. The twentieth awaits him. The twentieth awaits them all, living and dead alike. As if from a near distance, he can smell the fumes, he can feel the superheated fires as that darkness awaits them. Oh, Brahms, he wants to say, your flesh is as grass, your sorrows are as ash; blessed, truly, are the dead against whom your words, your very anguish is merely obbligato.
But he says nothing at all. He merely continues to listen. That is his fate, just as it is his function. He will listen and listen and out of this will come, finally and precisely, the arc of his doom. The twentieth crouches in its passageway, waiting to consume him. The swans grumble.
This is an exit survey. It is not an examination. Answer the questions quickly and without attempting to be precise. It is your reaction which is being sought, not explanation. Good luck and thank you for participating in the Psychotronics League First Review.
1. What did you learn about your selected personage from the experiment? What if any characteristics of this personage differed from your preconception?
2. What was the most exciting moment for you?
3. What was the most disturbing moment? Was it the same as (2) above?
4. Would you enter this process again? Would you select the same personage?
5. Do you have any general recommendations about the process as to how it might be improved? Or are you content with the process as it was?
1. I learned that Johann Sebastian Brahms was real and that he was a human being just as I am. This differed a little from my preconception because I was in awe of this famous composer and found it hard to believe that he was a man with the same kind of problems and doubts as all of us. But I was not very surprised because I kind of suspected this. I should have researched better, though.
2. The most exciting moment was when Doctor Freud turned on me and said he could not help me because I was a charlatan and a liar who was not being truthful with him and then when he told me to get out of his sight. That was what I meant about not researching.
3. The most disturbing moment was the same as the most exciting moment I have described above. It was disturbing because Doctor Freud was so angry and I did not know what was making him so mad. He said it was all a lie, all of it was lies, and that all the time we were walking around the lake I was thinking I was Brahms and it really was meant to be Mahler only it wasn’t because I was so stupid. This made me very upset particularly when he would not stop yelling at me. But it ended soon enough so I guess it wasn’t that bad.
4. I would definitely enter this process again but I would not do it as Johann Sebastian Brahms. I would not do it again with anyone unless I had researched him much better. I see now that research is a very important part of psychotronics and that without it things do not really work out very well at all. I also see that one of the purposes of psychotronics might be to teach us the value of research for itself so I am not very angry about this but take it as a lesson. I would want to enter the process again but not I think as an important Western figure of music. Maybe I would be a performing figure or royalty instead because they have less problems. King Seville would be a good one to be, for instance.
5. The process was very good and realistic too; I really felt myself at the lake and with the Doctor and so on. It might be improved a little if the research could be done for us and like implanted so that we would not have to study. But generally speaking and despite being yelled at I was satisfied with the process and I would recommend it to anyone who wanted a different perspective on themselves or to understand what the past was really like for those who lived through it to make our own times for us.
Stretched on his bed, wracked in h
is bed, Freud rises at last from the terrible dream and lurches to the window, stares at the moon phosphorescent in the dim, wet night. My God, he thinks, my God. Who was it?
What was it? What has Mahler done to him? He cannot bear these dreams in the wake of analytic encounter; is this the price that his new mental science will extract from him?
It is too high. It is too much. Mahler had mentioned that doomed figure but was it of the tormented Brahms or the dystopic twentieth of which he has so luridly dreamed? Freud unwraps his next cigar with shaking fingers as far beyond, high and filled with song, the dying swan leaps suddenly jagged against the moon.
We are all dying, Freud thinks.
“No,” he says aloud, “all flesh is grass. We will be reborn.”
The idea of reincarnation goes back in history a very long way and has given rise to many interpretations, including fascinating ones by science fiction and fantasy writers. Here’s a story with more thoughts on the matter… and its implications.
Mona Clee graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in law; she now practices in Los Angeles. She attended the Clarion Conference in 1983 and has sold several stories to forthcoming anthologies of fantasy.
MONA A. CLEE - ENCOUNTER ON THE LADDER
It wasn’t the kind of place where you’d expect to end up talking about reincarnation. Dividends and Interest was a shiny, fancy, plastic-slick singles bar just off the Loop in Houston, its parking lot full of BMWs and its tables swarming with Yuppies. Normally I hate places like that; I just went there because it was Friday night, I’d had an awful week, and I needed a beer really bad. The Div, as we called it, was the only place within five miles of work where you could hope to get a drink without getting mugged as well.