by Daniel Keyes
I slipped my arms around her.
"That's different," she cooed. "I was beginning to think you didn't care."
"I care," I whispered, kissing her throat. But as I did it, I saw the two of us, as if I were a third person standing in the doorway. I was watching a man and woman in each other's arms. But seeing myself that way, from a distance, left me unresponsive. There was no panic, it was true, but there was also no excitement—no desire.
"Your place or mine?" she asked.
"Wait a minute."
"What's the matter?"
"Maybe we'd better not. I don't feel well this evening."
She looked at me wonderingly. "Is there anything else?...Anything you want me to do?...I don't mind..."
"No, that's not it," I said sharply. "I just don't feel well tonight." I was curious about the ways she had of getting a man excited, but this was no time to start experimenting. The solution to my problem lay elsewhere.
I didn't know what else to say to her. I wished she'd go away, but I didn't want to tell her to go. She was studying me, and then finally she said, "Look, do you mind if I spend the night here?"
"Why?"
She shrugged. "I like you. I don't know. Leroy might come back. Lots of reasons. If you don't want me to..."
She caught me off guard again. I might have found a dozen excuses to get rid of her, but I gave in.
"Got any gin?" she asked.
"No, I don't drink much."
"I've got some in my place. I'll bring it over." Before I could stop her she was out the window and a few minutes later she returned with a bottle about two-thirds full, and a lemon. She took two glasses from my kitchen and poured some gin into each. "Here," she said, "this'll make you feel better. It'll take the starch out of those straight lines. That's what's bugging you. Everything is too neat and straight and you're all boxed in. Like Algernon in his sculpture there."
I wasn't going to at first, but I felt so lousy that I figured why not. It couldn't make things any worse, and it might possibly dull the feeling that I was watching myself through eyes that didn't understand what I was doing.
She got me drunk.
I remember the first drink, and getting into bed, and her slipping in beside me with the bottle in her hand. And that was all until this afternoon when I got up with a hangover.
She was still asleep, face to the wall, her pillow bunched up under her neck. On the night table beside the ash tray overflowing with crushed butts stood the empty bottle, but the last thing I remembered before the curtain came down was watching myself take the second drink.
She stretched and rolled toward me—nude. I moved back and fell out of bed. I grabbed a blanket to wrap around myself.
"Hi," she yawned. "You know what I want to do one of these days?"
"What?"
"Paint you in the nude. Like Michelangelo's 'David.' You'd be beautiful. You okay?"
I nodded. "Except for a headache. Did I—uh—drink too much last night?"
She laughed and propped herself up on one elbow. "You were loaded. And boy did you act queer—I don't mean fairyish or anything like that but strange."
"What"—I said, struggling to work the blanket around so that I could walk—"is that supposed to mean? What did I do?"
"I've seen guys get happy, or sad, or sleepy, or sexy, but I never saw anyone act the way you did. It's a good thing you don't drink often. Oh, my God, I only wish I had a camera. What a short subject you'd have made."
"Well, for Christ's sake, what'd I do?"
"Not what I expected. No sex, or anything like that. But you were phenomenal. What an act! The weirdest. You'd be great on the stage. You'd wow them at the Palace. You went all confused and silly. You know, as if a grown man starts acting like a kid. Talking about how you wanted to go to school and learn to read and write so you could be smart like everyone else. Crazy stuff like that. You were a different person—like they do with method-acting—and you kept saying you couldn't play with me because your mother would take away your peanuts and put you in a cage."
"Peanuts?"
"Yeah! So help me!" she laughed, scratching her head. "And you kept saying I couldn't have your peanuts. The weirdest. But I tell you, the way you talked! Like those dimwits on street corners, who work themselves up by just looking at a girl. A different guy completely. At first I thought you were just kidding around, but now I think you're compulsive or something. All this neatness and worrying about everything."
It didn't upset me, although I would have expected it to. Somehow, getting drunk had momentarily broken down the conscious barriers that kept the old Charlie Gordon hidden deep in my mind. As I suspected all along, he was not really gone. Nothing in our minds is ever really gone. The operation had covered him over with a veneer of education and culture, but emotionally he was there—watching and waiting.
What was he waiting for?
"You okay now?"
I told her I was fine.
She grabbed the blanket I was wrapped in, and pulled me back into bed. Before I could stop her she slipped her arms around me and kissed me. "I was scared last night, Charlie. I thought you flipped. I've heard about guys who are impotent, how it suddenly gets them and they become maniacs."
"How come you stayed?"
She shrugged. "Well, you were like a scared little kid. I was sure you wouldn't hurt me, but I thought you might hurt yourself. So I figured I'd hang around. I felt so sorry. Anyway, I kept this handy, just in case..." She pulled out a heavy book end she had wedged between the bed and the wall.
"I guess you didn't have to use it."
She shook her head. "Boy, you must have liked peanuts when you were a kid."
She got out of bed and started to dress. I lay there for a while watching her. She moved in front of me with no shyness or inhibition. Her breasts were full as she had painted them in that self-portrait. I longed to reach out for her, but I knew it was futile. In spite of the operation Charlie was still with me.
And Charlie was afraid of losing his peanuts.
June 24—Today I went on a strange kind of anti-intellectual binge. If I had dared to, I would have gotten drunk, but after the experience with Fay, I knew it would be dangerous. So, instead, I went to Times Square, from movie house to movie house, immersing myself in westerns and horror movies—the way I used to. Each time, sitting through the picture, I would find myself whipped with guilt. I'd walk out in the middle of the picture and wander into another one. I told myself I was looking for something in the make-believe screen world that was missing from my new life.
Then, in a sudden intuition, right outside the Keno Amusement Center, I knew it wasn't the movies I wanted, but the audiences. I wanted to be with the people around me in the darkness.
The walls between people are thin here, and if I listen quietly, I hear what is going on. Greenwich Village is like that too. Not just being close—because I don't feel it in a crowded elevator or on the subway during the rush—but on a hot night when everyone is out walking, or sitting in the theater, there is a rustling, and for a moment I brush against someone and sense the connection between the branch and trunk and the deep root. At such moments my flesh is thin and tight, and the unbearable hunger to be part of it drives me out to search in the dark corners and blind alleys of the night.
Usually, when I'm exhausted from walking, I go back to the apartment and drop off into a deep sleep, but tonight instead of going up to my own place I went to the diner. There was a new dishwasher, a boy of about sixteen, and there was something familiar about him, his movements, the look in his eyes. And then, clearing away the table behind me, he dropped some dishes.
They crashed to the floor, shattering and sending bits of white china under the tables. He stood there, dazed and frightened, holding the empty tray in his hand. The whistles and catcalls from the customers (cries of "hey, there go the profits!"..."Mazel tov!"...and "well, he didn't work here very long..." which invariably seems to follow the breaking of dishware in a pub
lic restaurant) confused him.
When the owner came to see what the excitement was about, the boy cowered—threw up his arms as if to ward off a blow.
"All right! All right, you dope," shouted the man, "don't just stand there! Get the broom and sweep up that mess. A broom ... a broom! you idiot! It's in the kitchen. Sweep up all the pieces."
When the boy saw that he was not going to be punished, his frightened expression disappeared, and he smiled and hummed as he came back with the broom. A few of the rowdier customers kept up the remarks, amusing themselves at his expense.
"Here, sonny, over here. There's a nice piece behind you..."
"C'mon, do it again..."
"He's not so dumb. It's easier to break 'em than to wash 'em..."
As the boy's vacant eyes moved across the crowd of amused onlookers, he slowly mirrored their smiles and finally broke into an uncertain grin at the joke which he did not understand.
I felt sick inside as I looked at his dull, vacuous smile—the wide, bright eyes of a child, uncertain but eager to please, and I realized what I had recognized in him. They were laughing at him because he was retarded.
And at first I had been amused along with the rest.
Suddenly, I was furious at myself and all those who were smirking at him. I wanted to pick up the dishes and throw them. I wanted to smash their laughing faces. I jumped up and shouted: "Shut up! Leave him alone! He can't understand. He can't help what he is ... but for God's sake, have some respect! He's a human being!"
The restaurant grew silent. I cursed myself for losing control and creating a scene, and I tried not to look at the boy as I paid my check and walked out without touching my food. I felt ashamed for both of us.
How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibility, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man born with low intelligence. It infuriated me to remember that not too long ago I—like this boy—had foolishly played the clown.
And I had almost forgotten.
Only a short time ago, I learned that people laughed at me. Now I can see that unknowingly I joined them in laughing at myself. That hurts most of all.
I have often reread my early progress reports and seen the illiteracy, the childish naïveté, the mind of low intelligence peering from a dark room, through the keyhole, at the dazzling light outside. In my dreams and memories I've seen Charlie smiling happily and uncertainly at what people around him were saying. Even in my dullness I knew I was inferior. Other people had something I lacked—something denied me. In my mental blindness, I had believed it was somehow connected with the ability to read and write, and I was sure that if I could get those skills I would have intelligence too.
Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.
A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.
This day was good for me. I've got to stop this childish worrying about myself—my past and my future. Let me give something of myself to others. I've got to use my knowledge and skills to work in the field of increasing human intelligence. Who is better equipped? Who else has lived in both worlds?
Tomorrow, I'm going to get in touch with the board of directors at the Welberg Foundation and ask for permission to do some independent work on the project. If they'll let me, I may be able to help them. I have some ideas.
There is so much that can be done with this technique, if it is perfected. If I could be made into a genius, what about the more than five million mentally retarded in the United States? What about the countless millions all over the world, and those yet unborn destined to be retarded? What fantastic levels might be achieved by using this technique on normal people. On geniuses?
There are so many doors to open I am impatient to apply my own knowledge and skills to the problem. I've got to make them all see that this is something important for me to do. I'm sure the Foundation will grant me permission.
But I can't be alone any more. I have to tell Alice about it.
June 25—I called Alice today. I was nervous, and I must have sounded incoherent, but it was good to hear her voice, and she sounded happy to hear from me. She agreed to see me, and I took a taxi uptown, impatient at the slowness with which we moved.
Before I could knock, she opened the door and threw her arms around me. "Charlie, we've been so worried about you. I had horrible visions of you dead in an alleyway, or wandering around skid row with amnesia. Why didn't you let us know you were all right? You could have done that."
"Don't scold me. I had to be alone for a while to find some answers."
"Come in the kitchen. I'll make some coffee. What have you been doing?"
"Days—I've been thinking, reading, and writing; and nights—wandering in search of myself. And I've discovered that Charlie is watching me."
"Don't talk like that," she shuddered. "This business about being watched isn't real. You've built it up in your mind."
"I can't help feeling that I'm not me. I've usurped his place and locked him out the way they locked me out of the bakery. What I mean to say is that Charlie Gordon exists in the past, and the past is real. You can't put up a new building on a site until you destroy the old one, and the old Charlie can't be destroyed. He exists. At first I was searching for him: I went to see his—my—father. All I wanted to do was prove that Charlie existed as a person in the past, so that I could justify my own existence. I was insulted when Nemur said he created me. But I've discovered that not only did Charlie exist in the past, he exists now. In me and around me. He's been coming between us all along. I thought my intelligence created the barrier—my pompous, foolish pride, the feeling we had nothing in common because I had gone beyond you. You put that idea into my head. But that's not it. It's Charlie, the little boy who's afraid of women because of things his mother did to him. Don't you see? All these months while I've been growing up intellectually, I've still had the emotional wiring of the childlike Charlie. And every time I came close to you, or thought about making love to you, there was a short circuit."
I was excited, and my voice pounded at her until she began to quiver. Her face became flushed. "Charlie," she whispered, "can't I do anything? Can't I help?"
"I think I've changed during these weeks away from the lab," I said. "I couldn't see how to do it at first, but tonight, while I was wandering around the city, it came to me. The foolish thing was trying to solve the problem all by myself. But the deeper I get tangled up in this mass of dreams and memories the more I realize that emotional problems can't be solved as intellectual problems are. That's what I discovered about myself last night. I told myself I was wandering around like a lost soul, and then I saw that I was lost.
"Somehow I've become separated emotionally from everyone and everything. And what I was really searching for out there in the dark streets—the last damned place I could ever find it—was a way to make myself a part of people again emotionally, while still retaining my freedom intellectually. I've got to grow up. For me it means everything.... "
I talked on and on, spewing out of myself every doubt and fear that bubbled to the surface. She was my sounding board and she sat there hypnotized. I felt myself grow warm, feverish, until I thought my body was on fire. I was burning out the infection in front of someone I cared about, and that made all the difference.
But it was too much for her. What had started as trembling became tears. The picture over the couch caught my eye—the cringing, red-cheeked maiden—and I wondered what Alice was feeling just then. I knew she would give herself to me, and I wanted her, but what about Charlie?
Charlie might not interfere if I wanted to make love to Fay. He would probably just stand in the doorway and watch. But the moment I came close to Alice, he panicked. Why was he afraid to let me love Alice?
She sat on the couch, looking at me, waiting to see what I would do. And what could I do? I wanted to take her in my arms and...
As I began
to think of it, the warning came.
"Are you all right, Charlie? You're so pale."
I sat down on the couch beside her. "Just a little dizzy. It'll pass." But I knew it would only get worse as long as Charlie felt there was danger I'd make love to her.
And then I got the idea. It disgusted me at first, but suddenly I realized the only way to overcome this paralysis was to outwit him. If for some reason Charlie was afraid of Alice but not of Fay, then I would turn out the lights, and pretend I was making love to Fay. He would never know the difference.
It was wrong—disgusting—but if it worked it would break Charlie's strangle hold on my emotions. I would know afterwards that I had loved Alice, and that this was the only way.
"I'm all right now. Let's sit in the dark for a while," I said, turning off the lights and waiting to collect myself. It wasn't going to be easy. I had to convince myself, visualize Fay, hypnotize myself into believing that the woman sitting beside me was Fay. And even if he separated himself from me to watch from outside my body, it would do him no good because the room would be dark.
I waited for some sign that he suspected—the warning symptoms of panic. But nothing. I felt alert and calm. I put my arm around her.
"Charlie, I—"
"Don't talk!" I snapped, and she shrank from me. "Please," I reassured her, "don't say anything. Just let me hold you quietly in the dark." I brought her close to me, and there under the darkness of my closed lids, I conjured up the picture of Fay—with her long blonde hair and fair skin. Fay, as I had seen her last beside me. I kissed Fay's hair, Fay's throat, and finally came to rest upon Fay's lips. I felt Fay's arms stroking the muscles on my back, my shoulders, and the tightness inside me built up as it had never before done for a woman. I caressed her slowly at first and then with impatient, mounting excitement that would soon tell.