But am I right? are you in the middle of something you can’t decide if it’s there or not?—so I feel, Is it trivial or dangerous or important or what? —because you aren’t whimsical.
Anyway the three brilliant white suits came out of the building, each man carrying his twin-hosed portable life-support pack, out of the suiting-up building (you understood that) and under the outside roof-overhang above where the white van was parked a grand hotel seeing off a team of—I don’t know what they were: not warriors though suspicious plunder was their aim; not priests, notwithstanding the slow uniforms and tight caps beneath the helmets; not condemned men in their divers’ fishbowls fixed forever onto neck rings; not statesmen in protective on-site inspection suits—but (words fail, again and again, words, words) surprise!—explorers: hunters. A fireman on one knee watches them stop to greet their families, the rangy American women dolled up, a cool, Sundayfied adolescent or two, one in a long skirt, was it Carlsbad Caverns, the Empire State Building? No kissing through the helmets, two wives not three—one wife, the Command Module pilot’s, did kiss her husband’s convex bubble and he the air inside, so their kiss met very firm, no tongues, poles invisible they are so familiar. And the blithe bachelor rock man Schmitt (also seen off by a lady) kicked up his huge Earth-heels—or was it Evans, the Command Module pilot—just before he climbed in the back of the Apollo van, his white bringing up into contrast a touch of rust-brown.
The boxes they are carrying said the South American gent next to me after all, maintaining the conversation he had seemed to decline. I pointed out the hoses and told him what I’d picked up—which did not (in reply to him) include who made the space suits and where. He said, They are taking overnight bags . . .
Kidney-machine overnight bags, I said.
They are getting away from their women for a weekend—
—on the Moon, I said—
—it is every American’s dream, he said, it is what you and I were bused here from the Press Site to see, it is a brief, expensive shot from a movie—
—seen much closer up (I pointed out) by the crowd back at the Press Site on closed-circuit. But are you a journalist?
The astronauts are elated.
They’re like kids in those aviator skullcaps.
Who is the one who danced? Was it not our bachelor rock man?
The geology of space.
But now that they are in the van I am not so sure.
Hard to tell.
They look alike, suited up. Unknown soldiers.
Wasn’t the idea one unknown soldier? Mayn asked.
Yes, more than one spoils that.
Ah well, unknown soldiers vacuum-packed for burial in space, Mayn slowly quipped.
Is it the Service Module pilot who orbits the Moon while the other two are on the surface?
The reliable friend who is there for the heroes.
Still, a vacation in a vacuum, said the tall, bald man with the mustache; what was that you said? vacuum-packed for burial in space? I will remember that.
The van has a rusty tailpipe, I said.
It will drop off on the way; nothing spent, nothing gained.
You know about the Polish revolutionary who was told to blow up a bus.
I knew him; he was not Polish.
And burnt his lips on the tailpipe.
That’s not the one I knew. Your astronauts don’t make mistakes. Can they be heroes?
Those tight skullcaps, that’s the secret.
It is a performance.
Shot out of a cannon, I said: do they have that act in your circuses?
In America you can see anything and live to tell about it, said the man with the Spanish intonation in the first phrase and in "leave" for "live."
Or see nothing and not live to tell about it, Mayn had replied, he thought.
Nothing? A man in prison assured me, yes, prison is about nothing. But of course that is not just anywhere.
A journalist also? I asked.
Also?
A journalist?
In fact, he had once wanted to be one, since you ask. As well as a public speaker, perhaps, though now compelled to have a limited audience however practiced an audience.
Political prisoner? I asked.
He killed someone. He had a theory, said the tall, bald man.
Political? I said (I couldn’t just say, Oh?).
Possibly about imprisonment, said the tall, bald man, but it was about the unconscious: in effect he said—he was not so clear as my summary of him—he had found it unavoidable, the unconscious—we reconstituted ourselves in each other’s heads, I believe, our minds being congruent frequently, does that sound right?—always near to being one mind, was that it? Oh, he apologized, always, and it was not him I at first went to visit; he eavesdropped; he ignored a man and woman who had come to see him, actually, and listened to me and the man I was talking with. It’s chemistry, this mind-family affair, but I was unable to give him my full attention. His theory was of imprisonment, and in the fragments I heard while essentially speaking to the person I was with, I gathered it was consolatory rationalization, yet moving. He expressed contempt for exposes of prison life. He was quite intelligent: he called jail abstract. No, his theory was about all imprisonment, if there is such a thing; but I would not have called him a political prisoner. I learned later that he had killed a woman one night who had been his girlfriend more or less since grade school. He was doing a long stretch.
You were not.
A matter of hours, no more. He seemed to have taken up economics but later I wondered if/ had started something.
This lean, diplomatic man with a mustache turned away, clasping his hands behind his back and raising his chin like a royal consort on a visit. Or a king. Not a journalist.
But I did see you, I said, in the telephone room at the Press Center back in town.
The man seemed frank—and if contempt was here it was not for Mayn, to whom the man had attended quite warmly. But he was looking away now. He did not speak of the man Mayn knew with whom Mayn had seen him in conversation, an ageless little villain (well, not so little) named Spence. Ever meet him? he gives information a bad name. The Chilean answered me that he was not a journalist, he said he knew nothing of space but he had heard there were particular pathways in it finding which we might save time. He had humor to spare.
That’s quite a lot, the girl murmurs, and an elbow lands on Mayn’s breast, and charges into him so the skin and bones couldn’t stop it.
Mayn’s more awake and there is a strip of horror over his heart, he wouldn’t know why, he hasn’t been asleep, he knows that. Hey, did you tell me the gravitational hills and valleys of space give us libration points but not the transfer of persons two to one?
Two people one, yeah, the girl murmurs, half asleep and more than half, Libration, vuhbration, she says the v like another language.
But did you?
For just a moment she’s awake like a woman he once married who when she woke up cocked one eye at the light and kept the other shut (but which eye suddenly seems important, but it’s lost): Yeah, well libration points I know but ... I don’t really recall . . . saying anything about them, and . . . transfer of persons from two to one, I know I didn’t say gravity ... her voice closes . . . didn’t . . . and she’s out again. Or in.
Where did he get gravity valleys, gravity hills, geology of space, libration points, where’s he coming from?, he’s no scientist, far from it. It’s like a mountain is coming to him.
We are not there any more, he continues. "No, we’re at Sky lab, May, ‘73," he imagines her sharply saying out of one wire-thin cleft of sleep; but he hears, "Mmhmm" and says, "Please" (meaning stay awake and hear me) and she says, "No" (meaning perhaps some opposite) and breathes; and then she breathes words he’s heard before—"resting my eyes"—heard from a wife—again between his lips feels the softness of her lower lip and her eyes looking out the back of his head. His fingers catch the ghost of the word Spence.
We’ve be
en bused back to the Press Site now, and it’s getting late. The place is packed, the grass infield stretching from the grandstand toward the Banana River. We don’t know for a few minutes yet that we have four hours to wait. The delay doesn’t dull me. Against the blinding giant disk of searchlight the contour of bald head and loose robe of an Indian holy man stood for a long moment. A delay is coming. A computer hold. And the computer is far away in Alabama, same Moon though. But my man, you see, appears twice more to me and then a third time. Under the grandstand at the hot-chocolate machine. Hands at his sides, calm, indifferent you’d say if you didn’t pick up this weird independence. But he’s not doing anything there, and you can’t see the launch pad, and he’s not there to study the structure of the grandstand or blow it up, although I might ask again about that one. He’s got to be waiting for someone, and I felt stupidly it was me. He looks away through me with a steady power I didn’t see before, so he’s above me and I’m only half there, and I have to make some conversation, the bastard; but then abruptly he acknowledges me: Where are they? he asks, and he answers, Elsewhere, elsewhere. The Governor of Alabama and the one-hundred-thirty-year-old slave must be seen, and he smiles and moves away.
I look at a girl’s name tag as she tips a paper cup to her mouth and eyes me and I look away to the body in general of a girl next to her who doesn’t have a name tag and this girl does not notice, and moves away from the other girl, they’re not together, why am I going into this?, while someone behind me reports that Press Site buses will visit the VIP stands, and I can hear a student returning to her friends camped on the infield grass down near the dark glimmer of the water say, "I saw him—he looked dead," and a boy called out, "What about the slave, Suzie?" while somewhere a woman says, "Zsa Zsa Gabor," and the syllable hangs on and holds as if the whole statement opens toward verbless nothing, but we know what is meant even if the future should think it not worth the struggle. The third time that night I see my man the South American—I’m jumping from first to third—
Mmhmm, I ‘member.
No, this is December when I was down for Apollo. We’re near launch, near the big sneeze, I recall my grandmother telling me the Earth sneezed once to launch a giant bird westward, we’re on the infield watching the great electronic scoreboard record the countdown and there is the rocket and a flat gleam of bay that’s part of the Banana River at the edge of the grass, and here’s the son of a bitch I’ve already seen him with once back in Cocoa Beach in the correspondents’ telephone room, but now they’ve got their backs to me and I remember my man wears no press badge, and they’re side to side facing the sea. My man in his dark suit has his hands clenched behind him; the other man, Spence, seems smiling when he turns to him—I’ve seen that smile when he listened to me—and I keep hearing him say to my man, "No," but also in combinations like "You know"—plus whatever; and when the countdown hits ten minutes I’m closer, but a woman with a tripod asks them to move and they step apart, glance behind without seeing, then walk away mingling singly, and after the launch they’re nowhere.
The launch?
But the second time—the second time that night mattered most.
Ah, says the girl, you had a lot of reasons to look this man up, I really believe that.
My back to the bay I stood halfway up the infield grass toward the grandstand.
Mmhmm.
Mmhmm. Contact. Here is a holy man in a baseball cap.
Mmhmm. I ‘member.
No, this wasn’t this trip. This was December. This was on my left while next to it on the right were commentators in the three network trailers—trailers, were they?—and I was looking away from the rocket, the bright launch complex.
Mmhmm.
Mmhmm—look away, look away, CBS, ABC. And NBC. Trailers had their picture windows at the right angle. People inside had their legs crossed. But outside in front were some small tables—card tables, weren’t they?
Mmhmm, I ‘member.
Glad to have you aboard—corroboration and so forth.
Mmhmm.
Moral support, and standing by one of them was my man, and the man sitting down at a mike was a Voice of America man I once met in Washington at a Softball game—turned out he was the South American voice, and later he seemed not to know who I meant by the tall, bald man, but here now he assumed I and the man knew each other. He and the man—he was Chilean I learned later—were talking as I walked up. The Voice man started to introduce us, but the Chilean bowed to me and said we’d met.
I don’t know any Chilean, the girl murmurs.
It is very beautiful, the Chilean said—a squint of gaiety pinched the points of his eyes. He would look out toward the rocket, then at me; I only at him, with my back to the rocket though I saw behind him the picture windows of the networks: men on camera recrossing their legs and lighting up, while they thought of something to say while the hold went on.
It’s money, I said.
Money? He had a slight stammer but you didn’t pick it up, he used it to hold back what he was going to say. They risk their necks for a few rocks, he said; and I said, It’s not money they’re being paid off with, staring at him. He dropped his eyes to my shirt pocket where I’d neglected to unpin my press badge.
Why . . . why . . . The girl’s whole body stirs vaguely.
They have no necks, he said; look how the helmet sits on the shoulder: a new skin will develop in which one can live without the pressure of our atmosphere.
And the blood pulsing from inside? I said.
A new cool blood. All one type. Type R. Reptilian skin with fine patterns, and these creatures will come to understand each other without speaking, one will be like another, they will all be married to the future, they will live in zero gravity, no gravity will be wasted, and if they find the wherewithal and the tranquil control, they will be interchangeable, I think I have heard this said—I don’t think it is original with me—their hair will not need to be cut, they will die if they wish and the wish will be beyond burial or incineration —that’s as I’ve taken it, and I don’t know a booster from an Apollo.
Greek to you?
Greek I can read a few words for myself, though if they say liquid oxygen is being used I am prepared to believe even if I do not know. It is their wings, yet it is wings they fly from, to become what?
News, I said, but what he said felt like life or death.
It’s a very good show, he said with that slight intensity of stammer.
The girl rolls over and bends her back and brings up her knees and snuggles back against Mayn. How long have you been divorced? You said your daughter’s working on the environment?
I went for something to say, I didn’t know what I said: chemistry, I remember saying, you know your chemistry, people can be made interchangeable.
Nothing to speak of, he said. The chemistry of trade.
He made me think of his prisoner. Your prisoner, I said, and heard "Your witness," "your witness," "your murderer."
My prisoner, he said. My economical prisoner.
Your profession? I said, but he replied, An unusual inmate, but he had to spend his time somehow; he was attempting to take some thoughts he had and, I believe, collapse them into one.
The unconscious.
Oh yes, the Colloidal Unconscious was how he put it. But we were interrupted and I see I have to visit him again when I am back in his part of the world.
Colloidal, I said.
I checked, said the gentleman: it is between a solution and a suspension—fine particles in a liquid, you know. Homogenized milk but not a dust storm. Particles too small to see under a microscope. But for the unconscious I do not know what it is. But I carry it onward, you know.
The Colloidal Unconscious? I asked.
Sounds like news, he said.
Something else is what it sounds like, something else I have never heard out loud before, or a crackbrained American business.
But the Colloidal Unconscious, said the South American gentleman, I
would not speak of it. I don’t know any Colloidal Unconscious. It is, as you say, something else.
Maybe it’s news, I said.
It’s news, he said, looking away toward Apollo 17 and the sea, both of which had stopped existing for the while, but he wanted to say something more.
They take the elevator, I said, up to the top floor, make a few phone calls to influential people, loved ones, then they’re off. If I did some homework I’d care more.
The other way round, he said, and I felt him to be a brother.
Mmhmm.
What prison were you in? I asked, and Spence grinned in my mind, never forget it, like he knew me—which of course he did.
I was not inside, the Chilean said. I was paying a visit. I left the city in the morning, I was back in time for a late dinner. A Vietnam restaurant cheers one up, an authentic one as opposed to half the Vietnam restaurants in Paris.
The prison was a pleasant ride through the hills. You are almost as persistent as another man against whom I once stammered; but I stammer slightly in several languages.
Santiago? I thought, the approach is through wide, flat fields of shining green. Caracas—Caracas has hills. Are there hills outside Athens, and a Vietnam restaurant? The ones in Paris, but a prison in Paris and a highly conceptual prisoner? Possible.
(Are you kidding, the girl murmurs; of course there are hills; it’s a regular amphitheater.)
But Spence materialized at the corner of the press grandstand. My man had seen him at once, and changed absolutely and asked me what it was that I wanted, as if I had been after information.
I said, Your prisoner was not in prison for his beliefs, I gather.
He had found a way around waste, or a way to stem the anguish of it. The passerby—what was it he said?—who carelessly strikes off the head of a sunflower. The thoughts we may or may not call our own that go nowhere until we immerse ourselves in the larger colloid. The need to go away but the discovery that we can go away by staying and being left. I see I must visit him again. When I return from California one day I may. One day soon, was the offhand remark the South American gentleman I think made against the Voice of America man transmitting.
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